It seems to me like you're outlining four different scenarios:
1) The United States, or another major power, converts from manned to unmanned weapons of war. A military coup is impossible today because soldiers won't be willing to launch one; were soldiers to be replaced by robots, they could be ordered to.
2) Another state develops unmanned weapons systems which enable it to defeat the United States.
3) A private individual develops unmanned weapons systems which enable them to defeat the United States.
4) Another state which is already a dictatorship develops unmanned weapons systems which alow the dictator to remain in power.
My interpretation of your original comment was that you were arguing for #3; that is the only context in which hiring sociopaths would be relevant, as normal weapons development clearly doesn't require hiring a swarm of sociopathic engineers. The claim that dictatorships exclusively or primarily rely on sociopaths is factually wrong. e.g. according to data from Order Police Battalion 101, 97% of an arbitrary sample of Germans under Hitler were willing to take guns and mow down civilians. Certainly, close to 100% of an arbitrary sample of people would be willing to work on developing robots for either the US or any other state- we can easily see this today.
If you were arguing for #2, then my response would be that the presence of unmanned weapons systems wouldn't make a different one way or another- if we're positing another state able to outdevelop, then defeat, the US, it would presumably be able to do so anyways. The only difference would be if it had an enormous GDP but low population; but such a state would be unlikely to be an aggressive military dictatorship, and, anyways, clearly doesn't exist.
For #4, current dictatorships are too far behind in terms of technological development for unmanned weapons systems to have a significant impact- what we see today is that the most complex weapons systems are produced in a few. mostly stable and democratic nations, and there's good reason to think that democracy is caused by economic and technological development, such that the states that are most able to produce unmanned weapons are also the most likely to already be democratic. (More precisely, are the most likely to be democratic by the time they build enough unmanned weapons, which seems to be decades off at a minimum.) Worst case, there are 1-3 states (Iran, Russia, China[*]) likely to achieve the capacity to build their own unmanned weapons systems without being democracies; and even then, it's questionable whether unmanned weapons systems would be able to do all that much. (It depends on the exact implementation, of course; but in general, no robots can assure the safety of a dictator, and they cannot stop the only way recent Great Power dictatorships have loosened up, by choice of their leaders.)
[*] This is a list of every country that is a dictatorship or quasi-dictatorship that's built it's own fighters, bombers, or tanks, minus Pakistan. I'm very confident that China's government already has enough stability/legitimacy concerns and movement towards democracy that they would implement safeguards. Iran and Russia I give ~50% chances each of doing so.
If you were arguing for #1, then a) the US has well-established procedures for oversight of dangerous weapons (i.e. WMD) which have never failed, b) it would be much easier for the President and a small cabal to gain control using nukes than robots, c) the President doesn't actually have direct control of the military- the ability to create military plans and respond to circumstances for large groups of military robots almost certainly requires AGI, d) as noted separately, there never be a point, pre-AGI, where robots are actually independent of people, e) conspiracies as a general rule are very rarely workable, and this hypothetical conspiracy seems even less workable than most, because it requires many people working together over at least several decades, each person ascending to an elite position.
How long do you think it would take for the US government to build 100 million killer robots?
I don't believe that it ever will. If the US spends 6,000 USD in maintenance per robot, that would eat up the entire US military budget. 6,000$ is almost certainly a severe underestimate of the cost of operating them, by roughly 3 orders of magnitude, and anyways, that neglects a huge number of relevant factors: the cost of purchasing an MQ-1, amortized over a 30-year operating period, is roughly the same per year as the operating cost; money also needs to be spent doing R&D; non-robot fixed costs total at least 6% of the US military budget; much of US military spending is on things like carriers or aerial refueling or transports whose robot equivalents wouldn't be 'killer robots'; etc. (The military budget may go up over time, but the cost per plane has risen faster than the military budget since WWII, so if anything this also argues against large numbers of robots.)
