Month: December 2025

Anyone who has played RTS games such as Blizzard’s Starcraft knows the basics of swarm warfare: you build a swarm of cheap units and hurl them against the enemy’s smaller force of more expensive units. The plan is that although the swarm will be decimated, the enemy will be exterminated. The same tactic is also used in the classic tabletop game Ogre. It pitted a lone intelligent super tank against a large force of human infantry and armor. And, of course, the real world has many examples of swarm warfare with some successful for those using the swarm tactic (ants taking out a larger foe) and some proving disastrous (massed infantry attacks on machineguns in WWI).

A modern approach to swarm tactics is to build a swarm of drones and deploy them against the enemy. While such drones will tend to be airborne units, they could also be ground or sea machines. In terms of their attacks, there are many options. The drones could be large enough to be equipped with weapons, such as small caliber guns, that would allow them to engage and return to reload for future battles. Some might be equipped with melee weapons, poisons, or biological weapons. The drones could also be suicide machines, small missiles intended to damage the enemy by destroying themselves.

While the development of military drone swarms in the United States will fall within the usual high cost of developing new weapon technology, the drones themselves can be cheap. After all, they will tend to be much smaller and simpler than crewed weapons such as aircraft, ships and ground vehicles. The main cost will most likely be in developing the software to make the drones operate effectively in a swarm; but after that it will be just a matter of mass producing the hardware.

If effective software and cost-effective hardware can be developed, one of the main advantages of the battle swarm will be its low cost. While such low-cost warfare might be problematic for defense contractors who have grown accustomed to profitable contracts, it is appealing to those concerned about costs and reducing government spending. After all, if low-cost drones could replace expensive units, defenses expenses could be significantly reduced. The savings could be used for social programs or, more likely, more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Low-cost units, if effective, can confer an attrition advantage. If, for example, it costs you $12,000 in drones to take down the enemy’s $12,000,000 fighter jet, then you stand a decent chance of winning. If hundreds of dollars of drones can take down millions of dollars of aircraft, then the situation is even better for the side with the drones. Likewise for naval vessels, land vehicles and structures.

The low cost does raise some concerns, though. Once the drone controlling software makes its way out into the world (via the inevitable hack, theft, or sale), then everyone could use swarms. This will recreate the IED and suicide bomber situation, only at an exponential increase. Instead of IEDs in the road, they will be flying around cities, looking for targets. Instead of a few suicide bombers with vests, there will be swarms of drones loaded with explosives. Since Uber comparisons are now mandatory, the swarm will be the Uber of death.

This does raise moral concerns about the development of drone software and technology; but the easy and obvious reply is that there is nothing new about this situation: every weapon ever developed eventually gets around. As such, the usual ethics of weapon development applies here, with due emphasis on the possibility of providing another cheap and effective way to destroy and kill.

One short term advantage of the first swarms is that they will be facing weapons designed primarily to engage small numbers of high value targets. For example, air defense systems now consist mostly of expensive missiles designed to destroy very expensive aircraft. Firing a standard anti-aircraft missile into a swarm will destroy some of the drones (assuming the missile detonates), but enough of the swarm will probably survive the attack for it to remain effective. It is also likely that the weapons used to defend against the drones will cost more than the drones, which ties back into the cost advantage.

This advantage of the drones would be quickly lost if effective anti-swarm weapons were developed. Not surprisingly, gamers have already worked out effective responses to swarms. In D&D and Pathfinder players generally loath swarms for the same reason that ill-prepared militaries will loath drone swarms: while individual swarm members are easy to kill, it is difficult to kill enough of them with standard weapons. In games, players respond to swarms with area of effect attacks, such as fireballs (or running away). These sorts of attacks can consume the entire swarm and either eliminate it or reduce its numbers, so it is no longer a threat. While the real world has an unfortunate lack of wizards, the same idea will work against drone swarms: cheap weapons that do moderate damage over a large area. One possible weapon is a battery of large, automatic shotguns that fill the sky with pellets or flechettes. Missiles could also be designed that act like claymore mines in the sky, spraying ball bearings in almost all directions.  And, obviously enough, swarms will be countered by swarms.

The drones would also be subject to electronic warfare. If they are being remotely controlled, this connection could be disrupted. Autonomous drones would be  less vulnerable, but they would still need to coordinate with each other to remain a swarm, and this coordination could be targeted.

The practical challenge would be to make the defenses cheap enough to make them cost effective. Then again, countries whose ruling class is happy to burn money for expensive weapon systems would not need to worry about the costs. In fact, defense contractors will presumably be lobbying for expensive swarm and anti-swarm systems.

The swarms also inherit  existing moral concerns about non-swarm drones, be they controlled by humans or deployed as autonomous killing machines. The ethical problems of swarms controlled by a human operator would be the same as the ethical problems of a single drone controlled by a human, the difference in numbers does not make a moral difference. For example, if drone assassination with a single drone is wrong (or right), then drone assassination with a swarm would also be wrong (or right).

Likewise, an autonomous swarm is not morally different from a single autonomous unit in terms of the ethics of the situation.  For example, if deploying a single autonomous killbot is wrong (or right), then deploying an autonomous killbot swarm is wrong (or right).  That said, perhaps there is a greater chance that an autonomous killbot swarm will develop a rogue hive mind and turn against us. Or perhaps not. In any case, Will Rodgers will be proven right once again: “You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.”

One challenge in combatting fake news is developing a principled distinction between the fake and the real. One reason defense is to defend against the misuse of the term “fake news” to attack news on ideological or other irrelevant grounds. I make no pretense of being able to present a necessary and sufficient definition of fake news, but I will endeavor to provide a rough sketch. My approach is built around three attributes: intention, factuality, and methodology. I will consider each in turn.

