Palmer argues that U.S. autonomous weapons are built for specific threats, not global dominance. The new systems target the Pacific and Taiwan, not a World War III scenario. China and Russia have their own regional aims, and a submarine designed for the Taiwan Strait won't start a war with Canada.
There's another view, right, where it's like, okay, but by building all these futuristic things, you are egging on something like World War III, because just by the nature of continuing this push, right, and making it seem, um, I, I hear the argument.
People look at military power like a scale of 1 to 100. In fact, we build something that is more like a scale of 1 to 100 for a particular type of conflict and not really that spooky for many other types. Right now, the United States is building a military fundamentally oriented around deterring a great power conflict in the Pacific with China, likely over Taiwan. And so when you look at the types of weapons that we're building and the force structure that we're building, it shouldn't concern a lot of other people around the world. Like, we are not building an invasion force capable of taking and holding land in Europe or Asia. That is not what we're building. That is what China is building. That is what Russia are building. They also are building specific types of militaries with a specific type of intent. China is orienting themselves around being able to do amphibious landings of nations like Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, or Japan, and seize and hold territory at scale. Russia is trying to build a military that is able to seize and hold territory in the continent of Europe without getting dug out by the US weapons systems that were designed to do that during the Cold War. And so, and you see this even in African militaries, you see this in other Asian militaries, they're actually very powerful, the thing they decide to be. And so the point that I would make to people when they say, oh, you're egging it on, you're egging on some conflict, I say, well, wait a sec, you're not egging on conflict in general. At most, you're egging on the particular type of conflict that you're actually building towards. And I don't know, is there anyone who thinks that we should be not defending Taiwan or Japan or Korea? Yeah, yeah, they definitely exist. I don't know, I feel like we're ramping up exactly the right type of military power. When people say, are you concerned about it being used for other things? I, I often point out, you know, I'm not sure it's actually all that useful for the things that you're most worried about. Like, oh, what about invading? What about like invading Canada? Like, you're not going to invade Canada with autonomous, autonomous submarines that are designed to clear the Taiwan Strait. You're just not.
