3 ms·

When you say 'dying' are you referring to civilians or soldiers? No civilian supports killing by drone in their home town. Drone targeting is often indiscrimi

When you say 'dying' are you referring to civilians or soldiers? No civilian supports killing by drone in their home town. Drone targeting is often indiscriminate and always unaccountable. Because drone kills are anonymous to anyone but the killer, it allows soldiers to act invisibly by remote control. And now we want to give that responsibility to robots? That'd be a truly terrible precedent for future warfare. Would you be OK with your local police enforcing the law at 1000 feet? Using a rocket launcher? That's what we're asking the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to do. No company that actually believes in the maxim "Don't be evil" would participate in such a technology, much less promote it, or worst of all, lead it.

josefresco 8y ago
Drone targeting is often indiscriminate and always unaccountable. This is just wrong and not helpful to the discussion. Have you read (or even seen thanks to YT) anything about how "drone targeting" by US forces is actually accomplished besides media outrage when a bomb misses? Mistakes are made, but targeting is far, far from indiscriminate. And being "unaccountable" is not exclusive to drone warfare. "Would you be OK with your local police enforcing the law at 1000 feet? Using a rocket launcher? That's what we're asking the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to do." If my local criminal network detonated a bomb at my local coffee shop, killing 50, 100, 200 of my friends and family members, and then proceeded to do so every week, yes - I'd encourage rocket launchers from 1000 feet, 10,000 feet or 10 feet if that was the most effective way to stop them.
- randcraw 8y ago
  You don't need to kill dozens of bystanders to misuse drone technology or to do it unaccountably. As I understand it, the call for a drone kill of an insurgent target is made by the JSOC ...or... by a CIA officer in Langley. In the latter, the case for discriminate sufficiency is entirely up to the CIA and its current set of political priorities for that target, which is NOT shared with the drone team or their chain of command, nor with any non-CIA entity. I've seen no mention that the CIA is NO LONGER killing with drones (which became one of the established practices for drone use in Afghanistan about 5 years ago, IIRC). This program is very much one that Google would serve in targeting drones, which is why I mention it. No doubt the CIA would claim their reasoning behind each kill order was discriminate. But if my description of SOP is correct and the CIA is still in charge of many drone kills, that makes them unaccountable in any practical sense. For some background on CIA's targeting of drone strikes: "Transferring CIA Drone Strikes to the Pentagon" https://www.cfr.org/report/transferring-cia-drone-strikes-pentagon https://www.cfr.org/report/transferring-cia-drone-strikes-pe...

josefresco 8y ago

Drone targeting is often indiscriminate and always unaccountable. This is just wrong and not helpful to the discussion. Have you read (or even seen thanks to YT) anything about how "drone targeting" by US forces is actually accomplished besides media outrage when a bomb misses? Mistakes are made, but targeting is far, far from indiscriminate. And being "unaccountable" is not exclusive to drone warfare. "Would you be OK with your local police enforcing the law at 1000 feet? Using a rocket launcher? That's what we're asking the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to do." If my local criminal network detonated a bomb at my local coffee shop, killing 50, 100, 200 of my friends and family members, and then proceeded to do so every week, yes - I'd encourage rocket launchers from 1000 feet, 10,000 feet or 10 feet if that was the most effective way to stop them.

randcraw 8y ago
You don't need to kill dozens of bystanders to misuse drone technology or to do it unaccountably. As I understand it, the call for a drone kill of an insurgent target is made by the JSOC ...or... by a CIA officer in Langley. In the latter, the case for discriminate sufficiency is entirely up to the CIA and its current set of political priorities for that target, which is NOT shared with the drone team or their chain of command, nor with any non-CIA entity. I've seen no mention that the CIA is NO LONGER killing with drones (which became one of the established practices for drone use in Afghanistan about 5 years ago, IIRC). This program is very much one that Google would serve in targeting drones, which is why I mention it. No doubt the CIA would claim their reasoning behind each kill order was discriminate. But if my description of SOP is correct and the CIA is still in charge of many drone kills, that makes them unaccountable in any practical sense. For some background on CIA's targeting of drone strikes: "Transferring CIA Drone Strikes to the Pentagon" https://www.cfr.org/report/transferring-cia-drone-strikes-pentagon https://www.cfr.org/report/transferring-cia-drone-strikes-pe...