Robots Schmobots - Here's How You Take Them Out
For obvious reasons I will address the obligatory legal preamble before I attempt a mildly humorous take on our current AI and robot takeover situation just in case the vaccine damaged and otherwise compromised individuals out there start acting out their anti-robot fantasies in the real world and some real life robots come to harm.
So, without getting too deep into the legalese, this list of tips and techniques is obviously satire and not to be taken seriously... at all.
Before we begin, lets have a little recap on where we stand exactly when it comes to the AI and robotics industries. You can break down their economic impact on the world as a whole as individual breakthrough technologies or, as I see them now, a double act that has been simply waiting for the right moment to push forward as the One Machine, something that sci-fi authors have been predicting for the last hundred years.
Here's the latest pulse read on the AI industry, the brains behind the brawn...
AI market projected to hit $4.8 trillion by 2033, emerging as dominant frontier technology
AI is already reshaping industries – from content creation and product design to automated coding and customer service.
Globally, it could affect 40% of jobs, with up to one third in advanced economies at risk of automation. But those same economies are better placed to benefit: 27% of their jobs could be enhanced by AI, boosting productivity and complementing human skills.
AI is borderless, but its governance is fragmented and dominated by a few wealthy nations. Only the G7 countries are involved in all major AI governance initiatives, while 118 countries – mostly developing – are not involved in any.
Today’s AI landscape is shaped by multinational tech giants. Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft each have a market value of around $3 trillion – rivaling the GDP of the entire African continent.
Now lets look at the muscle...
By 2028, the market size of the robotics industry is expected to increase to USD 65.59 billion.
The Robotic Industry Statistics also declared that in the future, around 20 million manufacturing jobs (i.e., 3.3 times the current number of jobs) will be replaced by robots.
Moreover, the market valuation of the military robotics segment is supposed to grow to USD 16.5 billion by 2025.
Approximately 90% of businesses will adopt robotics by 2030.
https://www.sci-tech-today.com/stats/robotics-industry-statistics-updated/
And here's a sideways glance at the energy industry just for comparison...
The annual revenue of the global oil and gas exploration and production industry is $5 trillion.
https://www.zippia.com/advice/oil-and-gas-industry-statistics/
The global electricity transmission and distribution market size was valued at USD 386.59 billion in 2024. It is projected to be worth USD 397.99 billion in 2025 and reach USD 525.99 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 4.06% during the forecast period. The Asia Pacific dominated the electricity transmission and distribution market with a share of 42.26% in 2024. The Electricity transmission and distribution market in the U.S. is projected to grow significantly, reaching an estimated value of USD 128.39 billion by 2032.
Source: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/electricity-transmission-and-distribution-market-106366
With all that in mind, lets explore the reasons why some people are getting antsy about the rise of robots and AI and why you'll find a long list of comments under robotics and AI related articles suggesting ways in which these invaders will be dealt with when the time comes to see who's Boss.
1 - Go for their Achilles Heel
The old one liner when it comes to shutting down rogue robots or AI supercomputers is "pull the plug" meaning disconnect the machinery from its power supply. That might have been good advice back in the day of Robbie the Robot or Colossus: The Forbin Project but even then I'm sure there were countermeasures in place to stop people from simply pulling the plug.
Today, with the advent of cloud computing, enhanced security measures, and backup energy supplies, it has become increasingly difficult to shut down the global expansion of AI data centers and robotics applications.
On a one to one basis though... an individual robot, whether tethered, wheeled, winged, or a walker can be tampered with in a multitude of ways that would make it hard for it to recharge or replace its batteries.
You can cut cables. Squeeze gum into the sockets. Trip the switches on the power supply. Pour water or grease on replacement batteries.
All this, of course, will only work in the early stages of the robot uprising because once AI and robots are savvy enough they'll have all of these angles of attack covered with sufficient protective and defensive measures allowing for uninterrupted supply and total dominion.
2 - Lets Get Physical
A baseball bat, but preferably a heavy wrench, can still deliver plenty of whack especially if you catch your robot off guard. Even the latest humanoid walkers, say Atlas from Boston Dynamics, not exactly gifted in the height and strength department, can easily be knocked off balance and even floored (as demonstrated by robotics engineers (future targets) over the years).
Some commenters suggest aiming for the sensor package that is easy to locate on most robots. This might be a viable and successful angle of attack for domestic and general purpose mobile robots around the workplace, but military and police robotic security units are likely to sport reinforced glass and other unbreakable, hardened materials as coverings for their most sensitive and vital components. Maybe a ball-peen hammer or a powerful armor piercing round will get the job the done, but then that approach would also work on other parts of the robot such as visible joints and grippers, if anything just to slow the thing down somewhat or cripple it's ability to squeeze the life out of you.
To be fair, joints and 'end effectors' may actually turn out to be much tougher than other 'softer' body parts on our unfriendly robot cohabitants. And since you can't be sure where the onboard AI chips are housed (could be the head or torso or some other location on non-humanoid machines) you won't know what to aim a precision shot at with your ballistic weapon of choice.
