Ever since things started getting hectic in Kenya, I have been considering how the news might appear within that country. An obvious thing to do, but one that I had not really done until now was to look up a Kenyan newspaper online. In this case I found the East Africa Standard and the Daily Nation - both Kenya-based.
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During a recent trip to Guatemala I was surprised to discover how large the indigenous population of that country is - by some estimates nearly half the population is classified as “Native American”, or indigenous. What surprised me even more was the prevalence of people who spoke and used traditional Mayan languages such as Tz’utujil, K’iche and Kaqchikel in daily life. Some people I spoke to said that many of the older people spoke only a Mayan language and did not know Spanish at all. According to the CIA World Factbook, 40% of the population speaks on of 23 Mayan dialects.
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2007 ushered in a new era in warfare as armed robots were first deployed on the battlefield. The SWORDS robots are manned remotely by soldiers, and do not make tactical decisions on their own, so I wonder if this is any different than remotely controlled Predator drones, which have been used for years.

Naturally, the use of any new technology in the battlefield raises ethical issues, and in this case some people are concerned with the issue of responsibility when a remotely controlled robot takes a life. I would argue that it is the soldier controlling that robot. However, in the future we might see thornier issues as robots are given more independent control over their responses to threats. If an algorithm decides to take a fatal shot without human input, who is to blame then if the robot kills a friendly target or civilian due to programming error?

It still remains to be seen if robots are even an effective or reliable tool in ground combat.