Imagine a world in which people who hold a certain political ideology could be sought out and summarily executed with surgical precision using autonomous microdrones and with no collateral damage. While this may seem like a great way to eliminate terrorist organizations like ISIS or Al-Qaeda, it could also be used by them to wipe you out.

As the Future of Live Institute points out, Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention. They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.

All the technology to assemble these machines which would carry out autonomous assassination exists right now. However, as far as the public is concerned, it has not yet been implemented to the point we see in the ominous video below which was created by the Future of Life Institute to raise awareness to this encroaching dystopian reality.

If the above video made you feel uneasy, it should. Knowing the horrifying lengths to which governments and terrorist organizations will go to implement their will, the idea of easily wiping out one’s political foes is like a wet dream to the warmongering elite.

Indeed, these weapons have long been the wet dreams of warmongers and are outlined in their own documents which detail fleets of robots that “can fit inside a soldier’s pocket” and weapons that can “target specific genotypes.” The Project for a New American Century, the neocon think tank founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1997 described these weapons in their report, written in September 2000, titled, Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

On land, the clash of massive, combined-arms armored forces may be replaced by the dashes of much lighter, stealthier and information-intensive forces, augmented by fleets of robots, some small enough to fit in soldiers’ pockets…..And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

The swarming drones—as fictionally portrayed in the video above—are real. In fact, as TFTP reported last year, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter disclosed the existence of Micro-drones that can be launched from the flare dispensers of F-16s and F/A-18 fighter jets traveling at the speed of sound. As the drones are released, tiny propellers provide them with the propulsion they need to find each other and create a swarm.

While the idea of weaponized swarming micro-robots deployed by one of the most destructive governments in the history of the world is ominous and horrifying, the war-mongering bureaucrats in D.C. are actually patting themselves on the back and released video of their robots to justify stealing even more of your tax dollars to build them.

After the release of the video, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called for $902 million in funding for SCO in 2017 — nearly twice what it received this year, and 18 times what it started with — and he got it.

If you thought the fictional video above was frightening, wait until you watch this very real video below.

Given that the US government never reveals everything that it is working on, we can safely assume—given the information that they have already released—that some version of these killer robots exists right now. This must be stopped.

The good news is that the rest of the world agrees that allowing the government to take your tax dollars and develop autonomous slaughterbots, which could potentially wipe out humanity, is generally a bad idea and they are taking action to stop it.

The International Committee for Robot Arms Control is calling upon the international community for a treaty against autonomous weapon systems.

Given the rapid pace of development of military robotics and the pressing dangers that these pose to peace and international security and to civilians in conflict, we call upon the international community for a legally binding treaty to prohibit the development, testing, production and use of autonomous weapon systems in all circumstances.

Human Rights Watch is another organization calling for the preventive measures to stop the machines…

The development of fully autonomous weapons—“killer robots”—that could select and engage targets without human intervention need to be stopped to prevent a future of warfare and policing outside of human control and responsibility.

Human Rights Watch investigates these and other problematic weapons systems and works to develop and monitor international standards to protect civilians from armed violence.

If you’d like to help stop this madness, please share this article and spread the word.

Tell the world why you think we should #bankillerrobots.

Add your name to the list of over 20,000 others who oppose autonomous weapons.

Reach out to your elected representative in the US, UK or wherever you live.

Visit the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots to take further action or donate to the cause

Sadly, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about this sort of thing over five decades ago — yet we’ve still failed to heed his advice.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”