So that way most of the actual “thinking” is being done by a human brain somewhere else. Then the machine learning control mechanism just takes that and uses it to know what to do.

Yes, I can see that too. The AI in that scenario would be kind of like the motions we perform “automatically” once we’ve learned some skill like playing the piano – while the conscious mind is focused on other things like “what interpretation do I want to give this passage,” etc.

armoured vehicles and air superiority are the next most significant in modern war, and infantry comes a distant third.

That’s not entirely true. To actually hold an area, you need infantry, hence why all warfare ultimately comes down to a ground assault. Bombing campaigns kill (murder) civilians and destroy infrastructure, but it’s harder to take out soldiers that way: since by the time your planes get there, most of the men and equipment will be dispersed and spread out. World War II proved this, and the lesson has been reiterated many times, notably in Korea and in Yugoslavia.

From what I understand, the idea of bombers and missiles coming out en masse and wiping out the enemy is largely a creation of Hollywood. In actual military tactics, air power is considered a “force multiplier,” i.e., it enables you to attack or defend as if with more men. Armor is also not nearly as invincible as often assumed. Its tracks are its weak point, and once immobilized it becomes very vulnerable – basically a standing artillerypiece. It is for this reason not very useful in urban fighting.

Very interesting. Some thoughts:

A difference between drones and robot soldiers is that drones are really not new technology. Radio control of various types of flying machines has been around, in one form or another, since World War I; and drones have been used, albeit in a limited function, in World War II and most wars since. What makes them, in the 21st century, suddenly an important weapon is the miniaturization of camera technology (so the drone operator can guide the craft as if he were in the air), and the development of things like FPV control systems. But the remote-controlled flying machine is in fact old and tested technology. Fibre-optic drones are in some ways even simpler, though the system of relaying control signals is exotic; for the concept of a craft connected to its operator by a cable is a reversion to pre-radio technology.

A machine which can walk and balance like a human, on the other hand, is much more complex and “experimental” – the more so if it is equipped with machine learning. People have been trying to build such things since complex clockwork was developed, and probably before, and the result has always been unsatisfactory; simply because walking and balancing on two legs is a much more complicated matter than it appears. The human brain, as probably the world’s most complex and astonishing computer – and the only “machine” which makes tools in its own likeness – manages it all. Whether humanoid robot soldiers are possible depends on whether we have finally been able to turn the corner and make a machine with something like our own balance system and situational awareness, something that can’t easily be tripped or defeated. (I can imagine “tiger traps” of the kind used by the People’s Army of Vietnam during their war with the US imperialists being quite effective; maybe even being built into city streets). Otherwise, something like a small remote-controlled tracked vehicle seems to me more likely.

Kim showed him how to guide the bullet with the power of Juche necromancy

Executing the last remaining Uighur – who was actually a paid Han Chinese actor – while shouting “the Han shot first!” This is the battlecry of Han supremacy (source: New York Times) which every single Chinese person was forced to shout ten times a day during the draconian COVID lockdown (source: Guardian, Wall Street Journal)

Even Tucker was like “wtf, dude” at that point

I’d off myself if I caught myself posting the Epic Comeback that Cruz did on twitter:

Yeah, I don’t like the guy. But it’s weird seeing a MAGA politician not able to keep his story straight in front of a (presumably somewhat sympathetic) MAGA news pundit.

Yes, that is concerning. And the way Cruz is talking sort of confirms my suspicion that Washington is in chaos right now – there’s no one person making the decisions, and Lindsey Graham (that Dixieland moron) has if anything more power to decide, unilaterally, foreign policy than has the president. Not that it would be good either way, but this seems a dangerous breakdown in basic government functioning, which could have disastrous consequences for the world.

President of Fr*nce

vs

one Chinese man being AUTHORITARIAN! on twitter

Glad to see this community taking the principled anti-imperialist stand here (as we did on Russia’s intervention in the Ukraine). The mainstream internet is full of the worst Zionist shitlibbery.

That seems like the very last thing you do before reddit spends the next ten years arguing whether your death was epic or not

He sure didn’t heil at the end, but he also made sure to remind you that his grandfather did, and that this is somehow supposed to make you as an antifascist feel guilty.