Faced with the likely situation that you won't be prepared, or have much at hand that is of much use, going up against a robot in hand to hand combat, your best option may be to run, but robots are getting better at that too so a low battery would be your only hope.
Failing all of that, a well-placed large sheet or fishing net could be enough to trap a robot clumsy enough to wrap itself up in it when traipsing through your territory. A couple of heavy objects tied to the ends would help the sheet or net be more difficult to remove.
3 - Slippery stealth
If you have time on your hands to plan your defense strategy, all manner of robot traps and tricks can be set along the expected approach path. Got some oil? Squirt a bottle of the stuff all over the floor, passages, entrances, windows, drives, anywhere you think the robot or robots will attempt to access your location. With any luck you'll hear the slips and bumps as your victim suffers the effects of your carefully laid traps.
Even if you're caught in the act, having a bottle in hand will mean you can empty the contents in the robots path in real time just as its lunging for your neck.
Just remember where you dumped the oil so that you don't fall victim to your own countermeasures if the situation gets out of hand or you fall asleep and forget that you laid traps.
Another great option is to string up some high tensile strength fishing line which everyone should have in the house just in case. Similar to the oil strategy, you would essentially map out potential entry points and place wire across them so that robot limbs and wheels become so entangled they are rendered immobile. Then you can move in for the final blow or hose them down with water or foam just to see what it does. Probably nothing nice.
On that note, a water trap would be worth looking into. The old bucket over the door may actually get the job done, frying a few circuits and even contributing to the slip effect. I would still generally advise against this method of attack because many types of machinery including robots are being developed to be waterproof. How else would walking hunks of sensitive machinery be able to walk or roll in the rain or through light puddles if not for extensive waterproofing?
4 - Light My Fire
You might think that fire could be an effective measure to counter a robot attack by either leading a robot to a fire pit or trapping it in some way and then setting fire to it. The thing is, you're likely to burn everything else down too as fire tends to get out of hand so, before you go purchasing that Tesla flamethrower or practicing at home with an aerosol-lighter combo, best to think this through. It's likely that police and military robots will be reasonably tough with fireproof coatings as well as the aforementioned waterproofing. Some level of bullet proofing will also be likely for these kinds of units. Even K-9 officers have protective jackets. Why not their synthetic comrades?
5 - Lasers, Cameras and Mirrors
As you probably know by now, it's relatively easy to blind machine sensors using strong lights and lasers. Shine directly into the sensor package and the robot or drone becomes a hunk of machine looking for something to crash into.
The Tesla self-driving experiment led by Sir Elon, the Tech Jesus wannabe, utilizes a camera and AI only approach, completely shunning the use of a LIDAR package. Cameras can be covered, damaged, spray-painted, paint-pelleted, and scratched rendering the world invisible to the vehicles onboard computers. LIDAR would continue working to some extent through poor weather conditions but breaks down when rain, fog and smoke become too dense.
https://gearmusk.com/2025/07/25/lidar-weather-performance/
So there's a little clue. If a robot is utilizing LIDAR you could try supersaturating the air by opening up sprinkler systems or setting the water hose nozzle to spray. This could potentially confuse the laser pulses into producing bad mapping and other erroneous environmental cues. Fogging with a dry ice machine would also work for cameras and LIDAR but not so much for infrared (body heat) sensors.
False images and mirrors can also be used effectively to trick the onboard sensors into believing there is nothing in front of the robot or that their own reflected image is actually another robot attacking them.
Tesla vehicles have sailed straight through false images of roads displayed on cloth or soft structures sometimes breaking at the last second when it's already too late. Onboard sensors can be tricked by light, fog, darkness, and other atmospheric conditions. Thankfully, for the military and police squads of robots that will be patrolling streets all over the world, these sensors are being improved so that they will be able to navigate under extreme conditions. Infrared, microwave, pulsed lasers, ultrasound, and more techniques are being developed to give robots the eyes and ears they'll need to find anyone anywhere at any time of day, month or year. Prepare accordingly.
Self-driving vehicles and the safety conscious algorithms that betray them fall for the simplest of road blocks that a child could set up in seconds. A few obstacles like road cones or cardboard cutouts of people in the road and these vehicles seize up and will not budge. A few more cones behind them and they are completely trapped and useless unless a remote controller has the ability to override the situation. Again, your experience with tactical military and police versions of these autonomous vehicles may vary. They are likely to ignore such cues and will attack anyone trying to interfere with mission objectives.
6 - Drone Daze
Autonomous hunter-killer drones are likely to become the 'killer' app to end all killer apps... literally. A powerful flying machine with sufficient range and firepower, able to navigate through urban environments would constitute an extremely cheap and effective disposable workhorse for the Decision Makers in the fight against unruly dissidents.
Of course, this cheap and effective technology can be deployed by anyone against anyone or anything and I'm quite frankly a little surprised that we haven't seen more incidents involving drones outside of the typical reports of increased drone use on the battlefield.
So how do you take them out?
Well, a well-aimed shotgun shell should do the trick if you time to react. Other firearms or a bow and arrow would require extreme precision or luck. Maybe something with a laser sight on it while the drone is hovering, but otherwise... fuggedaboudit, you're not hitting a fast moving object with a single projectile.
