I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun and accessible topics, cute concepts, and decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me


The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU

In it, he talks about a few techniques for how to take down “bad guy drones”, the problems with each, and then shows off the drone tech by Anduril as a solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries

Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.

In the video, the Anduril product is a heavy drone that uses kinetic energy to destroy other drones (by flying into them). Quoting the person in the video:

imagine a children’s bowling ball thrown at twice as fast as a major league baseball fastball, that’s what it’s like getting hit by Anvil


This technology is scary for obvious reasons, especially in the wrong hands. What I also don’t like is how Mark Rober’s content is aimed at children, and this video includes a large segment advertising the children’s products he is selling. Despite that, it is showing off military technology with serious ethical implications.

There’s even a section in the video where they show off the Roadrunner, compare it against the patriot missiles, and loosely tie it in to defending against drones.

Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner built for ground-based air defense that can rapidly launch, identify, intercept, and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats — or be safely recovered and relaunched at near-zero cost.

  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The vortex cannon was shot directly at the youtubers in this video and they were fine. The attack drone is designed to take out other drones. What here is going to be used to kill humans exactly? Did you watch the video?

    • demonsword@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I wasn’t refering to the video. “Defense” tech is obviously a much larget topic than the video itself.

    • Sizzler@slrpnk.net
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      7 months ago

      The drone hovers and goes down instead of up. A 200 mile an hour brick that if used right could go for multiple targets before failure.

        • Sizzler@slrpnk.net
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          7 months ago

          There is no modify, only a down button, I suppose lazers are pretty effective but they are banned right? And EMP? I think I can survive that but I’m sure someone will be along to tell me I won’t.

          I’ve pointed out that they are weapons and being presented in a friendly way, that’s all, why argue when you asked the question?