An alternative date: I would expect the USAF to be majority unmanned by 2040 +- 5 years (50% bounds, most uncertainty above); this is roughly one lifecycle of planes forward from today. (Technically it's a fair bit less; but I'd expect development to speed up somewhat.)
I would expect the US Army to deploy unmanned ground combat units in serious numbers by 2035 +- 5 years.
I would expect the USAF to remove humans from the decision making loop on an individual plane's flights in 2045 +- 5 years; on a squadron, including maintenance, command, etc, 2065 +- 5 years; above that, never.
How long do you think it would take for the US government to build 100 million killer robots?
I don't believe that it ever will.
Technologies become less expensive over time, and as we progress, our wealth grows. If we don't have the money to produce it at the current cost, that doesn't mean they'll never be able to afford to do it.
If the US spends 6,000 USD in maintenance per robot, that would eat up the entire US military budget. 6,000$ is almost certainly a severe underestimate of the cost of operating them, by roughly 3 orders of magnitude
You ...
A new TED talk video just came out by Daniel Suarez, author of Daemon, explaining how autonomous combat drones with a capability called "lethal autonomy" pose a threat to democracy. Lethal autonomy is what it sounds like - the ability of a robot to kill a human without requiring a human to make the decision.
He explains that a human decision-maker is not a necessity for combat drones to function. This has potentially catastrophic consequences, as it would allow a small number of people to concentrate a very large amount of power, ruining the checks and balances of power between governments and their people and the checks and balances of power between different branches of government. According to Suarez, about 70 countries have begun developing remotely piloted drones (like predator drones), the precursor to killer robots with lethal autonomy.
Daniel Suarez: The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot
One thing he didn't mention in this video is that there's a difference in obedience levels between human soldiers and combat drones. Drones are completely obedient but humans can throw a revolt. Because they can rebel, human soldiers provide some obstacles to limit the power that would-be tyrants could otherwise obtain. Drones won't provide this type of protection whatsoever. Obviously, relying on human decision making is not perfect. Someone like Hitler can manage to convince people to make poor ethical choices - but still, they need to be convinced, and that requirement may play a major role in protecting us. Consider this - it's unthinkable that today's American soldiers might suddenly decide this evening to follow a tyrannical leader whose goal is to have total power and murder all who oppose. It is not, however, unthinkable at all that the same tyrant, if empowered by an army of combat drones, could successfully launch such an attack without risking a mutiny. The amount and variety of power grabs a tyrant with a robot army of sufficient power can get away with is unlimited.
Something else he didn't mention is that because we can optimize technologies more easily than we can optimize humans, it may be possible to produce killer robots in less time than it takes to build armies of human soldiers and with less expense than training and paying those soldiers. Considering the salaries and benefits paid to soldiers and the 18 year wait time on human development, it is possible that an overwhelmingly large army of killer robots could be built more quickly than human armies and with fewer resources.
Suarez's solution is to push for legislation that makes producing robots with lethal autonomy illegal. There are, obviously, pros and cons to this method. Another method (explored in Daemon) is that if the people have 3-D printers, then the people may be able to produce comparable weapons which will then check and balance their government's power. This method has pros and cons as well. I came up with a third method which is here. I think it's better than the alternatives but I would like more feedback.
As far as I know, no organization, not even MIRI (I checked), is dedicated to preventing the potential political disasters caused by near-term tool AI (MIRI is interested in the existential risks posed by AGI). That means it's up to us - the people - to develop our understanding of this subject and spread the word to others. Of all the forums on the internet, LessWrong is one of the most knowledgeable when it comes to artificial intelligence, so it's a logical place to fire up a discussion on this. I searched LessWrong for terms like "checks and balances" and "Daemon" and I just don't see evidence that we've done a group discussion on this issue. I'm starting by proposing and exploring some possible solutions to this problem and some pros and cons of each.
To keep things organized, let's put each potential solution, pro and con into a separate comment.