Well, this feels dystopian.

One of the downsides of seeing the development of robotic technology is that we all know, somewhere deep down, that we’re never going to actually get to use these robots ourselves. Pretty much all available robots are going to go directly to the military and police, where they’ll be used to plant explosives, shoot at people and generally cause terror. How fun!

This phenomenon isn’t unique to the United States. We’ve already seen China debut drones that look like birds and robot gun dogs. Now, they have a BB-8-like robot — except rather than being a playful, useful companion, it shoots out tear gas.