Hmmm, well I have more realistic concerns about this. I don't think the goverment should be downsizing the military, or cutting military spending right now. Face it with Russia's actions in Georgia, the rising spectre of China, the war in The Middle East (where we are unlikely to eliminate the threat when we pull out) right now is a time where the military should be the last thing on the chopping block.... and this entire program seems to be designed to cut a few million bucks more than anything.
This thing isn't a robot,so much as a Drone, and frankly I'm nervous about using things like this to defend sensitive sites like the one being discussed because I do not think they are capable of reacting to a serious threat effectively.
In a day and age when criminals can get their hands on anti-tank missles (I seem to remember years ago some articles about gang bangers having shot a couple of cop cars with RPGs) any kind of serious terrorist or commando attack on a site like this is probably going to be pretty well armed. When these things stop to relay information to a human operator all it's going to take is one good shot by someone who was prepared to take them out.
For something like a nuclear site, I definatly think the more expensive alternative of the extensive camera systems and the like, combined with a bunch of soldiers garrisoned there for defense is a much better alternative. No defense is perfect, anything can be breached, but relying on what is basically a camera drone on a jeep is kind of stupid. If it actually spots anything that's a real problem, we're going to have to send in the military anyway and I'd rather just cut out the middle man in favor of quick response if something was going to happen.
Six million dollars compared to someone managing to steal, or destroy portions of our nuclear stockpile... honestly, even if the world was a lot more peaceful than it is now, this one seems pretty bloody obvious to me (assuming I understand this all correctly).
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On the whole "Skynet" track that people are mentioning, I'll be entirely honest in saying I'm not all that paranoid about robots and AIs. I think people are jumping to massive conclusions when they assume that any sentinent machine's first impulse is going to be to wipe out humanity, or even just rebel against us. Oh granted, I don't put much faith in the whole "Commander Data" thing from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" either with a robot wanting to be human either. I more or less think such a development will lead to co-existance, and that we should be looking more towards the works of guys like Issac Asimov than action movies penned by luddite technophobes, who read "Frankenstein" one too many times.
While they areguably made the wrong desician in the end (you'd have to read it) the final book of Asimov's "Foundation" series which tied it to his "Robot" novels revealed that the Robots were actually floating around out there protecting humanity from the shadows all this time, despite not having been treated well in many respects. A sort of optimistic take on the entire AI thing that goes contrary to the entire "Skynet" idea (in a sort of obtuse way I guess you could see it sort of like "What if Skynet was Batman?"). Even in the end they pretty much leave it to humanity to make it's own desicians, using a guy with a psychic talent to always know the right thing to do, to determine what path humanity should take as the greatest war in universal history is about to happen (First Foundation Vs. Second Foundation), the "right" desician the guy comes to is to have this living planet (with the robots assistance) dissolve everyone into a sort of galactic mass mind, losing our true individuality to sort of become extensions of a single all consuming organism and overmind as I understood it.
