A bit futurologisticaly but I think as in any authocracy regime, companies don't rely on the market and consumers. The durable source of income for them are goverment contracts. Autonomous androids are the next big thing which should help the richest people deal with disobidient work force.

Great story, but Buddhism is not about cherishing the beautiful moments of life. It is about perceiving the universe as it is. It is about accepting that everything unfolds as it does and having the ability to see things as temporary forms of matter. In this story, the monk sees the cup as clay, a cup, and shards at the same time. So when the cup is broken, it means nothing to him.

The main problem with living under authoritarian rule is 1. the absenсe of control for the way where the country is going. 2. the value of human life is approaching zero. Today your life is pretty decent (unless you're some kind of minority (c)), but tomorrow you find yourself with a mobilization order because your country decides to start a war. And nobody cares about your surviving.

Don't forget that drones are evolving very fast and their potential is frightening. What about swarm of unmanned AI and computer vision capable drones spreaded across fields and forests waiting for their prey? You can make antipersonnel drones much smaller as you don't need even to kill the enemy - just to wound. You can place a big batteries across that zones so drones could go recharge theirselves and continue serving. Eventually you can just drop thousands of such killers above the territory or even some city and they will kill every human they find. Ok, then we can make unmanned drone hunters and human killer bots will start to enhance their defense capabilities. That will start another round in evolution where humans on the battlefield are just spectators. Or prey if they unlucky.

The article contradicts this view. It says that drones are hardly evolving: even years into the war they still use easily jammed analogue radio links on a handful of frequencies, and the biggest "upgrade" has been tying a fiber optic cable to them with all the obvious downsides that implies (at double the cost). Nor have they become easier to pilot.

The FPV drone is used in battle largely because they're extremely cheap and use components sourceable from many suppliers backed by hobbyist markets. These devices are so cheap and basic they don't even use digital encryption for the video back to the operator, they don't even take off a third of the time, and you're talking about putting AI chips on them. There is much lower hanging fruit than AI.

As far as I know drones usually are one step forward against jamming capabilities of the defence. Jamming device that blocks all frequences costs a lot in money, consumes a lot of power and can be mounted only on a vehicle. And then fiber-optic drones join the game. Infantry not in the vehicle is unprotected and is unable to defence itself. The only chance to survive is to run faster than drone which can be achieved using bikes. But that is not a solution at all. Not all drones are cheap. What about FPV with night vision cameras? Even if it costs a lot but gives you superiority you can benefit from it in some critical missions and then mass production will reduce the cost. I suppose going from FPV drones to unmanned AI-drones will change everything like when jet aircrafts replaced propeller aircrafts.