What are unmanned weapons and where did America’s quest for autonomy begin? The answer takes us back to the birthplace of the country and David Bushnell’s famed kegs of floating gunpowder then to the Civil War when, first Confederate and then Union generals experimented with land and naval mines and tethered torpedoes, and finally, how the invention of aircraft, the radio, and two World Wars ushered in a new age of autonomy.
Introducing a new, limited 8-episode series from the Hoover Institution: The Hand Behind Unmanned.
The Hand Behind Unmanned is a podcast about the people who design, direct, and deploy America’s arsenal of unmanned weapons. The limited series podcast tells stories about their beliefs, identities, and the ways in which human ideas about warfare created and continue to shape today’s drone revolution. It is a history of US investment in mines, torpedoes, missiles, satellites, bombs, and drones from the point of view of the generals, admirals, career bureaucrats, academicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs that guided, dictated, and sometimes manipulated technology to create autonomous systems.
You can also pick up a copy of the book “The Hand Behind Unmanned: Origins of the US Autonomous Military Arsenal” by Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald. Available now: https://www.hoover.org/research/hand-behind-unmanned-origins-us-autonomous-military-arsenal?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=thbu_description
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