“[W]e now feel renewed urgency in light of the increasing public concern in recent months caused by a small number of people who have visibly publicized their makeshift efforts to weaponize commercially available robots.” The robots available to the general public are still somewhat expensive, and they’re not as common as the other kinds of commercial technologies that people can buy (namely, drones).These are essentially just off-the-shelf technologies.” An international campaign called Stop Killer Robots has urged people to push back against the development of autonomous weapons, and has highlighted how racism, sexism, and dehumanization can be built into these technologies.In 2021, an art collective called MSCHF purchased a Spot, Boston Dynamics’ nearly $75,000 robot dog, for a demonstration the group called “Spot’s Rampage.” The project involved attaching a paint gun to the robot and then inviting people from around the world to remotely operate the “weapon.” Though the paintball gun-armed robot eventually broke down, Boston Dynamics — which has offered the same robot model to police departments and militaries in the past — was not happy, and said the project misrepresented how its robot “is being used to benefit our daily lives.” Though off-the-shelf robots are still somewhat rare, drones have become more commonplace, and demonstrate how consumer technologies can be weaponized.Terrorist groups and other non-state actors can also retrofit these relatively simple technologies to their advantage, explains Kerry Chávez, an instructor at Texas Tech University and a project administrator at the university’s peace, war, and social conflicts laboratory.“Even if you cut off a supply chain from one vector, they can just activate another one.” The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives did not respond to a request for comment as to how common it knows weaponizing drones to be in the US, but we do know that it’s happened."