The CEO of America's leading autonomous drone maker wants Silicon Valley out of the business of deciding how its own weapons are used — and the debate is landing at an awkward moment.
Adam Bry, who leads Skydio — described by The Verge as "the leading US maker of autonomous drones" — argued in a recent podcast interview that tech companies should not be the ones drawing ethical red lines around military drone use. The conversation included a live demonstration: Bry let The Verge's host remotely pilot one of Skydio's drones from a New York studio, controlling it via a laptop in the Bay Area.
Bry's position puts him at odds with a growing chorus of international voices calling for exactly the opposite: firm, enforceable limits on autonomous weapons, with humans kept firmly in the loop.
According to the Straits Times, the UN's human rights chief has urged urgent global regulation of autonomous weapons, warning that robot weapons must not become a "licence for atrocity crimes." The UN's call centers on ensuring meaningful human control over life-and-death decisions made on the battlefield.
The tension is sharp. Bry's argument is essentially that civilian engineers and entrepreneurs are not equipped — or entitled — to unilaterally restrict how militaries deploy technology they've purchased. The UN's counter is that without someone setting limits, accountability for machine-made killing becomes dangerously murky.
With autonomous drones already deployed in active conflict zones and the US competing with China in the sector, the question of who gets to set the rules — tech founders, governments, or international bodies — has moved well beyond the theoretical.