The Hyundai robots
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The Hyundai robots are John Kiriakou's counter-example to the American defence research establishment: the thing the Pentagon has promised for decades, delivered by somebody else.

The promise and the excuse

Kiriakou set it up with the promise. "We've been told for decades they're working on this robot. It's gonna make soldiers obsolete. They just need to figure out the battery."

Who figured out the battery

"Well, you know what? The South Koreans figured out the battery. And now South Korea, I should say Hyundai's a subsidiary in South Korea that builds robots. It was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. They're ready to go to market with their robots with long life batteries that can do things like get in a self-driving car and go do your grocery shopping."

His two questions followed immediately: "How come we don't have that?... Why hasn't DARPA figured that out?"

The battery argument underneath

The robot was one instance of a wider point about battery chemistry. Kiriakou moved straight from it to the two Chinese firms he names as twenty years ahead, BYD and CATL, and from there to the car whose badge he had once had to have explained to him, at "Beyond Your Dreams".

The consequence he draws is military rather than domestic: "those batteries will go into military drones. They will go into military robots. They will go into all kinds of other equipment. And the US won't have that technology."

See also

- "Whatever DARPA's working on"
- "Beyond Your Dreams"
- China as economic threat
