29 ms·

I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

910 points by nsns 13y ago

TruthElixirX 13y ago
>Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain's secretary of state for defence Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within one year leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again. I doubt he gives a shit, and the reason we are in this mess is because most people think people like him do give a shit, they are just "misinformed."
- rwmj 13y ago
  The unfortunate truth is that any leader who orders soldiers to go to war should know that innocent and guilty people are going to die, women will be raped, property destroyed and looted, and so on. In WWII there was a deliberate policy of incinerating populated cities, but even if we don't go to that extreme the outcome is going to be grim. I hope any defence secretary both knows this, and considers it, but also considers what happens when you don't deploy soldiers/drones/etc.
  - TruthElixirX 13y ago
    >but also considers what happens when you don't deploy soldiers/drones/etc. Nothing happens. Nothing. The reason those people are pissed is because of the U.S. government constantly fucking with them and poking them. Over throwing governments, secret renditions, locking up loved ones in Guantanamo with no trial indefinitely. I'd be fucking pissed too.
    - rwmj 13y ago
      I meant in the general case for war. Obviously not much happens in the short term if we don't interfere in the affairs of Pakistan and neighbours. In the long term they might rebuild their terrorist training camps, but .. meh so what. Only a few people have been killed by terrorists, it's not a big deal and not a fundamental threat to civilisation. You couldn't say that there would be no consequences for not engaging in the 1930s. Many more countries could have been overrun by fascism for decades.
apunic 13y ago
Any tl;dr?
- lisper 13y ago
  The article is not that long, and worth reading in its entirety.
- hmsimha 13y ago
  Sorry I lost you at 'Any'. tl;dr please?
ck2 13y ago
The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed drones before it is too late.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  Not to justify any of this business, but why on earth wouldn't they apply 'beyond reasonable doubt' in their own minds when summarily executing somebody in the first place?
  - ck2 13y ago
    Because everyone hides behind "just following orders" up the chain. It is also somewhere along the line of why police feel it is okay to try to shoot suspects on a busy street and often shoot the wrong innocent person and mess up their lives.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    One of the best books to read to get a feel for how America commits its war crimes is Kill Anything that Moves about the Vietnam war. http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American-ebook/dp/B008FPSTOQ/ http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American-eboo...
  - dspeyer 13y ago
    That sort of standard works when the executor has massively more power than the executee. For the US versus an ordinary criminal, we can do it. Facing something that looks more like a war, applying standards of justice generally results in losing.
    - makomk 13y ago
      In this case, the executor has more power than the executee. The US can reduce people to bloody smears from drones that are almost invisible to their victims, with all the actual humans safely ensconced in bases hundreds of miles away. The people they're targetting have nothing like that - they cannot fight back without putting themselves straight in the line of fire.
fit2rule 13y ago
I think that one thing we 'normals' don't seem to understand, is that when you are in the business of killing, murdering, maiming other human beings, you're no longer really part of society. Society is determined by the survival of its members - start removing them, and you get a lesser society. That is obvious. But we in the 'normal' society don't have a clue what those in the 'murdering business society' really think about us. More often than not, you'll find that the 'official killers' really don't care about human life - or else they wouldn't be devoting their time on earth to the singular purpose of killing, maiming, destroying life. Its a simple fact that if you get up in the morning with the intention of taking a human life, if ordered to do so, then you no longer belong to the human race. You belong to something else. Not a single one of us in the 'normal society' can entertain the thought of killing someone, on a daily basis, and not suffer consequences. How is it then for those who spend their entire lives working to be the best possible killers they're allowed to be?
- neals 13y ago
  You seem very opinionated about this. I haven't given this as much thought as you have, but I think that doing something to protect your society from evil must count for something. Do you really see it as black and white as you describe it?
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    Yes, I do. The reason is because I think that anyone whose job it is to murder, maim, kill - officially, with sanction from the state - and who chooses to do this as a career is a very, very sick individual. We do not need a military that can deliver a bomb on some individuals head at the drop of a whim - we need an organization that makes peace, for the state, far more.
    - dreamfactory 13y ago
      The usual argument is that such people 'occur naturally' and the army at least directs their activities outwards (it forms the distinction between grunt and officer class in the forces). I don't agree with the premise but it's a nature vs nurture question.
yeukhon 13y ago
> The UAV's in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this Honestly, it has always been seen as a weapon. The whole point of drone is to carry out mission 24/7 as much as possible, because a pilot can't fly back and forth without sleeping. Also, humans have emotions they don't always follow orders. > incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure I have always thought the military fly drones to carry out specific mission, such as taking photos or launching an attack. And the latter is usually confirmed by some "intelligence". I want to see how many drone attacks were performed without a single human intelligence confirmation. > But here's the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end This is best seen in the movie Black Hawk Down (2001), based on true story.
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  > The whole point of drone is to carry out mission 24/7 as much as possible, because a pilot can't fly back and forth without sleeping. Humans are still required to fly the drones. The "whole point" is that drones can accomplish the same mission without risking a pilot and at a fraction of the cost of a manned aircraft.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    Well, in the future we will replace human pilots with automated flying drones. Sure we still have drones require human flying.
wreegab 13y ago
> "the video provided by a drone is a far cry from clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited clouds and perfect light" I wished she had pushed the questioning even further: Even if it's a weapon, that doesn't mean the person is a threat. I mean it's full of people carrying weapons in the U.S., they are not presumed a threat. And even if the person is deemed a threat, maybe the he would surrender, but now he is not even offered this choice.
- TruthElixirX 13y ago
  How is a guy two continents away carrying an AK a threat in any sane fashion? He sure as hell can't use the gun to fly over the ocean.
  - dreamfactory 13y ago
    Remember the official public NSA justification includes 'defending economic interests'.
  - Theodores 13y ago
    He is a profit centre. Not killing him is a danger to the entire military industrial complex. That would be a threat to national security.
  - stefan_kendall 13y ago
    The U.S countryside is strewn with men and women fitting this description. I bet it would be even more true if foreign soldiers were occupying america and routinely bombing its citizens.
  - wreegab 13y ago
    I just wished she questioned further. The more the better.
kingkawn 13y ago
Side note, I am excited for the application of all of this drone technology into things other than killing. War seems to be one of the few things that the US is unapologetically willing to go into debt to fund. Lots of cool possibilities with high resolution sensor technology.
gibybo 13y ago
These seem like compelling arguments against our "war" in the middle east, but I'm not sure why we should be singling out UAVs. People die in wars. Sometimes they are enemies, sometimes they are friends, and sometimes they are innocent bystanders. Do drones really make war worse than it already is?
- belorn 13y ago
  Depend on what has highest chance happening - That children dies because people who should confirm what is a threat fail because they are too lazy (or bad pixels, or bad weather / angle and so on), or children dies because solders on the street become so extremely mental unstable that they shoot innocent people just for laughs.
cpncrunch 13y ago
A little bit more background on Heather Linebaugh: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/soldiers-in-the-military-are-being-gagged-for-speaking-out http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/soldiers-in-the-military-are-...
- mzr 13y ago
  24 years old. I know this veers into hyperbole, but it seems we've both killed and ruined a whole generation.
  - ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
    And slightly older people-a 24 year old in 2003 who served in Iraq could be just as fucked up now as a 35 year old.
  - icegreentea 13y ago
    You should ask the "Greatest Generation" what they did. The door to door fighting through Europe was in no way clean.
f_salmon 13y ago
The drone program is probably the most efficient way to recruit new terrorists. Which is probably in the interest of the NSA. How else can they justify their dirty work if their is no more perceived "treat".
logotype 13y ago
The story is contradictory "...I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen..." and "The feed is so pixelated"
- cbg0 13y ago
  He didn't mean he was watching it clearly in 4K resolution when he said "great detail", he was trying to convey that he had a good understanding of what was going on on the ground even though he wasn't on the ground.
bearwithclaws 13y ago
Any cache or mirrors? Can't seemed to view the site.
salient 13y ago
This is only going to get worse if they make drones autonomous, which this TED talk shows they have a lot of reasons for why they will want to make them autonomous, unless there's huge public outcry demanding a ban: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI
Killah911 13y ago
I've worked on building some AI for drones for the US, and I'm fairly certain that advents in new technologies will mitigate most of the concerns in the article. It will make for a seriously scary new world, where devices like this exist at massive scale. Dictatorships will be even more brutal, and oppressors, even more oppressive. The sociopath in control of these machines will no longer have to worry about someone not carrying out orders properly due to emotions or questioning their judgement. All that aside, the one aspect I don't see getting resolved is the psychological effects of someone relatively "normal" & smart watching the horrors and carnage of war and then heading to the grocery store for some ice cream after his/her shift. Unlike being in a miserable (i.e. battlefield) place where your body is filled with adrenaline and a good chunk of your mental resources are dedicated to keeping yourself alive and getting the hell out of there alive. Having the time to reflect on the serious inequities in the world that you've just been witness to can't easily be swept under the rug. Even if the systems are mostly automated and pictures have a higher resolution, provided that the person/analyst/commander behind the screen is a somewhat sane and intelligent member of society, the psychological tolls might be worse when you're experiencing carnage thru relative safety.