While determining intent can be challenging, it has a role in distinguishing fake news from real news. An obvious comparison is to lying. A lie is not simply making an untrue claim but making it with an intent (typically malicious) to deceive. There are, of course, benign deceits, such as those of the arts.

There are some forms of “fake” news, namely those aimed at being humorous, that are benign. The Onion, for example, aims to entertain as does Duffel Blog and Andy Borowitz. Being comedic in nature, they fall under the protective umbrella of art: they say untrue things to make people laugh. Though they are technically fake news, they are benign in their fakery and hence should not be treated as malicious fake news.

Other fake news operators, such as those behind the stories about Comet Ping Pong Pizza, have different intentions. Some claim to create fake news with a benign intent, professing they want people to be more critical of the news. If this is their real intent, it has not worked out as they hoped. It is also worth considering that this is, at least in some cases, also a deceit that is like the “I was only joking” response when someone is called out for saying something awful.  As such, this sort of fake news is to be condemned.

Fake news is often created to make a profit. Since legitimate news agencies also intend to make a profit, this does not differentiate the fake from the real. However, those engaged in real news do not intend to deceive for profit, whereas the fake news operators use deceit as a tool in their money-making endeavors. This is to be condemned.

Others engage in fake news for ideological reasons or to achieve political goals; their intent is to advance their agenda with intentional deceits. The classic defense of this approach is utilitarian: the good done by the lies outweighs their harm (for the morally relevant beings). While truly noble lies might be morally justified, the usual lies of fake news do not aim at the general good, but the advancement of a specific agenda that will create more harm than good for most people. As this matter is so complicated, it is fortunate that the matter of fake news is much simpler: deceit presented as real news is fake news, even if it could be justified on utilitarian grounds.

In the case of real news, the intent is to present claims that are believed to be true. This might be with the goal of profit, but it is the intent to provide truth that makes the difference. Naturally, working out intent can be challenging, but there is a fact of the matter as to why people do what they do. Real news might also be presented with the desire to advance an agenda, but if the intent is also to provide truth, then the news would remain real.

In regard to factuality, an important difference between fake and real news is that the real news endeavors to offer facts and the fake news does not. A fact is a claim that has been established as true (to the requisite degree) and this is a matter of methodology, which will be discussed below.

Factual claims are claims that are objective. This means that they are true or false regardless of how people think, feel or believe about them. For example, the claim that the universe contains dark matter is a factual claim. Factual claims can, at least in theory, be verified or disproven. In contrast, non-factual claims are not objective and cannot be verified or disproven. As such, there can be no “fake” non-factual claims.

It might be tempting to protect the expression of values (moral, political, aesthetic and so on) in the news from accusations of being fake news by arguing that they are non-factual claims and thus cannot be fake news. The problem is that while many uncritically believe value judgments are not objective, this is a matter of philosophical dispute. To assume that value claims are not factual claims would be to beg the question. But, to assume they are would also beg the question. Since I cannot hope to solve this problem, I will instead endeavor to sketch a practical guide to the difference.

In terms of non-value factual claims of the sort that appear in the news, there are established methods for testing them. As such, the way to distinguish the fake from the real is by consideration of the methodology used (and applying the relevant method).

In the case of value claims, such as the claim that reducing the size of government is the morally right thing to do, there are not such established methods to determine the truth (and there might be no truth in this context). As such, while such claims and any arguments supporting them can be criticized, they should not be regarded as news as such. Thus, they could not be fake news.

As a final point, it is also worth considering the matter of legitimate controversy. There are some factual matters that are legitimately in dispute. While not all the claims can be right (and all could be wrong), this does not entail that the claims are fake news. Because of this, to brand one side or the other as being fake news simple because one disagrees with that side would be unjustified. For example, whether imposing a specific tariff would help the economy is a factual matter, but one that could be honestly debated. I now turn to methodology.

It might be wondered why the difference between fake and real news is not presented entirely in terms of one making fake claims and the other making true claims. The reason for this is that a real news could turn out to be untrue and fake news could turn out to be correct. In terms of real news errors, reporters do make mistakes, sources are not always accurate, and so on. By pure chance, a fake news story could get the facts right, but it would not be thus real news. The critical difference between fake and real news is thus the methodology. This can be supported by drawing an analogy to science.

What differentiates real science from fake science is not that one gets it right and the other gets it wrong. Rather, it is a matter of methodology. This can be illustrated by using the dispute over dark matter in physics. If it turns out that dark matter does not exist, this will not show that the scientists were doing fake science. It would just show that they were wrong. Suppose that instead of dark matter, what is really going on is that normal matter in a parallel universe is interacting with our universe. Since I just made this up, I would not be doing real science just because I happened to get it right.

Another analogy can be made to math. As any math teacher will tell you, it is not a matter of just getting the right answer, it is a matter of getting the right answer the right way. Hence the requirement of showing one’s work. A person could guess the answer and get it right; but they are not doing real math because they are not even doing math. Naturally, a person can be doing real math and still get the answer wrong.

Assuming these analogies hold, real news is a matter of methodology, a methodology that might fail. Many of the methods of real news are, not surprisingly, like the methods of critical thinking in philosophy. For example, there is the proper use of the argument from authority as the basis for claims. As another example, there are the methods of assessing unsupported claims against one’s own observations, one’s background information and against credible claims.

The real news uses this methodology and evidence of it is present in the news, such as identified sources, verifiable data, and so on. While a fake news story can also contain fakery about methodology, this is a key matter of distinction. Because of this, news that is based on the proper methodology would be real news, even if some might disagree with its content.