Political Memes

Ukraine are fighting for their survival. You can't put someone's back to the wall and expect them to make the most moral, clear-headed, rational decisions.

What they have right now is Western armaments and funding. What they don't have is an inexhaustible supply of manpower. And their enemy has a much bigger supply of manpower than they do. Developing more and better autonomous weapon systems is the most rational choice in the horrendous situation they've been placed in.

The ultimate moral responsibility here is not with Ukraine. If the world had taken Russia seriously as a threat when they took Crimea, if we had moved to provide serious and meaningful security guarantees to Ukraine and apply meaningful, effective punishments to Russia (like dumping their oil and gas, as we finally, begrudgingly started to do in 2022), none of this would have happened. Instead we threw them to the wolves, and now you're here wagging your finger at them for defending themselves any way they can.

They're thinking "Russia has far more men than we do so we need to even the odds".

This comic is an absurdly naive take.

Having better weapons than your enemy will make you safer, yes. And when they've been trying to conquer you for a thousand years or so, I think that's a fair approach.

What a naive position of comfort you're posting from 🤣

Looking back at human history and developing a bigger stick than your "neighbor" has, is a rather safe bet even if just to deter said "neighbor" from using their big stick.

For the autonomous drone point. See Ukraine vs russian conflict. Ukraine is heavily using drones to hold back russia, so yeah those are rather useful.

And as someone living next to russia, i cant wait when we get our hands on autonomous drones as a force multiplier.

Some of them don't know. One of my favorite jokes goes like this:

I work in a vacuum cleaner factory. My wife could use a vacuum cleaner, so I decided to take a different part home every day, so that eventually, I could build her a vacuum cleaner at home. But no matter how I assemble the parts I took, I always end up with a submachine gun.

It's from a German short film on napalm called The Inextinguishable Fire. Very short, worth a watch. Holds up.

They are thinking"if we don't they will" which is the same reason why we have so many nukes in the world now

Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. If there's a belligerent opponent eyeing you, your best way to ensure peace is to make sure they know it'll hurt to attack you. If you look weak then they'll have no reason to not invade. It sucks that things are this way, but it's been true for as long as humans have desired something from another. This applies from a schoolyard bully to a bellicose nation.

If we're not fighting yet, Mm having a deadlier weapon makes the cost of attacking me higher for my enemy, discouraging him. If we are already fighting, having a deadlier weapon will mean I kill more of them than they kill of us.

My enemy having a deadlier weapon makes it less costly to attack me, and makes them kill more of us.

So yes, having a deadlier weapon makes us more safe. The alternative to nobody having it is preferable, but that would require an enemy who will cooperate with me, which is a contradiction in terms.

Second Variety by Philip K Dick.

A machine built to end war is always a machine built to continue war.

I guess the goal is to develop weapons so terrible that you "wouldn't wish them on your worst enemy", thus solving the problem forever.

The Torment Nexus sounds like a great technical challenge.