For decades, the Consumer Electronics Show has emphasized (as you might guess by the name) the consumer side of things. CES is where they launched the VCR, the first Atari arcade game, and the first CD player. Las Vegas — convention centre extraordinaire, and the home of CES — where the future came to rest after winging its way across the Pacific from Japan and China and over the desert from the tech hubs of San Francisco and Palo Alto. You could walk miles of convention halls secure in the knowledge that nothing at the show could hurt you.
This year, the show was different. During the three days I spent roaming the massive halls, I didn’t see Bluetooth speakers or TV sets. Instead, I saw humanoid robots, autonomous drone platforms, and systems that could sort objects, play tic-tac-toe, and identify a target in the wild.
On the surface, many of the products still looked like consumer ideas. But what was unique were a series of pavilions dedicated to academic research and startups. These companies weren’t trying to make a cooler keyboard or add LEDs to a mouse. Instead, as in the case of one Chinese company called Neuromeka, they were building robots that could replace Amazon warehouse workers by packing and sorting boxes at comically slow speeds.
The undercurrent here was one of potential dual use, if not malice. These robots and drones, all of them designed to look like friendly game players and sports stars — one company featured a pair of little humanoids that boxed each other with realistic punches and kicks — had an ulterior motive, one firmly rooted in the future of warfare.
A Place for Innovation
CES has never truly been political. Founded in 1967 as an offshoot of the Chicago Music Show, the convention focused on consumer tech, tech that ended up in living rooms and cars including potential dual-use systems like CB radios and CCTV gear. Its parent organisation, the CTA, spent about $3 million last year in lobbying efforts and maxed out about $5 million in 2018 — a drop in the proverbial bucket when it comes to governmental coercion. Their stated goal? “To fight laws and rules that delay, restrict or ban the development of consumer technologies.” In other words, they simply wanted to sell more product.
And when they did get political, it was always to sell more widgets. In 1981, the organization fought Hollywood against the notion that “Home Taping Was Killing the Movies.” The fight, which was focused on building interest in video tape recorders, resulted in a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found that that VCRs and home videotaping were legal under “fair use.” That decision opened the floodgates for home video adoption, making it easy and legal for consumers to record and watch movies at home.
But none of that has any relation to what is happening now. Consumer tech, for the most part, has become commoditized, a product that shows up on your doorstep from Amazon or Temu and serves its limited purpose. As we noted before, some of the tech might have had military and first-responder uses. Now, nearly everything at the show fits that bill.
The innovation arc now pulls towards defence and dual-use tech. A so-called 360-degree drone company, Antigravity, offers immersive 3D viewing that allows the pilot to experience actually flying over terrain.
The Chungnam National University Intelligent Agriculture Mobility and Tractor Lab showed off surprisingly robust hydrogen-powered tractors designed to create a truly zero-emission farm — or offer an alternative to petrol-powered troop transports.
CES, most recently, had become a science fair, but this year there was a definite focus on Korean, Chinese, and Japanese research tech alongside European drone and mobility solutions. Yes, big companies like LG still showed off TVs and air conditioners, but you couldn’t help noticing that the startups were solving entirely different problems than they were even a few years ago, problems with defence potential.
CES has long felt oddly insulated from geopolitics, even as global tensions rise around technology control and data. The event has long been the domain of the optimistic and the frivolous. The battles fought there were between Betamax and VHS or Blu-ray and HDDVD. Now, things are different.
This is not to say that CES is becoming a munitions show.
On the floor, nothing looks secret. Booths are polished, demos are safe, and the vibe suggests a neutral trade fair. That said, real conversations happen off the show floor, in hotel suites and private rooms, where capabilities, roadmaps, and limits get discussed.
I spoke to one company, a South Korean robotics research organization, that was selling a pipe inspection bot that climbed through drains to pull out weeds and muck. Explaining that I was interested in defence potential, they immediately switched, talking about the tech’s usefulness on battleships that needed their various gas and waste lines cleaned out.
CES has long felt oddly insulated from geopolitics, even as global tensions rise around technology control and data. The event has long been the domain of the optimistic and the frivolous. The battles fought there were between Betamax and VHS or Blu-ray and HDDVD.
Now, things are different. The zeitgeist points to robots, drones, mobility vehicles, and communications. These are the things that are selling, and businesses want a part of the opportunity. In a world where a 157cm TV costs $300 and there is no more physical media to sell, there is little in the way of real profit to be made in making a thinner laptop or a nicer robotic toilet. Instead, manufacturers are looking to what’s next, and, given our current predilection towards conflict, a robot that can pack cylindrical objects — be they Stanley water bottles or shells — seems like a wise investment.
