Meet the Digital Kraken: Why Coastal Autonomy Doesn’t Mean Crewless Deep-Sea Shipping Is Imminent
Autonomous ships exist. But ‘crewless, commercially routine, transoceanic shipping’ is a different species of problem. Once you’re out of sight of the coast, a kind of digital Kraken waits for anyone who thinks autonomy is ‘software + sensors.’ Not a monster in the mythological sense — a monster in the engineering sense: rare failures, degraded modes, and long stretches where the ship must survive without help.