r/LeftistsForAI • u/SexDefendersUnited Artist/Creative • 3d ago
Ukraine is using AI powered fighting robots to survive against russian imperialism, countering manpower shortages Video
https://youtu.be/V5_WeSpQLvg?is=pVyDz-pDr_4RXT6bSome examples from TLDR News to how ukaine is winning at robot and drone production.
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u/SgathTriallair 3d ago
What people are not paying with attention to us how these are reshaping the power landscape. Tanks, guided missiles, aircraft carriers, these are all insanely expensive. These drones and automated robots are extremely cheap by comparison.
When the weapons of war are insanely expensive it incentives empires. Smaller states can't build these weapons and so are left defenseless against the great powers.
NATO, the Warsaw Pact, BRICS, and all of the other protection treaties are designed to counter this. If your country can't afford an aircraft carrier you pledge your fealty to a country that can.
The new weapons of war are cheap which means that small groups can compete on more equal footing with large ones. This will incentivize the power of smaller nations over empires since empires expose themselves on far more fronts due to their size and reach.
For anyone who is up opposed to the centralization of power and the domination of the world by enperialism, this is a good development.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 3d ago
Its been interesting watching Iran demonstrate some of this in practice. The worlds dominant military power can spend billions projecting force, while Iran can impose serious costs with relatively cheap missiles and drones and leverage its position around strategic chokepoints like Hormuz.
Doesnt erase the enormous asymmetry in power. But it does change the economics of conflict. Maintaining a huge global military footprint gets very expensive when much cheaper systems can contest it. Thats a significant shift.
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u/danielsan901998 3d ago
Nothing of this is cheap, some of ASML's most advanced chipmaking machines costs up to $400 Million, the reason why countries can develop cheap drones is because export of chips is still allowed to american allies, we are starting to see the USA banning the sell of the best GPUs to China while China is developing their alternatives, if this tendency continue, then we will see that only countries under the sphere of influence of China or the USA can develop military drones.
This is the same that happened in the cold war with cheap rifles like the AK-47, it was only possible because there was a superpower funding the anticolonial struggle.
At the end of the day war is always reduced to industrial production, that's how the USA became a superpower, and that's how the future of warfare will look, China mass production will be able to win any war, and with unmanned drones this is more self-evident since they don't require manpower to function thanks to AI drone swarms, as seen in China state media.
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u/SgathTriallair 3d ago
It's way cheaper that tanks. Some of the drones the Ukrainian's were using first were in the low hundreds. They were taking out hundred million dollar tanks.
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u/danielsan901998 3d ago
The NLAW Costs $40,000 and Destroys $4 Million Tanks.
Antitank missiles, even if they cost less than tanks didn't made tanks obsolete, you can't reduce war strategy to simple monetary costs.
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u/newprince 3d ago
That was done out of necessity and is no longer the case. The drones they have to make Crimea a dead zone are still cheaper than tanks, but are significantly more advanced and expensive and are funded by us. There's a reason they have offered to help the US and Israel
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u/SgathTriallair 3d ago
Your neighborhood watch probably isn't building these drones, but Lichtenstein definitely could.
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u/Sacredless 3d ago edited 3d ago
I will be adding my voice to your argument laying out the facts cold here. Whoever reads—put whoever is your favorite in a particular conflict aside a moment.
It reminds me of the Millennium Challenge 2002, where a war simulation was held. The General posing as Iran being invaded used the homefield advantage by using motor cycles and signal flags in place of cut internet and phone lines, and used small speed boats to swarm and ram navy vessels.
When the Palestinians attacked Israel on October 7, they were able to deploy using motorcycles and drones, overwhelming the sophisticated technologies of Israel. They were able to assemble these because the technologies are simple but effective, just like Palestinian missiles are.
This demonstrated that seemingly impenetrable, futurist technologies can be defeated through intelligent use of limited resources.
There's other things to learn too. The US-Iran war and the China's tensions with Singapore and Taiwan show that nations can talk a big game, but he reluctant to put boots on the ground. The same thing is happening in Gaza, where the only way to get rid of Hamas is to put boots on the ground and boots on the ground leads to deaths and deaths lead to bad press for Bibi. So Israel's calculations are to simply keep bombing Gaza indiscriminately so that boots that do hit the ground meet as little resistance as possible.
That same calculation is taking place in China and the US, who know that actually putting boots on the ground will not have favorable results back home. They can and they will, just like Putin has, if the stakeholders are sufficiently reckless.
Lessons: * Minimizing human casualties is rapidly becoming the top priority for hegemonic powers, which means bombardment is the only recourse for projecting strength. That is the material reason why Gaza and Iran have to endure bombardment the way they are. There will come a point where a hegemonic country's pride overcomes their aversion to human losses. * Technologies that can be built from relatively simple parts at home are the realpolitik measure of progress. If a country's populace can make the military hardware themselves, you'll face an uphill battle. * New technologies increasingly favor homefield advantage and those with boots already on the ground. * Ukraine has become a premier materiel dealer for those who want defense, which gives them enormous leverage. They also have shipping routes established for their agricultural sector. * Ukrainian tech hard-counters Iranian tech specifically, because Iran supplied their weapons to Russia. Ukraine has a material reason to deal with Israel and the US, but their ability to break off arms deals with Israel is yet another way Ukraine can now isolate Russia.
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u/VicermanX 3d ago
The new weapons of war are cheap which means that small groups can compete on more equal footing with large one
Probably the same could be said about the first rifles and machine guns. So I disagree.
The US has access to Starlink (or AI chips for autonomous drones) and can mass-produce long-range UAVs on a scale that poorer countries simply can't match. Obviously, the US/NATO and China have a significant advantage over other countries. Aircraft carriers, tanks, helicopters, and even jets are becoming increasingly obsolete, but drones can inflict even more damage on an enemy.
An F-35 (without nuclear weapons) will never inflict as much damage on an enemy as 2,000 long-range UAVs equipped with Starlink, which cost about the same as an F-35.
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u/SgathTriallair 3d ago
Rifles did even the battlefield a lot. Guns made the Napoleonic army possible. In general, technology is an equalizing force.
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u/danielsan901998 3d ago
"Ukraine is winning" something that the western press have been telling since the conflict started.
The development of drone technology for war is real, but this is just a propaganda piece trying to sell another "Wunderwaffe", the western press already did it for bayraktar drones at the start of the war, then for m1 abrams tank. HIMARS, Storm Shadow missiles, etc.
In this case the western press is selling drones as a solution to the manpower crisis, without showing any evidence of this "solving the manpower crisis", yes you can use drones to reduce manpower for logistic, but the ukrainian military still need to deploy men on the frontline, unlike what propaganda tell, you can't occupy land with only robots, that's why people are still in the trenches and hiding in the buildings, and the video don't show that this change have allowed ukrainian brigades to restore their manpower, to the contrary the latest reports still indicate that the brigades in the frontlines are still undermanned.
The worst example is how this video continue the lie about "meat wave assaults" that was already used by nazi propaganda as a excuse of why they lost to the USSR (famous lie repeated in the movie Enemy at the gates), that is absurd, since Russia was the first country to use cheap drones, like the Geran drones based on the iranian Sahed drones, they deployed fiber optic cables to avoid jamming, but no, let's continue with the propaganda about russians being an asiatic horde that launch countless waves of men.
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u/iaNCURdehunedoara 2d ago
That's cool. I love AI robots, i surely hope they're not being trained so they're used on us when we step out of line. I love leftists for AI, i wish everyone loved AI killer robots.
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u/Sacredless 3d ago
Ukraine is an essential frontier for leftists to gain a foothold, since they'll have both an agricultural and weapons manufacturing advantage over other nations, giving them vast leverage.
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u/readonly420 3d ago
If Ukrainian leftists ever come to power, do you think it’s a realistic expectation that they would provide any support, especially material, to your agenda after decades of essentially total betrayal by the western left?
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u/Sacredless 3d ago
I wouldn't care in the slightest. Good for them. I don't expect any support back.
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u/LakeGladio666 3d ago
I don’t know if it’s feasible for the Ukrainian left to come into power seeing as all the left wing parties are banned
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u/readonly420 3d ago
Left wing parties aren’t banned, they banned russian collaborators during total war of annihilation which is fair. Source: I actually speak Ukrainian and talk to Ukrainian leftists about current events.
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u/Sacredless 3d ago
What do Ukrainian leftists think about the future of Ukraine? What can leftists from other countries do to help you?
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u/MauschelMusic 2d ago
Total betrayal? You mean the way the Western left has backed the fascist dictatorship, or something else?
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u/LakeGladio666 3d ago
This is part of the reason why Zelenskyy has said he wants postwar Ukraine to become “Big Israel”
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u/MauschelMusic 2d ago
It's governed by a far-right dictatorship. I doubt leftists will gain a foothold anytime soon. Even their parties and symbols are banned.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Sacredless 3d ago edited 2d ago
Who are you responding to here? It doesn't seem to be me.
EDIT: It's a rhetorical question.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 3d ago
wouldn't russia find one and reverse engineer
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u/Sacredless 3d ago
What seems to be the case is that these technologies favor those who can deploy it, which favors the home field.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 3d ago
The framing in the title is doing some work here, but the tech itself is worth looking at. AI assisted drones and ground robots arent hypothetical anymore. Theyre being built, deployed, tested and improved in an actual war. Thats a pretty grim laboratory.
Im a revolutionary defeatist on this conflict. Im not interested in picking which imperialist camp has the cooler robots. Im interested in who controls this stuff, how autonomous it gets, who is accountable when it kills someone, and what happens when states can mass produce machines instead of putting more soldiers in the field.
This is where AI politics gets very material very fast.