For those who had lost faith in the ability of the empire to sow the seeds of its own destruction, consider what the effect of their latest weapon of choice will be.

Drones--whether aerial, terrestrial or aquatic--are cheap, intelligent mobile platforms. And because the intelligence is on the same technology curve as computing equipment, they will be ubiquitous in a matter of years. Where today they are being used as surveillance platforms to track enemies of the state, within a year or two they will be covering protests and traffic stops (like this or this), streaming live video to the Internet to record the activity of state agents for the protection of their victims. And where today, they are being used as platforms to deliver deadly force by state agents, in the future they will take the place of suicide bombers by replacing the targeting and evasion capabilities of a human with hardware costs similar to a laptop computer.

Though the initial use of drones by the state brings martial uses to mind, the market will no doubt find thousands of peaceful applications. Since seeing this demonstration a few years ago, I have imagined using a drone to locate sheep on my hilly 40 acre farm or to check the state of fences regularly. Where Skycams or helicopters cover professional sports events today, drones will cover high school cross-country meets in a few years. Lineman in cherry pickers will be replaced with pole climbing maintenance robots.

It has been about fifteen years since the Internet was commercialized, and agents of central planning are still trying to understand and respond to the resulting power shift from the collective to the individual. They will no doubt play catch-up to the genie they are unleashing by pouring resources into cheap, expendable platforms. They should stick to their nuclear bombs and battleships if they want to maintain a monopoly of weaponry.