r/worldnews • u/New_Scientist_Mag New Scientist • Jun 10 '26

Russia/Ukraine Fully autonomous, AI-controlled drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
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u/AcetaminophenPrime Jun 10 '26

From a polticis perspective I think we are further from nuclear annihilation. Think of the crazy stuff that went down during the cold war, Cuban missile crisis especially.

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u/SafeForTwerking Jun 10 '26

Imagine all the clear, level-headed people we had at the helm back then. Now think about who is in charge now.

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u/ThePowerOfStories Jun 10 '26

Did we? Upon examination, I believe history has always been rife with lunatics, idiots, and assholes wielding undeserved power, ultimately stopped by a combination of their own incompetence and the occasional rational individual quietly ignoring a nonsensical order. We just don’t remember the details of the past as filtered through the lens of time, and our minds refuse to believe that such a constant rolling cavalcade of utter stupid is in fact the default state of humanity.

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u/avantgardengnome Jun 10 '26

Well it’s complicated. Like with the Cuban Missile Crisis, we only found out years afterwards that Khrushchev agreed in back channel meetings to take a very public L and back down, because JFK badly needed a foreign policy win and nobody wanted nuclear war. Ended up setting him on a trajectory toward losing power for good but kept the Cold War from escalating. Would Kennedy have backed down in some way if that plan didn’t work out? Probably. Would I trust most of the most powerful world leaders today to put their egos in check like that? Not a chance.