On War

3/30/26 2:06AM

It has been 81 years since the last great war. In the past 81 years, most countries on Earth have enjoyed peaceful development except for several regional and localized wars. There are three types of countries according to the number of nuclear weapons they have, one type has the largest red button on thousands of strategic nuclear weapons, another has a slightly smaller red button on hundres of strategic nuclear weapons or fewer, the third type has none. Because of the principle of mutual assured destruction and sound mind of leaders who have access to those red launch buttons, our Earth remain largely peaceful. Now, another kind of weapon system has entered the war arena, the drones. The wide availability of materials for drone-making and the rapid refinement of drone-making technology is opening another Pandora's box for the human race. It's natural that today's military drones are going to evolve into very large scale formation(VLSF) of fully autonomous attack robots.

Very Large Scale Formation(VLSF)

With the wide availability of drone-making materials, capable individuals, organizations, any nation big or small, could build very large scale formations of fully autonomous drones that enable them to target people based on color of their skin, the type of food they eat, the language they speak, the belief they have, or other selection criteria. If the size of those drones is small enough, they could be produced in millions or trillions. Furthermore, those drones could be produced just in time by drones specialized in manufacturing, for instance, a million manufacturing drones each producing a million fighting robots(1 trillion = 1 million x 1 million). If the millions of manufacturing drones are prepositioned strategically in the space, VLSF certainly could become peers to nuclear weapons and enable their controllers to have a seat at the table with other nuclear nations. I think the best way to stall this natural evolution of fighting drones is for United Nations(UN) to place a 10-year moratorium on development of fully autonomous drone with diameters of 10 centimeters or less and on manufacturing drones that produce these attack drones in real-time. That would be the most straightforward defense. If the UN doesn't take action and place moratorium on fully autonomous military drones, we as individuals, neighbors/communities, may need make more preparations to defend against those self-flying, self-targeting tactical rifles.

Open Source Defense against VLSF

Bunkers are a good choice for individuals to shelter from those drones in hope that those drones would run out of energy and expire eventually. Building defensive drones to counter those offensive drones would be another option. There's an old Chinese saying, "Reciprocate, we will"("兵来将挡，水来土掩"). We could construct drones that would utilize brute force impact of masses, laser, or electromagnetic field disturbance to knock incoming military drones off course. Like the manufacturing drones that could produce attack drones in real time, we could make manufacturing drones that self-produce defense drones in large quantities. We can also lean on AI to come up with more defense methods. Still, the best course of action is to let VLSF go into the history book along with nuclear weapons. AI could help war planners to understand that long term goals could not be achieved by initiating a war.

Open Source Peace

When a war is to be started, AI could show the course of war and show any unjust war is not going to achieve the goals its planners intended, if there is an open source repository built and available for everyone to look at the scenarios and how they play out. When an unprovoked attack has to be repelled, AI could also show what kind of military response is appropriate, and if a coordinated, dynamic economic sanction sequence with allies could achieve the goals in place of military actions.

With the advancement of military drone technology, Earth could be seeing more centers of power; but with AI, we could see a more peaceful world with limited military responses in the worst case. And UN should consider place a 10-year moratorium on fully autonomous military robots first.

Feng Zhou

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