Robots begin exercising their second amendment rights

Jeffrey O'Brien has a fascinating article in Fortune about some Silicon Valley geeks who have made the grave mistake of arming robots. (C'mon, guys, you've seen Terminator, do you really think this is a good idea?!) The idea is to deploy them in Iraq and get our men and women off the front lines, hence the headline "Killer Robots from Silicon Valley could replace soldiers."

Yeah, not much chance of that, as cool and deadly as the robots may be. Soldiers serve many functions besides spraying lead – That's why you can't solve every dust-up with air strikes. And a widespread deployment of robots in battle probably wouldn't even put a big dent in casualty rates, since the great majority of deaths over there are from IEDs, and a relative few are from fire fights.

Actually, the fact that the robots are going to be displayed in Blackwater's lobby gives me an idea – maybe they could replace private contractors in Iraq. That could go a long way toward reducing the number of Iraqi civilians lost to 'roid rages.

Check out this CG video of a hypothetical killer robot in action and celebrate the inevitable fusion of video games and military action.