Outside the wire is a good sci-fi action movie. It sets in 2036, near future where robot soldiers will have been fighting in wars alongside human soldiers. Film discusses how this futuristic warfare methods affect human lives. Apart from dealing with war robots, most of these concerns are valid for real life, current ongoing wars.
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USA Uses peace keeping missions to spread their global presence
Story of the movie revolve around a foreign US military base in Ukraine. It was there to resolve a civil war. A terrorist group known as Krasny is fighting to absorb Ukraine back into Russia. Obviously Ukraine resist that movement with their own militia. Americans are there to prevent any genocide. At least that was the narrative. But the resistance leader Sofiya disagrees with that. She thinks USA is there to destabilize Russia by prolonging the civil war rather than actual peacekeeping. Does her claim has any merits?
If we consider real world facts US military has nearly 800 foreign bases around the world. At the end of the World War 2 and cold war, there were 1600 US foreign military bases in 40 countries. Even though the number of bases cut down from 1600 to 800, US military presence has grown from 40 countries to 80+ countries and territories.
If USA troops enter a country for peacekeeping, they normally do not leave. There are USA military bases still in Germany and Japan long after the end of World War 2. And also their so called peacekeeping intentions are questionable whether genuine or not. So Sofiya is right. If USA troops get hold in Ukraine in real life, they would not go away soon.
Fighting from behind a computer screen
Lieutenant Harp was an exceptional drone pilot. But he lacked empathy towards humans in battlefield due to the fact he was never in a ground battlefield himself. He wasn’t even in the same country where conflict was going on. As a drone pilot he piloted drones remotely from USA without even set a foot in Ukraine. He only saw the battles through his screen. So it made him insensitive to the gravity and real world consequences of his actions. He only cared about mission goals and statistics.
We see similar situation where Colonel Eckhart sent a GUMP unit to prevent terrorists from escape bank vault with nuclear codes. Those robots attacked and killed civilians at the scene.
Both Harp and Eckhart shrugged off human casualties when they were only looking at the battle remotely through a monitor because those casualties were just collateral damage to achieve the mission goals.
But when Harp was sent into DMZ- Demilitarize Zone in Ukraine to experience battlefield first hand, he acted completely different. When he was in the vault to stop the heist, he wanted to save every civilian life in there. When he was outside fighting with terrorists he was even hesitant to take the first shot. But if he was piloting a drone, he would not have think twice before shooting a hellfire missile to destroy the building to stop terrorists from obtaining the nuclear codes.
Captain Leo also ironically spoke against using machines to fight wars. Using machines remotely from behind a screen can be effective and reduce casualties of military servicemen, but it will decrease empathy towards civilians who caught in the middle of war.
All the civilian casualties are treated as collateral damage
No matter who wage wars or who fight in them, normal people are always going to suffer as a consequence. In the movie Harp admitted his drone missions had caused collateral damage. He was convinced that collateral damage was accepted since they were within the statistical margins. He did not realize how drone strikes affect civilian lives until he visited Sofiya’s orphanage and saw all the displaced children.
Advanced technologies like GUMP robots should have reduced collateral damage significantly because they do not have to worry about their wellbeing. But apparently GUMPs are trigger happy and do not care for human lives at all. When GUMP units deployed to destroy enemy insurgents in the vault building, those robots took shot at everyone without even trying to spare civilians. When Harp informed Colonel Eckhart that GUMPs killed civilians and the oncoming drone strike is going to kill everyone in the vicinity, Eckhart simply replied “They’re all collateral.”
In real world there are no GUMPs or sentient robots to fight in wars yet, but there are technologies to strike distance targets such as drones and missiles. But they can’t surgically eliminate specific targets. Most of the times terrorists hide among civilians using them as a human shield. If military decided to take out such target in a populated area there are no ways to prevent civilian casualties.
Wikipedia article “Civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes” shows that there are significant amount of civilian deaths and casualties as a result of US drone strikes. Since there are no independent observers on the ground to confirm whether the dead were indeed civilians or not, the numbers can be inaccurate. But there are children among the dead. No one can dispute those numbers. Even a one dead child is too many to justify as a collateral.
Human’s distrust of Artificial intelligence and fear of a uprising
Some soldiers in DMZ clearly don’t trust GUMP units. When Captain Leo confronted two soldiers who were bashing the head of a GUMP unit with a butt of a rifle, Leo asked them why they are bashing the robot known as Charlie 009. One soldier replied “Some asshole in Arlington thinks a vending machine can do a soldier’s job.”
Soldiers’ concerns were justifiable because GUMP units have the habit of shooting preemptively ignoring orders from soldiers. When US military convoy met a rebel team who were scavenging an aid truck both parties got into a tense situation. When military officers were trying to deescalate the situation, someone from the mob threw something toward a GUMP. At that moment above mentioned Charlie 009 shot some other rebel’s leg ignoring orders. Fortunately Captain Leo was there to resolve the situation without a further incident. When Harp was trying to negotiate and rescue hostages from terrorists, GUMPs shot everyone and killed several civilians alongside terrorists. In this both cases GUMP units overrode human judgment to act upon their own volition.
Captain Leo was a sentient 4th generation bio-tech robot. He got acute sensory perceptions to feel and empathize with humans. This emotions ultimately led him to believe that his kind of robots are too dangerous for warfare. So he managed to manipulate Harp’s impaired judgments to exploit loopholes in his systems to break free from human authority. Then to prove his point he tried to launch a nuclear attack on USA. Harp prevented the nuclear attack and possibly the World War 3 and destroyed Leo in the process. But I think Leo got what he wanted by proving his point.
Fear of A.I. uprising against humans is an age long fear entertained by many people since the A.I. was a mere concept. Famous science fiction author Isaac Asimov who coined many terms and rules regarding robots including the word ‘Robotics’ had introduced 3 rules for robots to follow to prevent causing any harm to humans. In his stories like ‘Naked Sun’ and ‘I Robot’ he discussed how these rules can be manipulated to cause harm to humans.
Movies like Terminator, The Matrix show how A.I. decided they know what’s better for humans and take over the world. Even Captain Leo thought he knew what’s best for humans, but fortunately he did not follow the path of the Skynet.
In tech world A.I. and robotic technologies are advancing in rapid pace. Are there any counter measures to prevent real world incidents like Captain Leo or Skynet happening in real life? Are there anyone working on solutions, protocols or kill switches to prevent such incidents?
Judging from many comments online regarding the film ‘Outside the Wire’ it is safe to assume that many people do not like the movie. Major complains were it lack sufficient amount of action scenes and has many dialogues and discussions between Leo and Harp. But for me it had right amount of actions and sufficient dialogues to provoke some interesting thoughts. So that’s why I like the movie.
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