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I am simultaneously in awe of the tech that it would take to pull this off and in complete revulsion at what was done.

It was interesting when I was in college to see which degrees required ethics classes and which ones didn't. Computer Science required us to take ethics classes. I assume because of the effects technology can have.

It is really subtle too. As one of my professors noted: "I'm sure none of you would write a 'BombJerusalem()' function, but you might write a 'Target(city)' function without realizing the implications."

What is the point of Ethics classes? Do they actually make people more ethical (and if so, is it ethical brain wash people?), or are they mostly used to pad out classes so that the philosophy department also gets some money?
I really struggle to be impressed by this as it’s a gross violation of national sovereignty, similar to US aggression in the Middle East. Imagine the other way around - headline: Iranian military shoot Israeli nuclear scientists on way home from work. It would likely cause WW III! This kind of intervention is wrong and should be condemned by the international community, not celebrated.
The middle east is a jungle. If I had to make a choice between living close to a nuclear Iran - a fundamentalist regime commits horrendous acts, like public hangings of gay men *or* violating international law, I would choose the latter without hesitation.

Laws are great when there's someone who enforces them. When there's no entity that makes sure those rules are obeyed they mean nothing.

One wonders how Iran would be today if the US had not eliminated the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in favor of religious monarchy, and whether they would've continued their progressive trajectory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état

I mean, Israel and Iran have both been quietly blowing holes in each other's ships for the last several years, and there's been no war.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/world/middleeast/israel-i...

I've been noticing the framing "imagine if the roles had been reversed... the reaction would be totally different!" more and more, especially around contentious issues.

I've never found it compelling. The argument seems like a variant of begging the question: we just saw that X caused Y reaction, but the argument asserts (generally without any evidence) that if the roles were reversed, then X' would cause a massively different Y'. Would it? Why? If we agree that it would, what does that demonstrate?

So from reading the article's first couple of paragraphs my obvious question was how do you dispose of the equipment to not allow it to fall into enemy hands? And of course they didn't:

> While the pickup truck exploded after the assassination, it failed to destroy the smart rifle system beyond recognition. This allowed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to piece together what occurred

Using remote AI-assisted seems a logical conclusion. Heck I imagine they hire somebody fresh out of high school who enjoys playing CoD to pull the trigger. It's lower casualty than drones but higher risk if you can't dispose of your tech appropriately

the terrifying thing will be when this type of system gets deployed at scale with drone swarms. The dream of any authoritarian government to use against citizens to keep them in line
This thread makes me wonder how many knife-missiles the USA has in stock.

(I am using the opportunity to reference the fact that the USA indeed has a “knife missile” and it is similar in principle if not in capability to the knife missile if the “Culture” series by Ian M. Banks.)

On one hand guns on drones are less destructive than bombs and missiles we are already using. So his wife in the car survived where a US drone strike would have killed them both.

On the other more surgical strikes may promote use.

This is almost exactly the plot of Captain America: Winter Soldier, for what it’s worth, except they use massive floating weapons platforms instead of drones
Part of the article makes it sound like there was no physical person close to the vehicle with the rifle, other parts make it sound like the rifle was merely AI assisted, whatever that may mean. At the very least people assembled the whole thing and probably drove it to the target location also.

At least the NYT article seems a bit better, and looking at the picture in the NYT article it seems like there were quite a few shots fired.

I wish there was some more detailed information here.

The big difference is that with the robot, the hit team has already left the country.
From the article:

> Fakhrizadeh was shot at least four times by the smart rifle, which was hidden in a pickup truck a short distance away.

> Israeli operatives smuggled the weapon and its parts piecemeal into Iran before reassembling it.

Reading the article (its short) it's a one ton robotic apparatus + gun, mounted, or at least transported, by a pickup truck. The gun utilized satellites to calculate its shots. This particular one wasn't much of a remote weapon deployable anywhere, but rather a weapon that replaces the requirement for an actual sniper to be competent and have a clear LOS. On some level I'd expect this thing could, for example, shoot through opaque conditions like smoke, or walls if the ballistics don't threaten it too much . It seems like it fired several shots which would help in that regard. You still, practically for a device this heavy and presumably expensive, would want a human driving it around and setting it up.
> The gun utilized satellites to calculate its shots.

highly doubtful. More likely it was something like a good quality camera fitted to a scope, outputting around 1.5 to 2 Mbps H264 or H265 4:2:0 color space video, with a data link over satellite to a remote controller. Some person staring at a screen with ability to pan and tilt the weapon.

I wonder if the scientist was voluntarily working on Iran’s nuclear program or if he had no other choice.

