Weapons that Wait (But Only for a While)

Robots Deployed via Commercial Logistics

The recent drone attacks on Russian bomber bases reminded me of the simultaneous smiting of September 2024, when thousands of communications devices exploded in the hands, homes, and pockets of folks in the employ of Hezbollah. In particular, I found myself thinking that, in both operations, clandestine servants of a state used ordinary commercial activities to deploy custom-tailored weapons that, upon reaching their appointed places of duty, awaited the command to go into action.

Soon thereafter, I realized that, in a world ruled by Murphy’s Law, every hour that passed between the deployment of such robots and their activation increased the chances of discovery. As a result, I came to suspect that the phrase ‘use it or lose it’ (or its equivalent in Hebrew or Ukrainian) haunted the dreams of the people who planted patient robots in the camps of their enemies.

I also surmised that, in all likelihood, such concerns convinced the drone directors, pager pundits, and walkie-talkie wallahs to fit their robots with automatic activators. Thus, should they fail to heed Heimdall’s horn, the automatons would, at the very least, inflict some sort of damage.

Towards the end of this reverie, I concluded that the short shelf life of automatons deployed by means of commercial logistics deprives them of much of their political utility. Thus, rather than giving a statesman the means of sending a tightly-timed signal, they allow, and, in some cases, oblige him, to the throw the strategic equivalent of a random sucker punch.

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