“We were fascists once, and that gives us exclusive right to determine what is and isn’t fascist” may not seem like a particularly logical position, but the German government has been going all in on it lately.

Not a problem; I’m open to other interpretations. Honestly, the political situation in the US is complicated, and I’m still trying to get some kind of theoretical handle on it.

I’ll copy-paste here a comment I made earlier (it’s limited to the US situation, and I don’t claim it’s the definitive analysis):

Today you have on one side finance capital, the big oil companies like Exon Mobile, and “legacy” capitalists, all of whom sit in the highest halls of power. They are allied with the Democrats and the intelligence agencies. On the other you have low-level capitalists like Trump and Betsy DeVos, and the world of tech startups in Silicon valley. They are allied with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, and what drives them is a kind of resentment about being controlled, regulated, and generally shut out from the upper echelons of political power. The Trumps and DeVoses of the world have obviously long been at the beck and call of upper-level capital in the US, but the tech companies are shut out as well: Silicon Valley was set up as a tech monopoly by the US government, and the newcomers on the scene have to play by rules which favor Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Trump and the tech startups are right now trying to throw off the yoke of finance capital and the oil companies. I do not expect them to succeed, and if they do it will likely destroy the petrodollar; which event, insofar as it would effectively end US global dominance, would end up destroying them as well. The good news is that a conflict within the ruling class is very often the prelude to the working class itself taking power. “All is in chaos on heaven and earth; the situation is excellent.”

Bedtime is literally Stalin.

Marxism is actually anti-colonialism; without anti-colonialism, Marxism loses its revolutionary character

Substitute imperialism for colonialism, and I would actually agree with this statement. Imperialism is the primary contradiction in the world today. The article gets into this a little towards the end – " above socialism vs. imperialism, he places anti-colonialism vs. colonialism" – but the thought is not developed. What needs to be stated is that, while colonialism is a phenomena that has existed since the dawn of nations and governments, imperialism is a specific economic system, the main expression of capitalism in its monopoly stage. Not understanding this basic principle of Leninism leads to a lot of confusion.

What’s interesting is the way so many ordinary people are willing to entertain the fact that these these things happened. Fifteen years ago, it was murder getting your average Y*nkee to admit COINTELPRO was even a thing. Now the fact that the intelligence agencies probably had something to do with Martin Luther King’s death is accepted as basic common sense by a whole lot of people.

I don’t have any real analysis of the situation: it’s just interesting.

It’s a symptom of the current conflict within the American ruling class – the sort of thing Marx described in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. First you have a revolution in the forces of production: since the 1970s, the development and widespread adoption of sophisticated computer technology. This revolution leads to a prolonged economic crisis: the western world since 2008. The bourgeoisie, which normally has a certain level of class solidarity, splits into factions; each faction has its own ideas on how the economy can be restarted, but they want the other capitalists to foot the bill. If the process is pushed to its logical conclusion, one faction eventually builds a mass movement and uses it to take control of the state machinery, in order to suppress other factions and enact its own economic policy. This was the fascists in Germany; it was also Franklin Roosevelt in the US.

Today you have on one side finance capital, the big oil companies like Exon Mobile, and “legacy” capitalists, all of whom sit in the highest halls of power. They are allied with the Democrats and the intelligence agencies. On the other you have low-level capitalists like Trump and Betsy DeVos, and the world of tech startups in Silicon valley. They are allied with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, and what drives them is a kind of resentment about being controlled, regulated, and generally shut out from the upper echelons of political power. The Trumps and DeVoses of the world have obviously long been at the beck and call of upper-level capital in the US, but the tech companies are shut out as well: Silicon Valley was set up as a tech monopoly by the US government, and the newcomers on the scene have to play by rules which favor Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Trump and the tech startups are right now trying to throw off the yoke of finance capital and the oil companies. I do not expect them to succeed, and if they do it will likely destroy the petrodollar; which event, insofar as it would effectively end US global dominance, would end up destroying them as well. The good news is that a conflict within the ruling class is very often the prelude to the working-class itself taking power. “All is in chaos on heaven and earth; the situation is excellent.”