It was said he liked to read poems and enjoy everyday life pleasures, maybe this was an escape he didn’t mind.

Either way this will not stop either country’s ambitions.

Many Iranians are very proud to be Iranians in the same way many Israelis are proud to be Israelis.

If those two countries could decide on peace (or rather, if the majorities in each country that want peace could push aside the warmongers), the Middle East and the entire world would be a much better place.

It's really so amazing to watch how humanity is spending great amounts of creative energy toward the goal of ending humanity.
Ending humanity, is trying to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons?
The goal is not to end humanity, though.
Mmm, believe the goal here is saving humanity.
A very good article trying to answer the question "How efficient is it to assasinate nuclear scientists?":

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-11/overview-nuclear-sci...

It just seems so dumb and a waste to kill people like that without pretty much any shock or scrutiny.

I value intelligence, and people who aren't demonstrating intelligence get to live through the most absurd circumstances. So it is really disturbing for me to see these meticulous targeted assassinations that at best only serves to delay the nuclear program, and at worst accelerates the irradiated glass theme park they're trying to avoid.

I wonder why the gun is not aiming on its own, like a human would do.

There would not be a problem of laatency, you would just state the expected result (shot the head you would point to first, or shot in the windshield, ...) and let the gun do it on autopilot.

I know nothing about guns, but assuming someone is walking at a typical pace, what kind of latency would you need for a robot to actually (remotely control and) shoot someone via a robot?
The article mentions a 1.6 second transmission delay. You can imagine how much someone could potentially move in 1.6 seconds, regardless of other factors.

Distance is the largest normal factor, and is not mentioned in the article. Under 100 meters bullet drop and time to target are negligible; with a stabilized rifle (as in this case), it would just be a matter of putting the crosshairs over the target. The communications latency, however, would make even such a short shot extremely challenging. I wonder how the AI mentioned compensated for that. They imply the vehicle may have been moving during the shot. So during a 1.6 second (presumably round trip) delay, you would need to account for movement of the vehicle during that time, movement of the target during that time, movement of the target after firing (for longer distances), wind effects on the bullet (for longer distances), and bullet drop (usually trivial, but still).

I don't know what kind of help the AI provided, but I wouldn't want to be the one with my hand on the button (normal ethical questions of assassination aside).

The article says there was a 1.6 second delay between what the operator saw and what the gun saw, but it's going to depend a lot on distance and angle.
I think a lot would depend on whether the target was approaching you in a near linear straight line, or traveling sideways across your field of view in azimuth.

As described in the NY times article it sounds like the gun was set up to shoot straight down the road into the windshield of the approaching car.

This makes me sad.

While I think we ideally shouldn’t build any more nuclear weapons, I don’t think we should prevent any country from doing so.

It’s so hypocritical.

Aside from that, this machine is disturbing, but not more so than a reaper drone. I’m not quite sure why they’d go through the trouble.

It’s not hypocritical at all, as the whole point is to maintain an imbalance of power and capability in one’s own favor. The public reasoning and ceremony around why we prevent others from getting this capability may be run through with hypocrisy, but the real reason isn’t.
Our foreign policy incentivizes gaining access to nuclear weapons and WMDs. It's one of the best ways to guarantee your continuing sovereignty. Nuclear countries are powerful enough that even the US is reticent to invade or destabilize them. Gaddafi gave up Libya's weapons programs and was dead within a decade. Iran gave up theirs, and the US reneged on the treaty almost immediately.
Iran in particular has stated repeatedly, unequivocally that their goal is to annihilate Israel.

So of course Israel wants to do what it can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state. This would be in its top 3 foreign policy goals.

> I don’t think we should prevent any country from doing so.

Even countries ruled by theocratic leaders who promote hate and obscurity ?

> Aside from that, this machine is disturbing, but not more so than a reaper drone. I’m not quite sure why they’d go through the trouble.

If I understood the article correctly, it's because the Mossad didn't want to reveal it was them, which is why the gun attempted to self-destruct after use.

Who need nukes when you can assasinate a single person in any country. From the same people who brought you Pegasus spyware (tm).
Are Iranian nuclear scientists civilian or military?
The guy was a brigadier general. A fact weirdly not mention in any article on the issue, but at least mentioned in the wiki page.
This seems pretty terrorist and illegal to me. Is it not a violation of Iran's sovereignty?
100%. Not dissimilar to when US carry out drone strikes randomly in Iran or send in marines to catch Bin Laden, in complete violation of sovereignty.
"Looking forward to seeing how this technology makes it into domestic situations. It's just like space and other military technology. It'll benefit us all in the end."

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