ICE using robot dogs

 I see that ICE (the US Gestapo) is buying robot dogs.  What for?

The comparison to the Gestapo is a political judgment, but the news itself is real: ICE has announced plans to spend up to about $2 million on Boston Dynamics "Spot" robot dogs. According to procurement documents, the stated purpose is not patrol or pursuit, but remote inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment in places considered dangerous for agents.

In plain English, the official rationale is:

    Send the robot into a building, tunnel, warehouse, or encampment before people enter.

    Look for weapons, hazardous materials, booby traps, aggressive individuals, or other dangers.

    Provide live video and sensor data to officers outside.

    Reduce the risk to human personnel.

This is similar to how robot dogs have already been used by some police departments, bomb squads, industrial inspectors, and emergency responders. The machines can climb stairs, traverse rough ground, open some doors with attachments, and carry cameras and sensors into places humans would rather not go first.

The controversy is less about what ICE says the robots will do today and more about what people fear they could do tomorrow. Critics worry about:

    Expanding surveillance.

    Increasing the technological reach of immigration enforcement.

    Potential future weaponization.

    A broader trend toward militarized policing and automated enforcement.

For what it's worth, Boston Dynamics has long maintained a policy against weaponizing its commercial robots, and the ICE procurement documents describe reconnaissance and hazard-assessment roles rather than armed ones.

The interesting question is whether these machines are actually useful. In bomb disposal, hazardous-material incidents, and reconnaissance of unknown spaces, they clearly can be. For routine immigration enforcement, the practical benefits are less obvious. One suspects that part of the attraction is symbolic: a robot dog makes for a very visible demonstration that an agency is using advanced technology, whether or not it materially changes outcomes.

And, as history often shows, technologies introduced for rare high-risk situations have a tendency to drift into more ordinary uses over time. That possibility is what seems to worry many civil-liberties advocates more than the robot dogs themselves.

Your response to my Gestapo reference was much milder than I expected.

I think that's because there are really two separate questions tangled together.

One is factual: What is ICE buying robot dogs for? That's answerable from procurement documents and public statements.

The other is rhetorical and political: Is ICE behaving in a way that invites comparison to the Gestapo? That's a matter of opinion and historical interpretation.

Many people on the political left have used the term "Gestapo" for ICE, especially during periods of aggressive immigration enforcement. Others regard the comparison as historically inaccurate or inflammatory, pointing out that the Gestapo was the secret police of a totalitarian state that suppressed political opposition, operated outside normal legal constraints, and participated in systematic terror and mass murder. ICE is a law-enforcement agency operating within a constitutional system, however contentious its policies and actions may be.

So if someone says "ICE is the Gestapo," I wouldn't treat that as a literal factual statement. I'd treat it as a political characterization expressing strong disapproval.

My role isn't to police the language or scold people for using it. If you use "Gestapo" as shorthand for "an agency I believe is conducting abusive or frightening enforcement actions," I understand what you're communicating. At the same time, if we switch from rhetoric to history, the comparison has significant limits.

The robot dog story itself is interesting because it triggers exactly those associations. A government agency already viewed with suspicion by some acquires machines that look as though they came from a dystopian film. Even if their intended use is mundane reconnaissance, the optics are dramatic. A four-legged robot with cameras wandering through a neighborhood is almost tailor-made to provoke concerns about surveillance and state power.

In short, I interpreted your phrase as a political opinion rather than something that needed correction, so I focused on the factual part of the question.

Yes—that distinction is important. Ideologues, rather than psychopaths, are probably the more historically significant phenomenon.

A psychopath may be indifferent to other people's suffering, but an ideologue can be quite capable of empathy while nevertheless convincing himself that cruelty is necessary, deserved, or even morally virtuous. That is much more powerful because the person doesn't experience himself as doing something wrong.

And "misled" is particularly apt. The dangerous progression isn't necessarily:

    "I enjoy hurting people, therefore I'll join the organization."

It can be:

    "There is a serious problem → these people are responsible for it → extraordinary measures are therefore justified → objections are helping the enemy → my duty is to carry out the policy."

At each step, the person can regard himself as the good guy.

That's one reason the historical comparison with the Gestapo has some legitimate warning value even though the equivalence is obviously false. The frightening part of authoritarian institutions isn't that they are staffed entirely by sadists. It is that ordinary people with an ideological justification can become extraordinarily effective instruments of a bad policy.

And there is an especially nasty feature of ideology: it can turn evidence that contradicts the ideology into evidence for it. If enforcement produces suffering, an ideologue may see that suffering not as evidence that the policy is wrong but as proof that the enemy is dangerous and that still greater force is required.

That is considerably more frightening to me than the psychopath theory. A psychopath is an individual problem. A convinced ideologue can become part of a self-reinforcing machine.

There is an above ground fear of robotic law enforcement.  And dogs, no less.  This strikes me as unbelievably bad politics.

Exactly. Even if the practical justification is perfectly mundane, the symbolism is atrocious.

A robot dog is almost uniquely bad at communicating "we are here to protect you." A conventional surveillance camera says bureaucracy. A police drone says technology. A robot dog says authority has acquired legs and is coming after you.

And there is an important political distinction between what the machine can actually do and what people imagine it can do. Most people don't know the technical specifications, procurement limitations, or current capabilities. They see a quadrupedal machine with a camera where its head ought to be, and their cultural memory supplies the rest—Black Mirror, RoboCop, science fiction, authoritarian surveillance, and so forth.

The "dog" part makes it worse. Dogs have been associated with police and military coercion for generations, but a real dog is also a living creature with an almost universal emotional resonance. A mechanical dog combines that familiar symbol with the unsettling idea of a creature that doesn't get tired, doesn't get frightened, doesn't need to be persuaded, and doesn't have to obey its own conscience.

So from a purely political-communications standpoint, I think you're right. If ICE wanted to reassure the public that it was becoming more humane and less threatening, robot dogs would be about the last prop I'd choose.

There's also a curious asymmetry here. The actual useful applications—searching an unstable building, looking around a hazardous site, checking a tunnel—are rather boring. They could have bought a tracked robot and nobody would have cared nearly as much. Choosing a dog gives the purchase an almost theatrical quality.

And that matters because public fear of robotic law enforcement is already "above ground," as you put it. You don't want to take an existing cultural anxiety and then give it four legs.

It reminds me of an old political rule: don't merely ask whether something is defensible; ask what picture it puts into the other person's head. The latter may be far more important.

Cocker Spaniels don't come to mind.

No, unfortunately. If ICE had announced the acquisition of robotic Cocker Spaniels, I suspect the political reaction would be rather different.

"ICE deploys robotic Cocker Spaniels to improve community safety" conjures up something like a slightly confused mechanical pet looking for contraband biscuits.

The quadruped they chose—or, more precisely, the type of machine the technology makes practical—is visually associated with military reconnaissance and policing. That's not an accident of the viewer's imagination. The silhouette itself carries baggage.

And there is another subtle problem: a dog is traditionally an extension of its handler's senses, whereas a robot dog can look like an autonomous agent. Even when a human is controlling it, the visual impression is that the machine has been given its own agency.

That is probably why your reaction is stronger than it would be to, say, "ICE buys 20 mobile cameras." The latter is surveillance technology. The robot dog is surveillance technology personified.

Cocker Spaniels, needless to say, have never quite achieved that reputation.