Yet again, you can use that handy high tensile strength fishing wire to set up air traps around your location. You can use existing telephone poles or any other vertical structures in your environment to draw lines in the sky that will bring down your aerial enemies one after another. Try effective patterns for maximum coverage and efficiency like a spiders web so that passage through your airspace becomes a hidden nightmare for drones. Fishing line is near invisible so a drones sensors are unlikely to pick it up and be able to squeeze through a gap making this a very simple, effective defense setup.
In my first book PULSE, I depict several situations where EMP type weapons are used effectively against different types of robots. While this makes for an interesting story and plot device, I'm not sure such devices or methods are effective in real life. They are still in the realm of science fiction even though large scale attempts at EMP using nuclear weapons have been attempted since testing began.
That said, a drones navigation systems can be hacked, jammed and spoofed making them vulnerable to such attacks. At the end of the day, most people defending against a drone invasion are not going to be able to use these techniques. It's hard to run from drones too, so reliance on simple handy defense strategies becomes paramount. If a drone comes brandishing projectile weapons systems such as a stubby automatic rifle then something like a sturdy metal garbage can lid could be wielded as a portable shield. Some strong doors or walls to hide behind while taking potshots with a paintball gun would be a decent tactic. Keeping a pet eagle on the ranch seems to help since there have been several incidences of large birds of prey viciously attacking drones that invade their territory.
https://www.droneblog.com/can-birds-take-down-a-drone/
On the other hand, if a swarm of exploding attack drones are sent on a search and destroy mission to your GPS location... pray. Or leave the device that is being tracked behind and make your getaway to a safe house while you can.
Conclusion
Just as with other societal upgrades, the robot revolution is going through variable hype and backtrack cycles like a game of snakes and ladders. Two steps forward and one step back seems to be the dominant strategic pattern. Push forward with implementation, see what the resistance is, where the potholes are, then back off, regroup, and try again applying what was learned from the feedback data.
The same happened with Google's augmented reality glasses roll out. There was massive negative reaction and push back but AR capability is core to the transhumanist takeover so one day they will get it right and uptake will be as successful as the smartphone has been to date with AR tech potentially signalling and paving the way for the death of handheld devices.
The endgame is to always move forward, even when much of the population are happy as they are, even when many are showing signs of technological progress fatigue and would actually prefer to backpedal to simpler times touting pleasant dreams and memories of an earlier analogue existence.
Despite these rumblings, the merchants of endless tech upgrades spout the mantra that workers need to adapt and evolve with the times otherwise they will be left behind on the scrapheap of life. 'Learn to code' was one such mantra not that long ago. Does is still hold up now after the advent of strong LLM activity? We're still going to need competent programmers and engineers. However, the playing field is going to shift dramatically across the entire spectrum of entry and mid-level jobs just as it has done historically when a major shift towards automation or employee augmentation happens in any industry.
The combination ratio of 'machinery plus human in the loop' is likely to change yet again although we have to keep in mind that this process sometimes leads to more humans being involved instead of less as more activity opens up due to the creation of new types of jobs that didn't exist before.
Computers and the people that augmented their abilities by using them became the new tools that maximized the potential of existing professionals such as accountants, lawyers, business managers, factory workers and health industry employees while creating entirely new industries such as computer games and film CGI as well as the current wave of AI-generated information, media, entertainment, and finance apps.
It could be that more people will be able to perform tasks for themselves with the help of AI and robotics that previously required the hiring of a highly-paid professional. If everything in general continues to move in this direction unhindered by limits to growth or the usual gripes about energy crunches and societal decay then we may even witness the greater shift towards open source and decentralized tech combined with local community building in rural areas.
The problem with these kinds of utopian ideas is that much of our world is controlled by central authorities and private corporations. For example, the infrastructure that everything runs on is not controlled by the users. It is built and maintained by private companies that bribe and manipulate governments to do their bidding. The users can try to circumvent these arrangements all they want but at the end of the day we are all connected to and use the integrated systems that these private industries provide. Try living without roads, the Internet, airports, undersea cables, satellites, global transportation networks, factories, and government regulation for a few months and see how you get on. Many people take these things for granted thinking that using an open source operating system will set them free from corporate slavery but there's a lot more to the story than that. Obviously, if private corporations through government control access to the infrastructure that everything runs on then all users are subject to this law of the land and can have their 'freedoms' restricted at any time as they were during Operation COVID.
So, the path forward is littered with uncomfortable truths that will be increasingly more difficult to ignore or step around as people have done previously. The changes to our way of life and how they affect humanity as a whole are simply too impactful, too radical, to brush aside as yet another 'upgrade.' The final 'plugging in' of human beings to the Grid has begun and it's going to be a messy affair. Some will reject it, attempt to drop away from the procedure, but others (the majority as usual) are embracing it all fully in yet another spate of keeping up with the Joneses.
Good luck to all of us.
We're going to need it.
Above all, try to maintain your sanity and your sense of humor. Without those two things, you're probably not going to make it.
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