- a_olt 13y ago
  This article discussed one of the solutions proposed by psychologists to relieve drone pilots of the stress and guilt that comes with launching an attack: http://io9.com/psychologists-propose-horrifying-solution-to-ptsd-in-dr-1453349900 http://io9.com/psychologists-propose-horrifying-solution-to-...
  - Killah911 13y ago
    Thx for posting the article. "Siri, kill those people", sounds like the makings of a new John Cleese bit. Had to check twice and make sure I wasn't reading an Onion article. I still wonder how much less existential strife an operator might experience by delegating the killing to an AI machine, especially if one can still see the faces (better resolution) and the carnage following "Siri" carrying out orders.
- ryandrake 13y ago
chmike 13y ago
what wories me the most with that UAV analyst problem is that there is only two solution. Minimize or even stop these operations or automate them with computers. I'm "curious" where this later option could lead us.
spiritplumber 13y ago
The public should also know that all this long range drone stuff can be done for cheap. Also, they pixelate the feed on purpose, to remove hesitation when hitting the trigger.
- wetmore 13y ago
  >Also, they pixelate the feed on purpose, to remove hesitation when hitting the trigger. Any proof for this?
  - spiritplumber 13y ago
    No, it's something I heard from a guy doing UI design for this stuff. We were comparing notes / discussing what's the minimum resolution to pilot a remote vehicle.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
It sucks to be part of the human element making life and death decisions about armed robots being used in non-traditional war situations. That's about all I got from this. And yes, it does suck. There was a third claim, that the public is misinformed/misled, but I take issue with that one. I think most people understand that somebody, somewhere is pushing the button. This essay didn't go into the rationale for drone warfare, or the situation that brought the west into armed conflict in the first place. So it's not hitting on a lot in terms of talking about the geopolitical issues, it's just a plea for more empathy about what's actually being done. I share that concern. We should be more empathetic. However -- and this is a big deal -- feeling more fully the terrible things we are doing does not in any way make those things less necessary. Those are two separate subjects. I think we are going down a bad road with armed robots, but I don't think essays like this are helping the discussion much. Still, it was good to hear this voice.
- bliksem 13y ago
  "There was a third claim, that the public is misinformed/misled, but I take issue with that one. I think most people understand that somebody, somewhere is pushing the button." True - though the mislead part I feel largely relates to claims of surgical strikes and claims of minimal 'collateral' deaths and injuries. " the terrible things we are doing does not in any way make those things less necessary" What is being done is indeed terrible - though I have yet to see the necessary bit backed up by any coherent numbers.
forktheif 13y ago
Again with the drone bashing. Civilians got killed by manned aircraft too. A-10s launching Hellfires at a wedding party, or AH-64 Apaches gunning down farmers in a field. It happens. And whether the pilot is sitting in the aircraft or a thousand miles away makes no difference. It's the same imperfect people making the same imperfect decisions based on imperfect information.
- classicsnoot 13y ago
  The issue is not that it happened. The issue is not that people died. The issue is that Drone Warfare allows rich people in power to remotely kill people they deem as threats whilst selling a story of reduced casualties on both sides. The casualties of this kind of war will be human at first...
  - votingprawn 13y ago
    > allows rich people in power to remotely kill people they deem as threats whilst selling a story of reduced casualties on both sides. Don't expensive manned aircraft with (the same) expensive precision guided munitions allow rich people to do exactly the same thing? A manned aircraft could perform these missions with the same level of "collateral damage" and minimal risk to the pilot.
    - classicsnoot 13y ago
      Absolutely, yes. It requires many years and oodles of cash to train humans to desensitise themselves to the degree it takes to be a good fighter jock [I have a few family members who have flown. They are brilliant. Flying is an amazing endeavour.]. I am sure it takes a fair amount of time to achieve the same level of "discipline" in an RPV team, as well. [Here follows a bunch of things that are personal observations.]I personally believe that both of these categories of specialization are symptomatic of a deeper mental illness in humanity. I am not really interested in less death or more death as some kind of assessment of a things value. Death, in all things, is unavoidable. We, as humans, see ourselves as individuals because it is empowering. In reality, we are largely indistinguishable from each other when one takes a broader perspective. Both fighter jets and military RPVs are cool as hell, but they are both death implements, or deathplements if you are grammatically frisky. I heard an interesting interview on NPR with a retired CIA chap. He was legal council to some alphabet soup within Central. He pointed out the irony of the controversy over the "Enhanced" Interrogation Techniques" and the relative quiet on the part of the American public about the Dispassionate Remotely Piloted Death Eagle Master Plan[This is the official name of the CIA's RPV program. look it up.]. I found it poignant. he has a book. I believe the title is Company Man.
macspoofing 13y ago
The entire concept of targeted drone assassinations is so surreal. Executing a convict in the US civilian court system requires a trial with a high-burden of proof, and the convict is afforded multiple appeals before the sentence is carried out. But in this case all it takes for the state to execute a suspect is the interpretation of some mid-level analyst. More perplexing, there are no qualms around civilian collateral damage. In what universe is striking a convoy carrying a suspect but also carrying innocent (or even if not innocent, not deserving a death sentence) civilians, deemed acceptable?
- tokenizerrr 13y ago
  > In what universe is striking a convoy carrying a suspect but also carrying innocent (or even if not innocent, not deserving a death sentence) civilians, deemed acceptable? America.
- kevinpet 13y ago
  > In what universe is striking a convoy carrying a suspect but also carrying innocent (or even if not innocent, not deserving a death sentence) civilians, deemed acceptable? During war, as accepted by every politician going back to the dawn of civilization. On the plus side, for the past several hundred years, we've started to make efforts to minimize. > there are no qualms around civilian collateral damage. Really? That seems to be all anyone is talking about when it comes to drones. From the perspective of anyone from more than a century ago, we're obsessed with it (and conversely, from the perspective of today, Dresden and Hiroshima would be war crimes.)
  - BrokenPipe 13y ago
    Even rape and slavery was accepted not long ago, not enough reason to continue do it? I'm seriously disgusted by some people capacity to accept brutality as normal and worse defend it too.
  - alextingle 13y ago
    > During war... Except the US isn't at war with any of the countries where these drone strikes are taking place.
BrandonRead 13y ago
Does anybody think there is space for a "CS Students against Weaponry" alliance? I go to Umass Amherst, and there are tons of people who end up working for Raytheon upon graduation. Sure, the 100k / yr is quite tempting when you just came from community college and a retail job just years before, but perhaps some education may stop students from agreeing to internships and careers at Raytheon, etc. It's oftentimes good students who are mostly oblivious to why their skills are being exploited. Maybe we could affect this mindset and bring a larger student audience into the ethical discussion. It is becoming harder and harder to distinguish your contributions to the indirect damages caused to innocent third-parties. And with CS, it's not like there is a shortage of jobs. But that may be a misguided view--it's obvious that students take these jobs because they 'have to' or risk suffering anywhere from 10k to 300k of debt, depending on the school and their financial background. It's all very much a shame.
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  > It's oftentimes good students who are mostly oblivious to why their skills are being exploited. I'm not sure I agree with that, but if that's what you think it doesn't make sense to try and keep the "good" students away from military contractors. If they're going to build weapons (that use/require code) I'd rather they have the best developers available. Hiring bad programmers certainly isn't going to decrease civilian casualties.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  If it were me I'd also get together a consortium of competing civilian recruiters to back such a venture.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Educational institutions are the battleground for mindshare between the military-industrial and the peace-lovers. Don't ask the question whether you should start a "CS Students against Weaponry" movement or not: just simply do it. You have to make peace, it doesn't just happen. Same with war, incidentally ..
tgflynn 13y ago
The common trend we see with the US government is total lack of restraint. It acts as a tyrant and a bully. 1) The government acquires drone technology. Rather than use it to kill a few known terrorists it operates massive drone programs which result in the deaths of 100's of innocent people in multiple countries. 2) The government develops advanced surveillance technology. Rather than use it on a few identified potential threats it decides to scoop up virtually all electronic communications of both its own and foreign citizens with regard for neither the letter nor the spirit of the US Bill of Rights. 3) The government enacts ridiculously heavy penalties for "crimes" whose negative impact is debatable then uses these laws and its virtually unlimited legal resources to terrorize individuals who engage in activities it doesn't like. I would like to think that some of the better president's in this nation's history: FDR, Kennedy, etc., would have acted to reign in these abuses but in any case that isn't relevant to our current generations which seem devoid of any concept of collective well-being or spirit of disinterested public leadership. The beast is clearly out of control.
- rhino369 13y ago
