Shape of things to comeTerminating the terminators: Anti-robot defense company launched

Readers of the HS Daily Wire would know that the newsletter’s unofficial motto is: ‘Where here is a security need, there is a business opportunity.” In evidence. Robots, or rather: the need to counter robots. As more and more unmanned vehicles — in the air, on land, at sea, and in law enforcement and first response — assume more and more intelligence-gathering and operational responsibilities, there is a need to find a way to defend against them — in case the bad guys begin to use them.

Ben Way, the famed dotcom 1.0 teen millionaire who developed Waysearch, which later became known as Pulsar (he was a teenager: He will turn 28 years old at the end of the month) took note, and launched a company specializing in anti-robot weaponry. Way foresees lucrative business opportunities in suppressing the inevitable rogue killer robots and machine rebellions to be expected in coming years.

The new company, WAR Defense (Weapons Against Robots) was launched this week. “The use of robotics in the military is on the up,” said Way in a statement. “Although the decision to take human life is currently still taken by another human, before long such decisions will be made … within a robot. Within 15 years robots will be commonplace in the home, and in just another 15 it is likely that they will have the same physical abilities as humans. Potentially the consequences of a computer crashing could be devastating. Hence, robotic defense is not just necessary for tackling combatants, but potentially for making sure we have control over our own weaponry.”

Lewis Page writes in the Register that the technology business boy wonder, who left school at 16, is handling a variety of technology ventures through his London-based Rainmakers operation. Apart from the new robo-busting venture, Rainmakers is also instrumental in a Web-to-mail application referred to as “post over Internet protocol,” a firm of green plumbers who drive around in electric vans. WAR Defense thus far appears to have little substance beyond the Rainmakers phone number and a flash-heavy Web site. Still, the company asserts that it is engaged in all types of serious droid-defense tech development. Promised products include “Autonomous-Against-Autonomous” and “Biological-Against-Autonomous” weaponry, plus “real-time detection systems” with “HUD integration” and “pattern movement tracking” to scan for “robotic entities.” The company also promises “robo viruses” able to “infiltrate and control” the enemy droids, and “molten metal ballistics.”

Way says that he is already in product development on the circuitry-frying electropulse/high-powered-microwave bomb. The U.S. military says it does not see any such program starting until 2012, assuming success in ongoing basic-principles research, but WAR Defense says it is already working on the Electric Storm-AX1, a “simple to use microwave high energy device that disrupts and destroys nearby electrical systems.”

Page correctly points out that it is not surprising that Way’s venture has won authoritative backing from Professor Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University. Sharkey is famous for his dire warning about theaters of war being populated by autonomous, life-and-death-decision-making machines (see HS Daily Wire’s stories of 20 August 2007 and 20 February 2008).  Speaking of Way’s WAR Defense effort, Sharkey said that the planned virus plagues, pulse bombs, and robot sniffers would come in handy if — Sharkey says “when” — the machine praetorians of tomorrow inevitably turn on their human masters. “This is the first real response that I have seen to the predicted rise in the use of autonomous military robots,” Sharkey, as quoted by Way, said. “It testifies to the dangerous slippery slope that we seem to be inevitably sliding down. Ben Way has certainly picked up on the magnitude of the impending threat of autonomous robot weapons to humanitarian war but it seems even more worrying that such steps are having to be taken…. I really hope that it does not come down to the use of these devices.” According to the WAR Defense press release: “WAR Defense is the world’s first defence company specifically targeted at protecting us against the current and emerging threats posed by robotics and is said to be already in talks with several Government defense agencies.” Page writes he could not get an answer from WAR Defense as to which government were in discussions with the company for its anti-robot systems.