OK, this will take a while, but go read this article in the New York Times. I’d tell you to read the cover story from this month’s Popular Science about a “Terminator Scenario,” too, but the link on the website is broken.

I try to reserve my paranoia for comedic purposes. I don’t actually wear a tinfoil hat with any regularity. But I find it difficult not to be at least a little bit legitimately, unironically frightened by the content of the Times article — detailing, among other things, the various advances in computer surveillance techniques — especially in conjunction with the PopSci piece, about recent advances in unmanned military technology and the current lack of any international agreement regulating its use.

Though I like to joke about robot uprisings, a Terminator Scenario (or a The Matrix Scenario) doesn’t really concern me. Some of our most advanced computers glitch out trying to solve Jeopardy! clues; I don’t think they’re going to develop the necessary intelligence and awareness to organize amongst themselves — and against us — anytime soon.

But people are less predictable and more often awful than machines. Though with age I’ve come to realize the pinpoint accuracy of Hanlon’s Razor — never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity — it seems eminently possible that the wrong person or people could wind up at the controls of the advanced surveillance and high-tech killing machines. And then it’s easy to see the clear path to dystopian future.

Just sayin’s all.