  You only have to look at past wars to see this is clearly not a total lack restraint. During WWII, the US purposely burned down entire cities (not just small villages, some of the biggest cities in the world) just to scare the shit out of the other side. In Korea and Vietnam millions of civilians were killed by artillery and air raids on villages and cities. By some accounts nearly all buildings in N. Korea were destroyed by bombing. Even in Iraqi and Serbia, the US was bombing civilian targets like bridges and power plants. LOL at FDR being against drones. He was overseeing the purposeful destruction of as many German and Japanese civlians as possible.
jusben1369 13y ago
We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read. We all know war is hell. We know using weapons to attack people creates horrific, real human harm. So starting off listing the effects of weaponry on humans tells us nothing about drones. It just tells us about the horrors of war. Given this is an article about drones it should be very drone specific. Do drones increase or decrease the inevitable horrors of war? I suspect they decrease it with smaller more targeted bombs vs prior more traditional larger bombs. Today if we make a mistake we bomb the wrong home and kill everyone. 25 years ago we bombed the entire village. Maybe they increase it because we're carrying out a lot more sorties than we did prior when a jet and a pilot were needed/at risk. However, I'm not sure and this article goes nowhere close to helping with the discussion. "The view is so pixelated it makes decisions tough" Can you imagine military people who fight/fought on the ground in real combat and order in strikes reading that? Surrounded by smoke and fire and deafening noise and hoping (or maybe not caring) that the strike they call in hits the right target/s vs all the nearby civilians also hiding and cowering in a village? The military is aware of the impact on these operators. From a February 20013 article sighting a Defense Department study: “Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.” Lastly, imagine how you'd feel reading a similar opinion piece on Fox News from a gun ho former operator talking about all the American lives he saved by observing and taking out "the bad guys". What's even better with drones we're not losing American solider lives and dramatically reducing the number of innocent civilians killed vs how we would have approached the same problem just 25 years ago. War is hell. The issues are complex. Trusted new sources add to the debate. Biased ones feed their viewership what they know they'll eat up and do little, maybe even damage, the search for truth.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  How is this story anything but a plea to the people to reign in their heinous military masters? You state 'we must be sure we're not being manipulated' - towards what end, exactly? The logical conclusion of this opinion piece (it is marked thus) is that we should not allow our elected representatives to get away with murder. How is that in any way a negative result?
rcthompson 13y ago
How are the drones even relevant to the discussion? There are people controlling some device in order to kill other people. Why does it matter that the device happens to be an UAV in this case? How is it different if the device in question is instead a cruise missile? A rifle? A knife? A fist? To me, the whole discussion about drones is a big misdirection that uses people's irrational fear of "killer robots" to make detractors forget that ultimately, there's a human pulling the trigger. Who cares if Obama authorized a drone strike to kill a US citizen abroad? What I care about is that he authorized an assassination of a US citizen, not that he chose "drone strike" as the method.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  I think complaints are not about drones per se, they are about the US drone program. It doesn't matter whether it's an UAV, a manned aricraft, or a rocket propelled chainsaw. What matters is that there's a program of systematic murder of innocent people on the other side of the globe without any formal declaration of war.
  - rcthompson 13y ago
    My point is that most of the complaining is about the drones, and it shouldn't be.
- gorhill 13y ago
  > "How is it different if the device in question is instead a cruise missile? A rifle? A knife? A fist?" I am pretty sure it's easier to dehumanize people when they are merely pixels on a screen.
  - rcthompson 13y ago
    That's true, but it's missing my point. The whole "drone war" is being cast as robots killing humans, mostly ignoring the fact that humans are making every decision about who to kill. This puts the focus of the debate on the technology instead of where it should be, which is on the people who have decided that it is ok to kill other people. So people protesting the program are demanding "Stop using drones!" when they should be demanding "Stop murdering people!"
classicsnoot 13y ago
There are a lot of comments, so i apologize if i am parroting a wiser person, but this thought has been occupying my head for some time and i crave the sweet relief of discourse. Drones are here to stay. Maybe like nuclear weapons, they will be something we try to eradicate later, but for now, we must accept and incorporate them, as companies/governments will make it happen regardless of our [read:citizenry(...of the world, of course)] concerns or opposition. In light of this, it is me earnest and sincere belief that control of the sky over our heads is up for grabs. Bothered by kill bots flown over your head by sme assholes in Nevada? Start building aerial jammers, yo. Think those pigs in your 'hood are corrupt? Set up video surveillance and make it open/free access online. Take pictures of cops using their mobiles whilst driving. Say nothing unnecessary at traffic stops; be happy to join them for a free ride to the station and a front row seat to how paperwork is an unbiased weapon in the hands of informed folks. I am so sick of soccer moms and military assholes telling me what is "safe", what "security" means, and how freaking precious our nation is. There is no one coming to save us, not in the US, not in Europe, and especially not in China (India... well we will see). But that is cool, because we have Internet. Seriously, in a stand up arms race, who is going to win, they people paying 100 million per drone or the people paying 1000 per drone. We dont need ordinance. We don't need permission. We have all the know how required [the OP/author sounds like a soldier of conscience if there ever was one]. This is not some Occupy circus. It is not a call for revolution or insurrection. It is just one person, trying to point out the facts... We, as the armchair scientists and tech inclined folk of the world, have the balance of insight, experience, funding, and motivation on our side. what is more, we need not kill anyone. we dont need to blow anyone up. Most importantly, we get to be honest, and we get to work by choice. We as people need not sit idly by while politicians and constables decide our fates and the fates of our brothers and sisters around the world. i long for a day when my country, because we kick ass, carpet bombs africa and the middle east weekly with well made books, toothpaste, and ruggedized tablet computers. I do not think this is a fantasy, but i am very aware of the other options. ...shit, this isn't the meeting at the docks...
bsaul 13y ago
it's not the first time i see reports about war traumas for drone pilots and analysts. I hope this won't be used later as an argument for fully automated drones. I much prefer having a least some people traumatized by being in war than none.
coldtea 13y ago
I thought this would be an anti-drone confession, but in reality it looks mostly manipulative. Most of it is the impact of using drones on drone operators and the soldiers who have them on THEIR side. How about the impact of drones to the OTHER side? You know, the one under attack? Even giving them both 50% share of the article is a disservice to them, and here it's even worse. How about them breaking international law? How about them being used for murder operations in a no-war situation? How about them used already and even more down the road against a country's own citizens? Another part of the article is about how they have low fidelity screens and radars and such. As if, if they had better tech (which they'll get down the road) all would be well with them. Not much touching the actual ethical, human, political and diplomatic implications of their use.
- gnaffle 13y ago
  I don't think it's manipulative at all. He says that he wishes the pro-drone people would be know more or be more forthcoming about the realities of the drone programs, and that they should be more transparent. The point of view that of the "other" side has also been mentioned many times, by The Guardian and other newspapers.
- scintill76 13y ago
  > soldiers who have them on THEIR side. How about the impact of drones to the OTHER side? I think this is still a somewhat useful (even if unfair) approach. So much of the conversation is already centered on how the "other" side effectively has no rights because they're not in America and are suspected of terrorism, and how drones are so much safer and cheaper for "our" side. I view this approach as saying "OK, so you want to believe those non-American deaths really can be written off as an 'unfortunate but necessary cost of war.' Let's see how horrific this still is for our troops that have to run these things and watch people die day after day; how IEDs still slip through screening and our troops have to watch, from thousands of miles away, their own comrades bleed out on the side of the road, through an oversight they may feel responsible for." Most of the politicians are spinning this as something precise and safe for our troops. It makes sense for the counterpoint to focus on how it's not precise and has hidden human costs to the troops. And it is clear the author understands the immorality of the deaths themselves, but that's not the focus because there aren't many people willing to argue in that arena.
kevinpet 13y ago
This article could just as well describing how war is conducted since we switched from all cotton to cotton-polyester blend utilities uniforms. It lets the reader assume that in some way drones are worse than non-drone warfare, without advancing any argument in that direction.
anderspetersson 13y ago
All this criticism against drones. Drones are awesome. I've worked on the ground in Afghanistan on a Mechanized Infantry Platoon. There's nothing more calming than hearing the buzz from a drone keeping an eye on the terrain from above and reporting to the TACP while you're on the ground. We where saved multiple times from running into ambushes and IEDs thanks to drones. Sure, Apache's could do the job as-well, but when they run out of fuel, and they do more often than a drone, you're on your own. Sure, that's another mission from flying a drone to a compound in Pakistan and dropping some explosive on it, that I can not comment on since I have not seen the Intel behind those missions.
- dchichkov 13y ago
  Best comment in the thread. So we should concentrate on development of 'guardian' and 'intelligence' drones, and leave the offense part to the soldiers on the ground, right?
  - anderspetersson 13y ago
    I believe both types of drones are needed, if the "fly-to-pakistan-and-drop-a-bomb-on-a-compound"-drones didnt exist, the SOF guys would have more to do, and would take more losses, I guess. I'm pretty sure the intel needed to carry out a drone-strike is insanely high. Drones are also great when the insurgents flees on their motorcycles, as often happens when the ground forces come in.
SpaceRaccoon 13y ago
