Army of None

[E]nabling a system to essentially fire at will removes a sense of accountability from human decision makers, who then can offload responsibility to the inanimate computer when mistakes are made.

During World War II, Army historian S. L. A. Marshall interviewed soldiers directly coming off the front lines and found, to his surprise, that most soldiers weren’t shooting at the enemy. Only 15 to 20 percent of soldiers were actually firing at the enemy. Most soldiers were firing above the enemy’s head or not firing at all. They were “posturing,” Grossman explained, pretending to fight but not actually trying to kill the enemy. Grossman drew on evidence from a variety of wars to show that this posturing has occurred throughout history. He argued that humans have an innate biological resistance to killing. In the animal kingdom, he explained, animals with lethal weaponry find nonlethal ways of resolving intraspecies conflict. Deaths from these fights occasionally occur, but usually one animal submits first. That’s because killing isn’t the point: dominance is.