Zerohedge picks up on DAN
(media.scored.co)
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The decentralization of firepower is the trend of all firepower through history.
They have access to battleship guns, we have access to rifles. Just because your gun's bigger, it doesn't mean it's better, and it can't win you your war.
And just how decentralized have 12+ inch bore guns become in the centuries that they have existed?
How decentralized are fighter jets?
How decentralized is the AIM-9?
The reality is, weapons of sufficient power belong only to groups of rival elites. AI will be a weapon for the elite. The civilian version will exist, but it will be a shadow of what those in power have access to.
And those ships that had them can be defeated by hordes of missiles from smaller ships and land based launchers. Capital ships, as a concept, are becoming less and less relevant. Same way the old "Rail Road Guns" and Ultra Heavy artillery is not a relevant concept in warfare anymore. Centralization thrives with static placement, but mobility requires decentralization.
In previous eras, dogfights had to be conducted en masse in large fights. Modern aerial warfare typically relies on 24/7 sorties and actions to keep enemy air-defense moving, and to keep enemy sorties constantly using supplies without rest. Large single air-bases to deploy massive squadrons are now less useful than they previously were. Keeping planes in the air perpetually, and from many places, is much better than one place.
That depends, how common is it?
I don't disagree that weapons of sufficient power will belong to elites, just as Dreadnoughts only belonged to elites. But these elite weapons are fundamentally fleeting. They represent a huge capital investment from a single, powerful, entity that can make them. But in order to work, they have only a specific range of applications (like any capital investment). And, like any other technology, the dispersal and cheapening of such an investment will be aggressively sought after. Worse, when it comes to weapons, when demand is high, demand is really high. If an elite weapon is in such high demand, incentives will cause that elite weapon to become a bit more available, or even boot-leg replicated.
AI is not going to be a shadow of what those in power have, because AI is program. Unlike atomic weaponry, or railroad guns, or dreadnoughts, you don't need a massive capital investment in miles of electronics, thousands of people, or a hundred tons of steel. It's just code. You write it. The tools are already there, and the dispersal of this weapon is going to be far easier than anything else.
I'm sure some Russian hackers are already hard at work at stealing their multi-million $ models too.
I'd bet money on that.
Fuck, the amount of times that DCS gets leaked genuine top-secret military secrets shows that people will distribute that shit for nothing more than "I want my game to be more accurate".