I watched a documentary by Vice recently about the Taliban in Pakistan. I do not remember the exact words, but when asked about allied air superiority with drones, an insurgent commander responded "Talking to people, I can get a few people to join my side. With one drone strike, I can get a whole village on my side." And herein lies the problem: for every insurgent a drone strike kills, whether he deserves it or not, that drone stroke motivates many more to join their ranks. After a flood, the Taliban helped to rebuild villages in Pakistan. People felt that the state did nothing for them, thus again strengthening support for the insurgency. I feel as though, if the US instead invested the money from war to rather rebuilding, infrastructure, healthcare, education, that the insurgency would fade on its own. People join the insurgency because they are motivated by hate and anger. Attempting to eliminate it through extermination is futile: the collateral damage only multiples the numbers wanting to fight. The way to win a war is by winning hearts and minds, as the cliche goes.
kyleblarson 13y ago
The Nobel Foundation must be facepalming a lot these days after O's peace prize.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  I would say they deserve the damage to the "brand," if not so many previous awardees had similarly questionable contributions to "peace."
gnaffle 13y ago
I find amount of pro-drone comments here quite stunning, including the complete lack of appreciation of how the economies of scale of drones will radically alter the equation of whether these are a good idea or not. "Now, all right we killed some innocent civilians, but that happens in war and we're at a constant war against terror now so there you go. Lets not jump to any conclusions about drones before all the facts are in!" All I can say is that these people will probably shut up and at least moderate their views as soon as the police in their country starts deploying drones en masse.
stcredzero 13y ago
> One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" This is precisely what the Oculus Rift folks and the people working on the helmet that goes with the F-35 are working against. Biological senses are freaking amazing. The outliers on the upper end of the scale are downright incredible. Synthetic substitutes need to be really well engineered to be comparable or surpass them. (Which is precisely what happened with RADAR. Did you know that modern radio telescopes developed from technology we used to eavesdrop on Soviet EM emissions reflected off the moon? Did you know that the energy gathered by all of the radio telescopes, ever, is less than that of a single snowflake hitting the ground?)
njharman 13y ago
This topic can be summed up as war is hell. It is brutal, bloody and evil. UAVs, nor anything else alters this. Modern democracies know this well and try to hide the horrors of war from their citizens. To have the freedom to wage war for as long as possible (or as long as needed) before public outrage forces them to stop. Citizens are at fault for not knowing history and not paying attention.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  For the nth time... "We are at war with Yemen?" How can citizens be at fault when they don't even have a representative choice in the matter? The whole "war is hell" thing is trite as all get out. As a metaphorical answer: "If war is hell... Don't court the Devil."
sinwave 13y ago
The title of this article is a bit misleading - I was expecting some fresh facts about the drone program. What I got instead was some heavy pathos and not much substance.
deleted 13y ago
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artellectual 13y ago
I think it's pretty clear that, the US army looks out for one nation only the U S of A, they are definitely making it clear that humanities best interest is not their long term goal. They look out for their own, I think we all live in a world where we all look out for our own. The US army are no better than the terrrorists who took the innocent lives of Americans. Honestly the US is just a big bully and what it all comes down to is media, they've brain washed the entire nation to make it seem like all these drone attacks are ok, they're not severe, they're not as bad as it sounds, justifying it through fancy words the common people can't understand. The fact is its usually worse than it sounds but most people just choose to switch off from it because no one wants to think about these depressing things, and by switching off their brains they are empowering the politicians that pull the triggers. It's never ok when innocent people die, innocent civilians of the US don't want innocent civilians of other nations to die. The fact of the matter is it's not these civilians who are pulling the trigger. The way I see it we all follow a pattern. In the US you have 2 big political parties, democrat and republican. I mean no one ever questions why we let these dickheads stay in power? Why isn't there a third, fourth or a fifth party? They have fabricated a world and a media were they have basically brain washed the entire world. I mean honestly do u think having 2 parties take turn in power is a democracy? What it all comes down to is to not give them the power. I think in every nation all around the world not voting is as powerful as voting. Breaking that pattern and having that critical thinking, to call the politicians bullshit, and impeach the shit out of them when they fuck up and lie, that conviction to get up and do the right thing. But that will never happen, because it's too hard, because we've all been brain washed, becuase everyone is busy living their lives. I think the American people have forgotten that their government exist to serve them not the other way around, when you pay tax your paying for a service, when you not getting the service you asked for, you should get up and do something.
smegel 13y ago
I don't find this very insightful. Drones kill civilians? Yeah, we know. Collateral damage is a reality of war. Drones are weapons? Is that really a revelation? I think there is a lot to criticize about the drone program, but it shouldn't read like this.
pearjuice 13y ago
What stuns me the most about drones is how unfair they are. The targets are mostly the Middle-East and they have absolutely no chance to take them down. And then they wonder why they attack innocent Americans working in an embasy. How are you supposed to fight something you cannot see? You don't, so you attack something of the enemy, no matter what, because it is the last option to hurt him.
- votingprawn 13y ago
  Couldn't the same argument be made against any other attack aircraft?
rdl 13y ago
The only thing this shows is that the recruiting standards for the US drone program are substandard, as the author was allegedly part. 1) Yes, absolutely UAV based jammers don't block all IEDs. Ground jammers like WARLOCK also don't block all IEDs. One thing they did do was force a lot of command detonated IEDs to go to command wire systems, instead of various wireless systems, which meant we then had a man with a switch in his hand within a few hundred meters (tops), who we then lit the fuck up before or after the attack. Sure beats someone being in another city with a cellphone! Just because something isn't 100% effective doesn't mean it's worthless. 2) Yes, UAVs are offensive combat weapons, particularly the programs in Horn of Africa and Pakistan. OTOH, I don't see a huge difference in getting killed by a Hellfire from a drone vs. having guys from JSOC show up at your door. There's a legitimate concern that UAVs lower the threshold to engage in ongoing low intensity conflict, but in the cases where they do have the right targets, I see no difference between drone, manned aircraft, or on the ground trigger-pullers. 3) The vast majority of drones are pure Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. DOD didn't even arm their drones for a long long time, it was CIA (who operate in those places) who pioneered armed Predators (then the other armed drones). Part of this is internal politics (pilots = officers), part of it is that when you've got manned aircraft armed with diverse weapons systems orbiting overhead, you can just use a smaller/cheaper/lighter drone for pure ISR, then when you develop a target, send the manned aircraft with a full suite of weapons to choose from to do the actual attack mission. 4) The grainy image of a UAV camera, over a 4h monitoring mission, is probably way beyond the standard of proof of a combat shooting in general. The UAV defaults to "no shoot". A soldier in combat who is threatened defaults to "shoot". You don't need high precision on a single image if you're able to spend a long time watching, gathering supporting information (knowing the area, vehicles that approach, etc.). This isn't law enforcement or civilian self defense; it's war. It's totally legitimate to question whether we should be at war, but the actual conduct of the war is less debatable IMO.
- midas007 13y ago
  According to someone familiar with current specops / USAF rules-of-engagement, the rule is that an officer always had to be present to authorize a kill by a UAV. Period. If JSOC or others were/are doing something different, this could be grounds for court-martial.
joshfraser 13y ago
Sometimes they can't tell if someone is carrying a weapon or not. Consider that for a moment. Even if they are carrying a weapon, why should that be enough information to issue a death sentence for them and everyone in their near proximity?
Houshalter 13y ago
So this affects people's lives and involves politics, but I can't help but feel like it's an engineering problem that could be solved. Measure how accurate information is from drones and how confident they are, calculate (even if roughly) how much is gained or lost by taking action. And then do whatever maximizes expected utility. I feel like merely having access to another tool should never make things worse unless the leaders are incompetent.
nationcrafting 13y ago
Scary as current drones are, they are nothing compared to how crazy things are going to get very quickly. Think of completely power-autonomous drones, the size of a wasp, swarming by the millions in the sky. The swarming feature alone would render most people helpless against an attack, or their sheer presence. To this, add distributed intelligence features, and networked control. The swarm becomes something akin to an intelligent, flying, all-seeing liquid. Then think of the drop in price that will enable this to become the dominant method of surveillance, policing, and military operations. There will quickly be nothing stopping dictatorships from buying billions of them, making them ubiquitous and all-pervasive. Killing, threatening and controlling billions of people suddenly becomes quite cheap, efficient, easy and cost-effective. Don't like those people demonstrating in your city? Send the swarms.
linuxhansl 13y ago
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." - Peter Ustinov
brian0624 13y ago
I can't believe this goes on...
charlesju 13y ago
I believe a highly relevant podcast is the incredible one by Dan Carlin called "Hardcore History". The episode below is one history fan's opinion of how we were able to justify mass killing of civilians in acts like the Atomic Bomb, Bombing of London in WW2, and the Fire Bombs against Tokyo. http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---(BLITZ)-Logical-Insanity/Second%20World%20War-World%20War%20Two-World%20War%20One http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---(BLIT...
rasengan0 13y ago
Drones remain viable because they cost money. You have to buy them and use them. Who is profiting from death? Saving troops on the ground is great marketing and saves political capital. Tribalism wins; WE GOOD, you Bad. Someone always makes up the math: X innocent goatherders = 1 US grunt Such a sad petty waste of and for humanity.

