Commodified just means mass produced and standardized. Bombs are heavily commodified because there are extensive supply chains that drive down their costs, even if you can’t easily buy them online. The point is that autonomous drones won’t be handcrafted, bespoke goods that require specialized industry and tooling to produce, but instead easily assembled from cheap components. Once a few major militaries start doing this, the supply of autonomous drones will be enormous, leaving plenty of room for smuggling or proxy transfers to non-state actors.
This is already exactly what happened with standard fixed wing drones. It was expensive to develop the initial concept, and then the costs collapsed to the point that the Houthis are throwing Shaheds around in Yemen.
Commodified just means mass produced and standardized. Bombs are heavily commodified because there are extensive supply chains that drive down their costs, even if you can’t easily buy them online. The point is that autonomous drones won’t be handcrafted, bespoke goods that require specialized industry and tooling to produce, but instead easily assembled from cheap components. Once a few major militaries start doing this, the supply of autonomous drones will be enormous, leaving plenty of room for smuggling or proxy transfers to non-state actors.
This is already exactly what happened with standard fixed wing drones. It was expensive to develop the initial concept, and then the costs collapsed to the point that the Houthis are throwing Shaheds around in Yemen.
I agree the components are comodified, I believe the software is what’s complex and will require iteration
The software seems solvable. Though I don’t want to detail how I concluded that, since I want to be the one posting details about constructing WMDs.