Right now, in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are over 12,000 unmanned systems (“robots”) on the ground, fighting the war on terror. That number will grow, and technology exists that one day could make human soldiers obsolete. What will the future of war look like?

P.W. Singer is considered one of the world’s leading experts on changes in 21st century warfare. A Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, he served as the coordinator of the Obama-08 campaign’s defense policy task force. No one is better equipped to provide insight into how the new administration can confront the war on terror using new technology, and how all of us will have to grapple with the consequences that armed unmanned systems bring to the battlefield.

This is not science-fiction, but often reads like it. Singer’s predictions are unnerving, from the moral implications of creating robots that can “think,” to a world where wars, like jobs, can be outsourced to machines. Will the traditional psychological barriers to killing fall away, or will more human lives be saved by our high tech surrogates?

Peter Singer, author of “Wired for War, during hour 2″

http:’//wiredforwar.pwsinger.com