910 points by nsns 13y ago

>Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain's secretary of state for defence Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within one year leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again. I doubt he gives a shit, and the reason we are in this mess is because most people think people like him do give a shit, they are just "misinformed."

rwmj 13y ago
The unfortunate truth is that any leader who orders soldiers to go to war should know that innocent and guilty people are going to die, women will be raped, property destroyed and looted, and so on. In WWII there was a deliberate policy of incinerating populated cities, but even if we don't go to that extreme the outcome is going to be grim. I hope any defence secretary both knows this, and considers it, but also considers what happens when you don't deploy soldiers/drones/etc.
- TruthElixirX 13y ago
  >but also considers what happens when you don't deploy soldiers/drones/etc. Nothing happens. Nothing. The reason those people are pissed is because of the U.S. government constantly fucking with them and poking them. Over throwing governments, secret renditions, locking up loved ones in Guantanamo with no trial indefinitely. I'd be fucking pissed too.
  - rwmj 13y ago
    I meant in the general case for war. Obviously not much happens in the short term if we don't interfere in the affairs of Pakistan and neighbours. In the long term they might rebuild their terrorist training camps, but .. meh so what. Only a few people have been killed by terrorists, it's not a big deal and not a fundamental threat to civilisation. You couldn't say that there would be no consequences for not engaging in the 1930s. Many more countries could have been overrun by fascism for decades.

apunic 13y ago

Any tl;dr?

lisper 13y ago
The article is not that long, and worth reading in its entirety.
hmsimha 13y ago
Sorry I lost you at 'Any'. tl;dr please?

ck2 13y ago

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed drones before it is too late.

dreamfactory 13y ago
Not to justify any of this business, but why on earth wouldn't they apply 'beyond reasonable doubt' in their own minds when summarily executing somebody in the first place?
- ck2 13y ago
  Because everyone hides behind "just following orders" up the chain. It is also somewhere along the line of why police feel it is okay to try to shoot suspects on a busy street and often shoot the wrong innocent person and mess up their lives.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  One of the best books to read to get a feel for how America commits its war crimes is Kill Anything that Moves about the Vietnam war. http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American-ebook/dp/B008FPSTOQ/ http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American-eboo...
- dspeyer 13y ago
  That sort of standard works when the executor has massively more power than the executee. For the US versus an ordinary criminal, we can do it. Facing something that looks more like a war, applying standards of justice generally results in losing.
  - makomk 13y ago
    In this case, the executor has more power than the executee. The US can reduce people to bloody smears from drones that are almost invisible to their victims, with all the actual humans safely ensconced in bases hundreds of miles away. The people they're targetting have nothing like that - they cannot fight back without putting themselves straight in the line of fire.

fit2rule 13y ago

I think that one thing we 'normals' don't seem to understand, is that when you are in the business of killing, murdering, maiming other human beings, you're no longer really part of society. Society is determined by the survival of its members - start removing them, and you get a lesser society. That is obvious. But we in the 'normal' society don't have a clue what those in the 'murdering business society' really think about us. More often than not, you'll find that the 'official killers' really don't care about human life - or else they wouldn't be devoting their time on earth to the singular purpose of killing, maiming, destroying life. Its a simple fact that if you get up in the morning with the intention of taking a human life, if ordered to do so, then you no longer belong to the human race. You belong to something else. Not a single one of us in the 'normal society' can entertain the thought of killing someone, on a daily basis, and not suffer consequences. How is it then for those who spend their entire lives working to be the best possible killers they're allowed to be?

neals 13y ago
You seem very opinionated about this. I haven't given this as much thought as you have, but I think that doing something to protect your society from evil must count for something. Do you really see it as black and white as you describe it?
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Yes, I do. The reason is because I think that anyone whose job it is to murder, maim, kill - officially, with sanction from the state - and who chooses to do this as a career is a very, very sick individual. We do not need a military that can deliver a bomb on some individuals head at the drop of a whim - we need an organization that makes peace, for the state, far more.
  - dreamfactory 13y ago
    The usual argument is that such people 'occur naturally' and the army at least directs their activities outwards (it forms the distinction between grunt and officer class in the forces). I don't agree with the premise but it's a nature vs nurture question.

yeukhon 13y ago

> The UAV's in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this Honestly, it has always been seen as a weapon. The whole point of drone is to carry out mission 24/7 as much as possible, because a pilot can't fly back and forth without sleeping. Also, humans have emotions they don't always follow orders. > incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure I have always thought the military fly drones to carry out specific mission, such as taking photos or launching an attack. And the latter is usually confirmed by some "intelligence". I want to see how many drone attacks were performed without a single human intelligence confirmation. > But here's the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end This is best seen in the movie Black Hawk Down (2001), based on true story.

frostmatthew 13y ago
> The whole point of drone is to carry out mission 24/7 as much as possible, because a pilot can't fly back and forth without sleeping. Humans are still required to fly the drones. The "whole point" is that drones can accomplish the same mission without risking a pilot and at a fraction of the cost of a manned aircraft.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Well, in the future we will replace human pilots with automated flying drones. Sure we still have drones require human flying.

wreegab 13y ago

> "the video provided by a drone is a far cry from clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited clouds and perfect light" I wished she had pushed the questioning even further: Even if it's a weapon, that doesn't mean the person is a threat. I mean it's full of people carrying weapons in the U.S., they are not presumed a threat. And even if the person is deemed a threat, maybe the he would surrender, but now he is not even offered this choice.

TruthElixirX 13y ago
How is a guy two continents away carrying an AK a threat in any sane fashion? He sure as hell can't use the gun to fly over the ocean.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  Remember the official public NSA justification includes 'defending economic interests'.
- Theodores 13y ago
  He is a profit centre. Not killing him is a danger to the entire military industrial complex. That would be a threat to national security.
- stefan_kendall 13y ago
  The U.S countryside is strewn with men and women fitting this description. I bet it would be even more true if foreign soldiers were occupying america and routinely bombing its citizens.
- wreegab 13y ago
  I just wished she questioned further. The more the better.

kingkawn 13y ago

Side note, I am excited for the application of all of this drone technology into things other than killing. War seems to be one of the few things that the US is unapologetically willing to go into debt to fund. Lots of cool possibilities with high resolution sensor technology.

gibybo 13y ago

These seem like compelling arguments against our "war" in the middle east, but I'm not sure why we should be singling out UAVs. People die in wars. Sometimes they are enemies, sometimes they are friends, and sometimes they are innocent bystanders. Do drones really make war worse than it already is?

belorn 13y ago
Depend on what has highest chance happening - That children dies because people who should confirm what is a threat fail because they are too lazy (or bad pixels, or bad weather / angle and so on), or children dies because solders on the street become so extremely mental unstable that they shoot innocent people just for laughs.

cpncrunch 13y ago

A little bit more background on Heather Linebaugh: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/soldiers-in-the-military-are-being-gagged-for-speaking-out http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/soldiers-in-the-military-are-...

mzr 13y ago
24 years old. I know this veers into hyperbole, but it seems we've both killed and ruined a whole generation.
- ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
  And slightly older people-a 24 year old in 2003 who served in Iraq could be just as fucked up now as a 35 year old.
- icegreentea 13y ago
  You should ask the "Greatest Generation" what they did. The door to door fighting through Europe was in no way clean.

f_salmon 13y ago

The drone program is probably the most efficient way to recruit new terrorists. Which is probably in the interest of the NSA. How else can they justify their dirty work if their is no more perceived "treat".

logotype 13y ago

The story is contradictory "...I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen..." and "The feed is so pixelated"

cbg0 13y ago
He didn't mean he was watching it clearly in 4K resolution when he said "great detail", he was trying to convey that he had a good understanding of what was going on on the ground even though he wasn't on the ground.

bearwithclaws 13y ago

Any cache or mirrors? Can't seemed to view the site.

salient 13y ago

This is only going to get worse if they make drones autonomous, which this TED talk shows they have a lot of reasons for why they will want to make them autonomous, unless there's huge public outcry demanding a ban: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI

Killah911 13y ago

I've worked on building some AI for drones for the US, and I'm fairly certain that advents in new technologies will mitigate most of the concerns in the article. It will make for a seriously scary new world, where devices like this exist at massive scale. Dictatorships will be even more brutal, and oppressors, even more oppressive. The sociopath in control of these machines will no longer have to worry about someone not carrying out orders properly due to emotions or questioning their judgement. All that aside, the one aspect I don't see getting resolved is the psychological effects of someone relatively "normal" & smart watching the horrors and carnage of war and then heading to the grocery store for some ice cream after his/her shift. Unlike being in a miserable (i.e. battlefield) place where your body is filled with adrenaline and a good chunk of your mental resources are dedicated to keeping yourself alive and getting the hell out of there alive. Having the time to reflect on the serious inequities in the world that you've just been witness to can't easily be swept under the rug. Even if the systems are mostly automated and pictures have a higher resolution, provided that the person/analyst/commander behind the screen is a somewhat sane and intelligent member of society, the psychological tolls might be worse when you're experiencing carnage thru relative safety.

a_olt 13y ago
This article discussed one of the solutions proposed by psychologists to relieve drone pilots of the stress and guilt that comes with launching an attack: http://io9.com/psychologists-propose-horrifying-solution-to-ptsd-in-dr-1453349900 http://io9.com/psychologists-propose-horrifying-solution-to-...
- Killah911 13y ago
  Thx for posting the article. "Siri, kill those people", sounds like the makings of a new John Cleese bit. Had to check twice and make sure I wasn't reading an Onion article. I still wonder how much less existential strife an operator might experience by delegating the killing to an AI machine, especially if one can still see the faces (better resolution) and the carnage following "Siri" carrying out orders.
ryandrake 13y ago

chmike 13y ago

what wories me the most with that UAV analyst problem is that there is only two solution. Minimize or even stop these operations or automate them with computers. I'm "curious" where this later option could lead us.

spiritplumber 13y ago

The public should also know that all this long range drone stuff can be done for cheap. Also, they pixelate the feed on purpose, to remove hesitation when hitting the trigger.

wetmore 13y ago
>Also, they pixelate the feed on purpose, to remove hesitation when hitting the trigger. Any proof for this?
- spiritplumber 13y ago
  No, it's something I heard from a guy doing UI design for this stuff. We were comparing notes / discussing what's the minimum resolution to pilot a remote vehicle.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

It sucks to be part of the human element making life and death decisions about armed robots being used in non-traditional war situations. That's about all I got from this. And yes, it does suck. There was a third claim, that the public is misinformed/misled, but I take issue with that one. I think most people understand that somebody, somewhere is pushing the button. This essay didn't go into the rationale for drone warfare, or the situation that brought the west into armed conflict in the first place. So it's not hitting on a lot in terms of talking about the geopolitical issues, it's just a plea for more empathy about what's actually being done. I share that concern. We should be more empathetic. However -- and this is a big deal -- feeling more fully the terrible things we are doing does not in any way make those things less necessary. Those are two separate subjects. I think we are going down a bad road with armed robots, but I don't think essays like this are helping the discussion much. Still, it was good to hear this voice.

bliksem 13y ago
"There was a third claim, that the public is misinformed/misled, but I take issue with that one. I think most people understand that somebody, somewhere is pushing the button." True - though the mislead part I feel largely relates to claims of surgical strikes and claims of minimal 'collateral' deaths and injuries. " the terrible things we are doing does not in any way make those things less necessary" What is being done is indeed terrible - though I have yet to see the necessary bit backed up by any coherent numbers.

forktheif 13y ago

Again with the drone bashing. Civilians got killed by manned aircraft too. A-10s launching Hellfires at a wedding party, or AH-64 Apaches gunning down farmers in a field. It happens. And whether the pilot is sitting in the aircraft or a thousand miles away makes no difference. It's the same imperfect people making the same imperfect decisions based on imperfect information.

classicsnoot 13y ago
The issue is not that it happened. The issue is not that people died. The issue is that Drone Warfare allows rich people in power to remotely kill people they deem as threats whilst selling a story of reduced casualties on both sides. The casualties of this kind of war will be human at first...
- votingprawn 13y ago
  > allows rich people in power to remotely kill people they deem as threats whilst selling a story of reduced casualties on both sides. Don't expensive manned aircraft with (the same) expensive precision guided munitions allow rich people to do exactly the same thing? A manned aircraft could perform these missions with the same level of "collateral damage" and minimal risk to the pilot.
  - classicsnoot 13y ago
    Absolutely, yes. It requires many years and oodles of cash to train humans to desensitise themselves to the degree it takes to be a good fighter jock [I have a few family members who have flown. They are brilliant. Flying is an amazing endeavour.]. I am sure it takes a fair amount of time to achieve the same level of "discipline" in an RPV team, as well. [Here follows a bunch of things that are personal observations.]I personally believe that both of these categories of specialization are symptomatic of a deeper mental illness in humanity. I am not really interested in less death or more death as some kind of assessment of a things value. Death, in all things, is unavoidable. We, as humans, see ourselves as individuals because it is empowering. In reality, we are largely indistinguishable from each other when one takes a broader perspective. Both fighter jets and military RPVs are cool as hell, but they are both death implements, or deathplements if you are grammatically frisky. I heard an interesting interview on NPR with a retired CIA chap. He was legal council to some alphabet soup within Central. He pointed out the irony of the controversy over the "Enhanced" Interrogation Techniques" and the relative quiet on the part of the American public about the Dispassionate Remotely Piloted Death Eagle Master Plan[This is the official name of the CIA's RPV program. look it up.]. I found it poignant. he has a book. I believe the title is Company Man.

macspoofing 13y ago

The entire concept of targeted drone assassinations is so surreal. Executing a convict in the US civilian court system requires a trial with a high-burden of proof, and the convict is afforded multiple appeals before the sentence is carried out. But in this case all it takes for the state to execute a suspect is the interpretation of some mid-level analyst. More perplexing, there are no qualms around civilian collateral damage. In what universe is striking a convoy carrying a suspect but also carrying innocent (or even if not innocent, not deserving a death sentence) civilians, deemed acceptable?

tokenizerrr 13y ago
> In what universe is striking a convoy carrying a suspect but also carrying innocent (or even if not innocent, not deserving a death sentence) civilians, deemed acceptable? America.
kevinpet 13y ago
> In what universe is striking a convoy carrying a suspect but also carrying innocent (or even if not innocent, not deserving a death sentence) civilians, deemed acceptable? During war, as accepted by every politician going back to the dawn of civilization. On the plus side, for the past several hundred years, we've started to make efforts to minimize. > there are no qualms around civilian collateral damage. Really? That seems to be all anyone is talking about when it comes to drones. From the perspective of anyone from more than a century ago, we're obsessed with it (and conversely, from the perspective of today, Dresden and Hiroshima would be war crimes.)
- BrokenPipe 13y ago
  Even rape and slavery was accepted not long ago, not enough reason to continue do it? I'm seriously disgusted by some people capacity to accept brutality as normal and worse defend it too.
- alextingle 13y ago
  > During war... Except the US isn't at war with any of the countries where these drone strikes are taking place.

BrandonRead 13y ago

Does anybody think there is space for a "CS Students against Weaponry" alliance? I go to Umass Amherst, and there are tons of people who end up working for Raytheon upon graduation. Sure, the 100k / yr is quite tempting when you just came from community college and a retail job just years before, but perhaps some education may stop students from agreeing to internships and careers at Raytheon, etc. It's oftentimes good students who are mostly oblivious to why their skills are being exploited. Maybe we could affect this mindset and bring a larger student audience into the ethical discussion. It is becoming harder and harder to distinguish your contributions to the indirect damages caused to innocent third-parties. And with CS, it's not like there is a shortage of jobs. But that may be a misguided view--it's obvious that students take these jobs because they 'have to' or risk suffering anywhere from 10k to 300k of debt, depending on the school and their financial background. It's all very much a shame.

frostmatthew 13y ago
> It's oftentimes good students who are mostly oblivious to why their skills are being exploited. I'm not sure I agree with that, but if that's what you think it doesn't make sense to try and keep the "good" students away from military contractors. If they're going to build weapons (that use/require code) I'd rather they have the best developers available. Hiring bad programmers certainly isn't going to decrease civilian casualties.
dreamfactory 13y ago
If it were me I'd also get together a consortium of competing civilian recruiters to back such a venture.
fit2rule 13y ago
Educational institutions are the battleground for mindshare between the military-industrial and the peace-lovers. Don't ask the question whether you should start a "CS Students against Weaponry" movement or not: just simply do it. You have to make peace, it doesn't just happen. Same with war, incidentally ..

tgflynn 13y ago

The common trend we see with the US government is total lack of restraint. It acts as a tyrant and a bully. 1) The government acquires drone technology. Rather than use it to kill a few known terrorists it operates massive drone programs which result in the deaths of 100's of innocent people in multiple countries. 2) The government develops advanced surveillance technology. Rather than use it on a few identified potential threats it decides to scoop up virtually all electronic communications of both its own and foreign citizens with regard for neither the letter nor the spirit of the US Bill of Rights. 3) The government enacts ridiculously heavy penalties for "crimes" whose negative impact is debatable then uses these laws and its virtually unlimited legal resources to terrorize individuals who engage in activities it doesn't like. I would like to think that some of the better president's in this nation's history: FDR, Kennedy, etc., would have acted to reign in these abuses but in any case that isn't relevant to our current generations which seem devoid of any concept of collective well-being or spirit of disinterested public leadership. The beast is clearly out of control.

rhino369 13y ago
You only have to look at past wars to see this is clearly not a total lack restraint. During WWII, the US purposely burned down entire cities (not just small villages, some of the biggest cities in the world) just to scare the shit out of the other side. In Korea and Vietnam millions of civilians were killed by artillery and air raids on villages and cities. By some accounts nearly all buildings in N. Korea were destroyed by bombing. Even in Iraqi and Serbia, the US was bombing civilian targets like bridges and power plants. LOL at FDR being against drones. He was overseeing the purposeful destruction of as many German and Japanese civlians as possible.

jusben1369 13y ago

We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read. We all know war is hell. We know using weapons to attack people creates horrific, real human harm. So starting off listing the effects of weaponry on humans tells us nothing about drones. It just tells us about the horrors of war. Given this is an article about drones it should be very drone specific. Do drones increase or decrease the inevitable horrors of war? I suspect they decrease it with smaller more targeted bombs vs prior more traditional larger bombs. Today if we make a mistake we bomb the wrong home and kill everyone. 25 years ago we bombed the entire village. Maybe they increase it because we're carrying out a lot more sorties than we did prior when a jet and a pilot were needed/at risk. However, I'm not sure and this article goes nowhere close to helping with the discussion. "The view is so pixelated it makes decisions tough" Can you imagine military people who fight/fought on the ground in real combat and order in strikes reading that? Surrounded by smoke and fire and deafening noise and hoping (or maybe not caring) that the strike they call in hits the right target/s vs all the nearby civilians also hiding and cowering in a village? The military is aware of the impact on these operators. From a February 20013 article sighting a Defense Department study: “Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.” Lastly, imagine how you'd feel reading a similar opinion piece on Fox News from a gun ho former operator talking about all the American lives he saved by observing and taking out "the bad guys". What's even better with drones we're not losing American solider lives and dramatically reducing the number of innocent civilians killed vs how we would have approached the same problem just 25 years ago. War is hell. The issues are complex. Trusted new sources add to the debate. Biased ones feed their viewership what they know they'll eat up and do little, maybe even damage, the search for truth.

fit2rule 13y ago
How is this story anything but a plea to the people to reign in their heinous military masters? You state 'we must be sure we're not being manipulated' - towards what end, exactly? The logical conclusion of this opinion piece (it is marked thus) is that we should not allow our elected representatives to get away with murder. How is that in any way a negative result?

rcthompson 13y ago

How are the drones even relevant to the discussion? There are people controlling some device in order to kill other people. Why does it matter that the device happens to be an UAV in this case? How is it different if the device in question is instead a cruise missile? A rifle? A knife? A fist? To me, the whole discussion about drones is a big misdirection that uses people's irrational fear of "killer robots" to make detractors forget that ultimately, there's a human pulling the trigger. Who cares if Obama authorized a drone strike to kill a US citizen abroad? What I care about is that he authorized an assassination of a US citizen, not that he chose "drone strike" as the method.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
I think complaints are not about drones per se, they are about the US drone program. It doesn't matter whether it's an UAV, a manned aricraft, or a rocket propelled chainsaw. What matters is that there's a program of systematic murder of innocent people on the other side of the globe without any formal declaration of war.
- rcthompson 13y ago
  My point is that most of the complaining is about the drones, and it shouldn't be.
gorhill 13y ago
> "How is it different if the device in question is instead a cruise missile? A rifle? A knife? A fist?" I am pretty sure it's easier to dehumanize people when they are merely pixels on a screen.
- rcthompson 13y ago
  That's true, but it's missing my point. The whole "drone war" is being cast as robots killing humans, mostly ignoring the fact that humans are making every decision about who to kill. This puts the focus of the debate on the technology instead of where it should be, which is on the people who have decided that it is ok to kill other people. So people protesting the program are demanding "Stop using drones!" when they should be demanding "Stop murdering people!"

classicsnoot 13y ago

There are a lot of comments, so i apologize if i am parroting a wiser person, but this thought has been occupying my head for some time and i crave the sweet relief of discourse. Drones are here to stay. Maybe like nuclear weapons, they will be something we try to eradicate later, but for now, we must accept and incorporate them, as companies/governments will make it happen regardless of our [read:citizenry(...of the world, of course)] concerns or opposition. In light of this, it is me earnest and sincere belief that control of the sky over our heads is up for grabs. Bothered by kill bots flown over your head by sme assholes in Nevada? Start building aerial jammers, yo. Think those pigs in your 'hood are corrupt? Set up video surveillance and make it open/free access online. Take pictures of cops using their mobiles whilst driving. Say nothing unnecessary at traffic stops; be happy to join them for a free ride to the station and a front row seat to how paperwork is an unbiased weapon in the hands of informed folks. I am so sick of soccer moms and military assholes telling me what is "safe", what "security" means, and how freaking precious our nation is. There is no one coming to save us, not in the US, not in Europe, and especially not in China (India... well we will see). But that is cool, because we have Internet. Seriously, in a stand up arms race, who is going to win, they people paying 100 million per drone or the people paying 1000 per drone. We dont need ordinance. We don't need permission. We have all the know how required [the OP/author sounds like a soldier of conscience if there ever was one]. This is not some Occupy circus. It is not a call for revolution or insurrection. It is just one person, trying to point out the facts... We, as the armchair scientists and tech inclined folk of the world, have the balance of insight, experience, funding, and motivation on our side. what is more, we need not kill anyone. we dont need to blow anyone up. Most importantly, we get to be honest, and we get to work by choice. We as people need not sit idly by while politicians and constables decide our fates and the fates of our brothers and sisters around the world. i long for a day when my country, because we kick ass, carpet bombs africa and the middle east weekly with well made books, toothpaste, and ruggedized tablet computers. I do not think this is a fantasy, but i am very aware of the other options. ...shit, this isn't the meeting at the docks...

bsaul 13y ago

it's not the first time i see reports about war traumas for drone pilots and analysts. I hope this won't be used later as an argument for fully automated drones. I much prefer having a least some people traumatized by being in war than none.

coldtea 13y ago

I thought this would be an anti-drone confession, but in reality it looks mostly manipulative. Most of it is the impact of using drones on drone operators and the soldiers who have them on THEIR side. How about the impact of drones to the OTHER side? You know, the one under attack? Even giving them both 50% share of the article is a disservice to them, and here it's even worse. How about them breaking international law? How about them being used for murder operations in a no-war situation? How about them used already and even more down the road against a country's own citizens? Another part of the article is about how they have low fidelity screens and radars and such. As if, if they had better tech (which they'll get down the road) all would be well with them. Not much touching the actual ethical, human, political and diplomatic implications of their use.

gnaffle 13y ago
I don't think it's manipulative at all. He says that he wishes the pro-drone people would be know more or be more forthcoming about the realities of the drone programs, and that they should be more transparent. The point of view that of the "other" side has also been mentioned many times, by The Guardian and other newspapers.
scintill76 13y ago
> soldiers who have them on THEIR side. How about the impact of drones to the OTHER side? I think this is still a somewhat useful (even if unfair) approach. So much of the conversation is already centered on how the "other" side effectively has no rights because they're not in America and are suspected of terrorism, and how drones are so much safer and cheaper for "our" side. I view this approach as saying "OK, so you want to believe those non-American deaths really can be written off as an 'unfortunate but necessary cost of war.' Let's see how horrific this still is for our troops that have to run these things and watch people die day after day; how IEDs still slip through screening and our troops have to watch, from thousands of miles away, their own comrades bleed out on the side of the road, through an oversight they may feel responsible for." Most of the politicians are spinning this as something precise and safe for our troops. It makes sense for the counterpoint to focus on how it's not precise and has hidden human costs to the troops. And it is clear the author understands the immorality of the deaths themselves, but that's not the focus because there aren't many people willing to argue in that arena.

kevinpet 13y ago

This article could just as well describing how war is conducted since we switched from all cotton to cotton-polyester blend utilities uniforms. It lets the reader assume that in some way drones are worse than non-drone warfare, without advancing any argument in that direction.

anderspetersson 13y ago

All this criticism against drones. Drones are awesome. I've worked on the ground in Afghanistan on a Mechanized Infantry Platoon. There's nothing more calming than hearing the buzz from a drone keeping an eye on the terrain from above and reporting to the TACP while you're on the ground. We where saved multiple times from running into ambushes and IEDs thanks to drones. Sure, Apache's could do the job as-well, but when they run out of fuel, and they do more often than a drone, you're on your own. Sure, that's another mission from flying a drone to a compound in Pakistan and dropping some explosive on it, that I can not comment on since I have not seen the Intel behind those missions.

dchichkov 13y ago
Best comment in the thread. So we should concentrate on development of 'guardian' and 'intelligence' drones, and leave the offense part to the soldiers on the ground, right?
- anderspetersson 13y ago
  I believe both types of drones are needed, if the "fly-to-pakistan-and-drop-a-bomb-on-a-compound"-drones didnt exist, the SOF guys would have more to do, and would take more losses, I guess. I'm pretty sure the intel needed to carry out a drone-strike is insanely high. Drones are also great when the insurgents flees on their motorcycles, as often happens when the ground forces come in.

