FARHAD MANJOO: I Love You, Killer Robots: Quadrotor drones are amazing and cute and will probably destroy us all.

Stare at this long enough and you could mistake the scene for something adorable—birds building a nest. But by this time you’ve stopped staring. Instead, you’ve opened another browser tab to look for good deals on bomb shelters and MREs.

Over the last couple years, videos like these ones from UPenn have become a mainstay of science and tech blogs. Every few weeks, there’s a new one showing drones swarming, mapping, surveilling, building, and generally wowing us with ever greater powers. Many of these flying objects are built by grad students at robotics labs, often in preparation for the International Aerial Robotics Competition. (That tournament will take place in North Dakota this summer.) The mission of this year’s competition: build a drone that can silently enter a heavily guarded, Osama Bin Laden-like compound and remove a USB flash drive from the top of an officer’s desk.

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