In this unique episode, we dive into the transformative Replicator Program initiated by the United States, which aims to revolutionize modern warfare through the mass production of autonomous AI-controlled drones. We discuss how the evolution of drones in the Ukrainian war has shifted the focus away from traditional military assets like tanks. The program's various components, including maritime, land-based, and even space and subsurface drones, are explored. We touch upon China's advancements in drone technology and the implications for global military dynamics. Additionally, we delve into methods of countering these drone swarms and their strategic significance. Join us as we unpack how autonomous systems are reshaping the battlefield and what this means for future conflicts.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00 ] Hello Simone. Today we are going to be doing an episode that is quite different from our normal content, but we're gonna be talking about a program.

And the moment I heard about this program, I was like, I need to think about this. Like potentially a lot because it changes a lot. I mean, what happened with drones in the Ukrainian war is we learned that drones changed the face of warfare

Simone Collins: 100%.

Malcolm Collins: And they in a large way have made things like large tanks and stuff like that, which used to be what countries were investing in obsolete.

Simone Collins: Hmm. And

Malcolm Collins: countries specifically. The United States has started something called the Replicator Program, and this is a program where the United States is beginning to outfit battleships to be able to build hundreds of autonomous AI controlled drones every day. A kill drone printer. A, A AI is not controlled by humans either.

These are autonomous [00:01:00 ] K drone printers for the sea.

You okay with the program? Don't worry. It's not limited to the sea. They've also talked about how they want to build versions of this that can go on land and for the army and stuff like that. So we're gonna have killed drone printers everywhere.

Simone Collins: It makes me think of those. The, the big ships in Star Wars, the, the crappy new ones that had all the droids come off of them.

You know, they were just Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfolded and came out. I'm picturing those now. Hopefully they won't have really bad dialogue. At least we know our LLMs of our universe and kids. Roger, Roger, Roger, Roger. Oh my God. They were the worst. Well, no Jar Jar banks were the worst, but at least we have like this STH Lord theory, right?

There was nothing for them. They were just awful. Like, like, oh no, don't even get me started. Let's keep going. Kill drone ships. Tell me more.

Malcolm Collins: No. What's funny about the [00:02:00 ] drones in, in Star Wars, I remember it was like the earlier versions were better and those were like a cost cutting measure. But what's weird is like we now know from our world, and apparently it's in our same timeline because it takes place a long time to go in a galaxy far away.

Yeah, sure. That like those drones, those, those droids were dumber than like deeps seek. Yeah, deeps

Simone Collins: seek is really dumb.

Malcolm Collins: That's somebody reached out to me and they were like, oh, well have you changed your mind about like, China's position? Oh yeah. Because of deeps seek. And I was like, deeps seek is a scam.

Like, do you guys, have you used it? Like, I feel like exclusively people who think deep seek is impressive is. Is is a completely different bucket than people would you met one very smart and

Simone Collins: successful person who uses deeps seek. Is their chosen? Yes,

Malcolm Collins: but it's for a very, very narrow task. If you need

Simone Collins: an open source,

Malcolm Collins: LM, if you need a totally open source, LLM, deep, it's apparently better than llama.

So marginally better, but that doesn't give China any power. Because anyone in any country can take Yeah. And use [00:03:00 ] it open source. Yeah. So you get no additional marginal power by having a fully open source LLM, and you only need a fully open source LLM if you're doing like absolutely massive scale stuff.

And generally what matters more is good LLMs and not open source lms. Yeah. By the way, if you're like, how did Deep Seek become the number one app in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The China Fact, take two. Do a good video on this. It appears to be mostly faked. Because they've traced the accounts, they were promoting it to China, CCP influencer accounts.

I'm super not, I, I do not believe having used Deeps seeq, that there's a lot of people using deep seek records that, you

Simone Collins: know, didn't the didn't that. Viral cycle around deep seek also correspond with this short-lived period when the YouTube algorithm weirdly favored Chinese propaganda videos. It's still doing that.

I'm now getting the critical stuff again. Maybe because the algo realizes I refuse to watch the propaganda, but.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's still doing, it's still doing the [00:04:00 ] propaganda. Like somebody needs to talk to YouTube about what's going on because it is very clearly punishing channels like China seekers and like, I don't like if anybody has any connections at YouTube, like whatever this pro c CCP thing they have going on.

So I've noticed that two types of videos are getting artificially sublimated by YouTube right now. Mm-hmm. One is anything that is critical of the CCP, which is literally a, a regime that's engaged in genocide. Yeah, like, like they have an active genocide campaign against the, right now what are doing, this is not a

Simone Collins: mystery at present

Malcolm Collins: and anything that is, is critical of trans people.

These are the two categories

Simone Collins: really. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Suppressed

Simone Collins: despite Trump's your executive well, it

Malcolm Collins: hasn't been implemented. Bias against need to, to they need to do a, a law around this or something. Yeah,

Simone Collins: they're a little busy. I know.

Malcolm Collins: And they're doing lots of stuff, you know, they're doing more than I expected some to in the Trump administration, but Yeah.

Yeah. So let's talk about this replicated program. Okay, what we're all here to talk about. Why are, why are you

Simone Collins: the only one who's told me about this? I would feel like Drudge Report being the [00:05:00 ] liberal bastion it is now, would be having an aneurysm. Liberals

Malcolm Collins: are pro-war, don't you know that? They're the party of Cheney?

Trump's the person who's trying to end the war. And everyone can see now that he was completely sincere about this because now he's gotten mad against Putin and is writing 25 to 50% oil tariffs on Putin and like, look. The, the people are like, oh, he was in Putin's pocket. But that when Putin started belittling Zelinsky and saying Zelinsky wasn't legitimate enough to hold the negotiations, Trump got furious.

Furious, which I think shows to everyone that anyone who's like, oh, he's in Putin's pocket. No, he just wants people to stop dying over, literally nothing at this point. Mm. There is. Literally no gain to have. People are like, well, it will teach Russia a you. They're not gonna win back that land. They're not gonna win back that land.

They have had plenty of time to win back that land. They're not winning it back right now. It's just how long before we accept that they might get a few miles. How many hundreds of thousands of lives is a few miles worth? [00:06:00 ] We haven't had a big breakthrough in years.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Or not years, but like a year, like it's, it's clear that there isn't the capacity for that anymore in terms of manpower.

OO on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side it's like, well, well, Russia attack other countries still, they don't have the manpower left to do that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They've

Malcolm Collins: been completely bled dry by this war. There, there isn't really anything like I, I, I was actually pro the war at the beginning, but now I'm just like, now they've been blood dry.

He, he did the Zach Branigan style.

The ?

Ukrainians.

A trifle. It was simply a matter of outsmarting them. You see,

Ukrainians.

have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down.

Kif, show them the medal I won.

Malcolm Collins: That literally was his war tactic. Yeah. Anyway so, the initiative is structured into two lines of effort with replicator. One focused on all domain at triple autonomous a DA two [00:07:00 ] systems encompassing aerial, ground surface, subsurface, and subspace capabilities.

So, note they what subspace,

Simone Collins: aside from the version I'm thinking of.

Malcolm Collins: In the, in the in the orbit orbital. So they want oh, okay. Autonomous orbital drones. They want, what I found interesting was subsurface. So this is underground drones. That's crazy. Underground automated kill drones. Yes.

Simone Collins: