This quote comes from a Washington Post article on how the Ukraine war is affecting development of AI-powered drones. I think it generalizes more broadly to how disadvantaged groups are driven to embrace alternatives that are outside conventional norms.

Ukraine doesn’t have the ability to fight the much larger Russia. Russia may have issues with corruption and the quality of its weapons, but it has a lot of them. And from the perspective of Ukraine, Russia has an infinite number of soldiers. So many that they can be squandered.

The West is providing Ukraine with enough weapons to survive, but not enough to attack and win decisively. I’ve read analysis where experts say that weapons systems are arriving just about as fast as Ukraine can incorporate them, but the order of delivery is from less-capable to more capable. They have artillery, but no F-16s, for example.

As a result, Ukraine is having to improvise and adapt. Since it is facing an existential risk, it’s not going to be too picky about the ethics of smart weapons. If AI helps in targeting, great. If Russia is jamming the control signals to drones, then AI can take over. There is a coevolution between the two forces, and the result may very well be cheap, effective AI combat drones that are largely autonomous in the right conditions.

Such technology is cheap and adaptable. Others will use it, and it will slowly trickle down to the level that a lone wolf in a small town can order the parts that can inflict carnage on the local school. Or something else. The problem is that the diffusion of technology and its associated risks are difficult to predict and manage. But the line that leads to this kind of tragedy will have its roots in our decision to starve Ukraine of the weapons that it needed to win quickly.

Of course, Ukraine isn’t the only smaller country facing an existential risk. Many low-lying countries, particularly those nearer the equator are facing similar risks from climate change – both from killing heat and sea level rise. Technology – as unproven as combat AI – exists for that too. It’s called Geoengineering.

We’ve been doing geoengineering for decades of course. By dumping megatons of carbon dioxide and other compounds in the atmosphere, we are heating our planet and are now arriving at a tipping point where potential risks are going to become very real and immediate for certain countries. If I were facing the destruction of my country by flooding and heat, I’d be looking at geoengineering very seriously. Particularly since the major economies are not doing much to stop it.

Which means that I expect that we will see efforts like the injection of sulfate aerosols into the upper atmosphere, or cloud brightening, or the spreading of iron or other nutrients to the oceans to increase the amount of phytoplankton to consume CO2. Or something else even more radical. Like Ukraine, these countries have limited budgets and limited options. They will be creative, and not worry too much about the side effects.

It’s a 24/7 technology race without a finish line. The racers are just trying to outrun disaster. And no one knows where that may lead.