SpaceRaccoon 13y ago

I watched a documentary by Vice recently about the Taliban in Pakistan. I do not remember the exact words, but when asked about allied air superiority with drones, an insurgent commander responded "Talking to people, I can get a few people to join my side. With one drone strike, I can get a whole village on my side." And herein lies the problem: for every insurgent a drone strike kills, whether he deserves it or not, that drone stroke motivates many more to join their ranks. After a flood, the Taliban helped to rebuild villages in Pakistan. People felt that the state did nothing for them, thus again strengthening support for the insurgency. I feel as though, if the US instead invested the money from war to rather rebuilding, infrastructure, healthcare, education, that the insurgency would fade on its own. People join the insurgency because they are motivated by hate and anger. Attempting to eliminate it through extermination is futile: the collateral damage only multiples the numbers wanting to fight. The way to win a war is by winning hearts and minds, as the cliche goes.

kyleblarson 13y ago

The Nobel Foundation must be facepalming a lot these days after O's peace prize.

wavefunction 13y ago
I would say they deserve the damage to the "brand," if not so many previous awardees had similarly questionable contributions to "peace."

gnaffle 13y ago

I find amount of pro-drone comments here quite stunning, including the complete lack of appreciation of how the economies of scale of drones will radically alter the equation of whether these are a good idea or not. "Now, all right we killed some innocent civilians, but that happens in war and we're at a constant war against terror now so there you go. Lets not jump to any conclusions about drones before all the facts are in!" All I can say is that these people will probably shut up and at least moderate their views as soon as the police in their country starts deploying drones en masse.

stcredzero 13y ago

> One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" This is precisely what the Oculus Rift folks and the people working on the helmet that goes with the F-35 are working against. Biological senses are freaking amazing. The outliers on the upper end of the scale are downright incredible. Synthetic substitutes need to be really well engineered to be comparable or surpass them. (Which is precisely what happened with RADAR. Did you know that modern radio telescopes developed from technology we used to eavesdrop on Soviet EM emissions reflected off the moon? Did you know that the energy gathered by all of the radio telescopes, ever, is less than that of a single snowflake hitting the ground?)

njharman 13y ago

This topic can be summed up as war is hell. It is brutal, bloody and evil. UAVs, nor anything else alters this. Modern democracies know this well and try to hide the horrors of war from their citizens. To have the freedom to wage war for as long as possible (or as long as needed) before public outrage forces them to stop. Citizens are at fault for not knowing history and not paying attention.

ItendToDisagree 13y ago
For the nth time... "We are at war with Yemen?" How can citizens be at fault when they don't even have a representative choice in the matter? The whole "war is hell" thing is trite as all get out. As a metaphorical answer: "If war is hell... Don't court the Devil."

sinwave 13y ago

The title of this article is a bit misleading - I was expecting some fresh facts about the drone program. What I got instead was some heavy pathos and not much substance.

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artellectual 13y ago

I think it's pretty clear that, the US army looks out for one nation only the U S of A, they are definitely making it clear that humanities best interest is not their long term goal. They look out for their own, I think we all live in a world where we all look out for our own. The US army are no better than the terrrorists who took the innocent lives of Americans. Honestly the US is just a big bully and what it all comes down to is media, they've brain washed the entire nation to make it seem like all these drone attacks are ok, they're not severe, they're not as bad as it sounds, justifying it through fancy words the common people can't understand. The fact is its usually worse than it sounds but most people just choose to switch off from it because no one wants to think about these depressing things, and by switching off their brains they are empowering the politicians that pull the triggers. It's never ok when innocent people die, innocent civilians of the US don't want innocent civilians of other nations to die. The fact of the matter is it's not these civilians who are pulling the trigger. The way I see it we all follow a pattern. In the US you have 2 big political parties, democrat and republican. I mean no one ever questions why we let these dickheads stay in power? Why isn't there a third, fourth or a fifth party? They have fabricated a world and a media were they have basically brain washed the entire world. I mean honestly do u think having 2 parties take turn in power is a democracy? What it all comes down to is to not give them the power. I think in every nation all around the world not voting is as powerful as voting. Breaking that pattern and having that critical thinking, to call the politicians bullshit, and impeach the shit out of them when they fuck up and lie, that conviction to get up and do the right thing. But that will never happen, because it's too hard, because we've all been brain washed, becuase everyone is busy living their lives. I think the American people have forgotten that their government exist to serve them not the other way around, when you pay tax your paying for a service, when you not getting the service you asked for, you should get up and do something.

smegel 13y ago

I don't find this very insightful. Drones kill civilians? Yeah, we know. Collateral damage is a reality of war. Drones are weapons? Is that really a revelation? I think there is a lot to criticize about the drone program, but it shouldn't read like this.

pearjuice 13y ago

What stuns me the most about drones is how unfair they are. The targets are mostly the Middle-East and they have absolutely no chance to take them down. And then they wonder why they attack innocent Americans working in an embasy. How are you supposed to fight something you cannot see? You don't, so you attack something of the enemy, no matter what, because it is the last option to hurt him.

votingprawn 13y ago
Couldn't the same argument be made against any other attack aircraft?

rdl 13y ago

The only thing this shows is that the recruiting standards for the US drone program are substandard, as the author was allegedly part. 1) Yes, absolutely UAV based jammers don't block all IEDs. Ground jammers like WARLOCK also don't block all IEDs. One thing they did do was force a lot of command detonated IEDs to go to command wire systems, instead of various wireless systems, which meant we then had a man with a switch in his hand within a few hundred meters (tops), who we then lit the fuck up before or after the attack. Sure beats someone being in another city with a cellphone! Just because something isn't 100% effective doesn't mean it's worthless. 2) Yes, UAVs are offensive combat weapons, particularly the programs in Horn of Africa and Pakistan. OTOH, I don't see a huge difference in getting killed by a Hellfire from a drone vs. having guys from JSOC show up at your door. There's a legitimate concern that UAVs lower the threshold to engage in ongoing low intensity conflict, but in the cases where they do have the right targets, I see no difference between drone, manned aircraft, or on the ground trigger-pullers. 3) The vast majority of drones are pure Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. DOD didn't even arm their drones for a long long time, it was CIA (who operate in those places) who pioneered armed Predators (then the other armed drones). Part of this is internal politics (pilots = officers), part of it is that when you've got manned aircraft armed with diverse weapons systems orbiting overhead, you can just use a smaller/cheaper/lighter drone for pure ISR, then when you develop a target, send the manned aircraft with a full suite of weapons to choose from to do the actual attack mission. 4) The grainy image of a UAV camera, over a 4h monitoring mission, is probably way beyond the standard of proof of a combat shooting in general. The UAV defaults to "no shoot". A soldier in combat who is threatened defaults to "shoot". You don't need high precision on a single image if you're able to spend a long time watching, gathering supporting information (knowing the area, vehicles that approach, etc.). This isn't law enforcement or civilian self defense; it's war. It's totally legitimate to question whether we should be at war, but the actual conduct of the war is less debatable IMO.

midas007 13y ago
According to someone familiar with current specops / USAF rules-of-engagement, the rule is that an officer always had to be present to authorize a kill by a UAV. Period. If JSOC or others were/are doing something different, this could be grounds for court-martial.

joshfraser 13y ago

Sometimes they can't tell if someone is carrying a weapon or not. Consider that for a moment. Even if they are carrying a weapon, why should that be enough information to issue a death sentence for them and everyone in their near proximity?

Houshalter 13y ago

So this affects people's lives and involves politics, but I can't help but feel like it's an engineering problem that could be solved. Measure how accurate information is from drones and how confident they are, calculate (even if roughly) how much is gained or lost by taking action. And then do whatever maximizes expected utility. I feel like merely having access to another tool should never make things worse unless the leaders are incompetent.

nationcrafting 13y ago

Scary as current drones are, they are nothing compared to how crazy things are going to get very quickly. Think of completely power-autonomous drones, the size of a wasp, swarming by the millions in the sky. The swarming feature alone would render most people helpless against an attack, or their sheer presence. To this, add distributed intelligence features, and networked control. The swarm becomes something akin to an intelligent, flying, all-seeing liquid. Then think of the drop in price that will enable this to become the dominant method of surveillance, policing, and military operations. There will quickly be nothing stopping dictatorships from buying billions of them, making them ubiquitous and all-pervasive. Killing, threatening and controlling billions of people suddenly becomes quite cheap, efficient, easy and cost-effective. Don't like those people demonstrating in your city? Send the swarms.

linuxhansl 13y ago

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." - Peter Ustinov

brian0624 13y ago

I can't believe this goes on...

charlesju 13y ago

I believe a highly relevant podcast is the incredible one by Dan Carlin called "Hardcore History". The episode below is one history fan's opinion of how we were able to justify mass killing of civilians in acts like the Atomic Bomb, Bombing of London in WW2, and the Fire Bombs against Tokyo. http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---(BLITZ)-Logical-Insanity/Second%20World%20War-World%20War%20Two-World%20War%20One http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---(BLIT...

rasengan0 13y ago

Drones remain viable because they cost money. You have to buy them and use them. Who is profiting from death? Saving troops on the ground is great marketing and saves political capital. Tribalism wins; WE GOOD, you Bad. Someone always makes up the math: X innocent goatherders = 1 US grunt Such a sad petty waste of and for humanity.