I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun, touch on accessible topics, and have decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU

In it, he talks about a few techniques for how to take down “bad guy drones”, the problems with each, and then shows off the drone tech by Anduril as a solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries

Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.

In the video, the Anduril product is a heavy drone that uses kinetic energy to destroy other drones (by flying into them). Quoting the person in the video:

imagine a children’s bowling ball thrown at twice as fast as a major league baseball fastball, that’s what it’s like getting hit by Anvil

This technology is scary for obvious reasons, especially in the wrong hands. What I also don’t like is how Mark Rober’s content is aimed at children, and this video includes a large segment advertising the children’s products he is selling. Despite that, he is promoting military technology with serious ethical implications.

There’s even a section in the video where they show off the Roadrunner, compare it against the patriot missiles, and loosely tie it in to defending against drones. While the Anvil could be used to hurt people, at least it is designed for small flying drones. The Roadrunner is not:

The Roadrunner is a 6 ft (1.8 m)-long twin turbojet-powered delta-winged craft capable of high subsonic speeds and extreme maneuverability. Company officials describe it as somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile. The basic version can be fitted with modular payloads such as intelligence and reconnaissance sensors. The Roadrunner-M has an explosive warhead to intercept UAS, cruise missiles, and manned aircraft.

  • @[email protected]English
    7•7 months ago

    Mostly I just hate when very obviously sponsored videos don’t declare their sponsorships. The entire first half of this like, 15 minute video is an ad, and then the rest of the content is made by like 3 other people. The thing he did was a big dart launcher. Now sure, that’s probably just for fun, it’s a scaled up version of the science kit he’s selling, it’s probably laudable that he didn’t want to show up his co-stars or whatever, but this is a video that has no content and basically no educational value. It’s trash, basically, it just has science education skin on.

    Veritasium has done a similar thing a couple times, like his video on the autonomous cars. Very clearly a sponsorship, I think he only says so at the very end of the video, he totally glosses over any problems or downsides the technology has and speaks glowingly of it the whole time, paycheck please, next video, credibility is basically totally shot. I dunno, when I was a kid, magazines like popular science sold me on shit like the hyperloop. I wish they had been as forward thinking and hyped about normal trains, instead. Especially considering how many people have probably fallen for similar garbage like this due to that kind of stuff.