this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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I agree about that part, but only from a modern human's perspective. We don't have interstellar spaceships (even intrastellar travel is still a huge feat for humanity as a collective) so if such a spaceship from an alien civilization arrives here tomorrow, even if it's a civilian one that was never intended to be a weapon - its operators could still cause us tremendous damage if they decide to use its power against us.
But let's go back to cars. If you take a regular car to a small village of some lost tribe completely detached from civilization (for the sake of the argument, let's assume that the ground is flat enough and solid enough to drive), you could probably use it to destroy the village. Take the same car to a modern city - and while you can still cause damage with it, it wouldn't be as devastating since they know how to deal with cars and have the infrastructures and rules to safely deal with them. Bring a tank, however, and it'd be a different story.
I imagine a type 3 civilization would know how to deal with interstellar vehicles. Bring such a spaceship to one of its outposts - and it won't be considered a weapon. Unless, of course, it happens to be one that's actually designed to be a weapon.
Just because a tank is a more powerful weapon than a car doesn't invalidates a car as a weapon. You can take a brick and go on a smashing spree in a populated city, and they will stop you fairly quickly, take a machine gun and you will be able to hurt a lot more people with it. That doesn't mean the brick isn't a weapon when someone uses it to kill people, it's just a different level of weapon.
And yes, a K3 civilization will not consider a 10^15 watt ship trying to attack it as an existential threat like a sub K1 civilisation will, but a modern military won't find a guy with bow and arrow as a threat (unless he is Rambo), still, a bow is a weapon regardless. It won't win a war, but it can still kill.
A bow is usually considered a weapon while a car isn't, but the car has much more destructive power than the bow. It's not the destructive power that makes something a weapon.
But even if you replace the bow with a brick, it is still a weapon when someone smashes people's faces with it.
And a soft piece of sponge is also a weapon when you force it in someone's throat. If you define "weapon" like this, almost anything is a weapon. You lose the distinction between a bow that was designed for killing and a brick which was designed for building.
But more importantly - if everything can be a weapon when used as such, then saying that an interstellar capable spaceship is a weapon says nothing about spaceships themselves or interstellar travel itself.