This is an extension of a summary paper that was written for a class so it references a presentation by a professor here at the University of Minnesota and his work on the legality of drone strikes. I found it an interesting topic and continued on past the one page limit so I thought I'd put it up here...
‘Machines that Kill’ (or, perhaps, ‘Skynet is coming, run for your lives’)
guess what bitches I'M FLYING OVER SYRIA happy friday news dump
Earlier this week, Professor Oren Gross of the Institute for International Legal and Security Studies gave a presentation on ‘drones’ entitled, Machines that Kill. Prof Gross started out with a brief overview of war and how it has been an “integral part of mankind.” Of course, the classic example of the integration of war and technology is the longbow at the battle of Agincourt and Prof Oren dutifully recounted this story as he progressed through the ages, intertwining war and technology. A highlight for me was his recounting of PW Singer’s work (as I’m a huge fan) about the “stretching of the battlefield.” For example it took 500 Grecian Hoplites to cover the space of a football field but in today’s modern military environment of the networked ‘battle space’ one soldier could cover 780 football fields.
Professor Oren explained via powerpoint that human beings are now the weakest link within the OODA loop. OODA is the military acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. Drones and other technological advancement makes it much easier to speed up all aspects of the OODA loop. That humans are being viewed as the ‘weak link’ is evidenced by the Air Force actually training more drone pilots, 350 in 2011, than fighter pilots.
Some of the reasons given for the increase in drone use, besides humans being a weak link in the OODA loop, were: the complexity of the battle space, a risk-free war, force multiplication, and costs. In terms of battle space, the evolution of modern warfare has reached the point where there is so much going on and so much information to process, faster, that human beings are being easily outpaced by drones. By risk-free war Oren was bringing to the forefront the idea that as nations see their human costs go down, regimes might be more likely to go to war. As far as cost goes, Oren made the point that machines are far cheaper (in terms of something like drones v jets or tanks + humans) and with force multiplication it is clear that instead of thousands of soldiers, there only needs to be one soldier with several machines. All of this is leading, Oren states, to a paradigmatic shift where humans will be removed from the battle space altogether.
Professor Oren then went on to review the state of drones in our current military – material that is familiar to any frequent reader of Wired’s Danger Room. Oren finished his presentation by discussing the legal issues that could be at stake with the increase in drone use around the world. For example, if there were war crimes committed (arguably there are war crimes being perpetrated by drones but we will continue to use his ‘if’), have the drones become so autonomous as to be able to charge them with the crime? Have we reached a ‘singularity,’ if you will, where the machines have been given enough sentience that they are capable of committing a crime and being held responsible? Or is the drone simply another tool of war, like a rifle or tank, and therefore simply a weapon and not its own individualized agent? It was posited that the way that drones have advanced and how they’ve been programmed, they could easily process so much information, so fast, that it is quite possible that they are on the verge of being responsible. It was discussed that at issue is whether to program the drones so that there would be no mistakes and they would completely follow the rules of war or to simply program them to be held to the same standard as human beings.
In a related note, on February 15, the chief scientist of the US Air Force wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal stating that the chance of having autonomous killer robots rampaging through our skies and ‘battle spaces’ is far-fetched science fiction. At least, that is what it appeared he would be arguing as the majority of his article was behind the ridiculously annoying WSJ paywall. Nevertheless, to his point, it should be noted that public hysteria regarding drones is perhaps only matched by the public fear and hysteria surrounding terrorist attacks. Average citizens, those who actually have time to follow any foreign policy news (a shout out to the readings for Monday) need to decide what they really want our responses to international events to be. Many times, it appears that the same individuals (Liberal Hawks, I believe they were called in an FP post earlier this week) espousing R2P and who feel we should be intervening militarily all around the globe are the same individuals who are concerned about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles which at this point are an integral piece of our military apparatus.
Technology’s main thrust in the context of war, according to the presentation, is to “remove or distance fighters from the battlefield.” I think that the influence, perhaps, can have a much larger impact. As anyone who has read anything of Naomi Klein’s work on ‘Disaster Capitalism,’ watched ‘Why We Fight,’ or read any of Eisenhower’s speeches on the Military Industrial Complex, one important factor that was perhaps overlooked in Oren’s discussion on the topic of technology and drones is the profit motive of defense contractors. Indeed as we have moved from the ‘guns or butter’ economy to a shareholder economy allowing the growth of guns and butter, this type of technological advancement being militarized is simply the tip of the iceberg, I’m sure. In fact, in perhaps a perfect confluence of the themes of profit motive, technology, and militarization of civilian space, The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems, a private lobbying federation made up of drone companies, recently expanded its operation, even setting up a congressional pro-drone caucus headed by a Representative from California and Texas. Due to their efforts, America’s skies are going to be opened up for commercial and law enforcement purposes. The FAA states that within eight years, we can expect 30,000 drones in the sky above us. Is this truly a good thing? Is this simply another example of technology and money moving far faster than philosophy and ethics…?
As Oren’s focus is, of course, the legality of drone strikes (shorter version: its illegal) it makes sense that he ends his discussion on this facet of the problem (he doesn’t describe it as a problem, however, one only needs to look to cluster bombed civilians in Afghanistan, Yemen, or Somalia to see that it is a problem). If someone were to read some Scahill on the topic, however, you could easily see the illegality and the policy weakness present. Much like LeMay firebombed all of Japan in order to not have to send in land forces, the Obama administration continues to send drone sorties into Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, etc… (at least with LeMay, we had legitimately declared war on Japan) giving video game-playing Air Force “pilots” something to do in the Nevada desert. It’s an interesting topic – interesting enough for me that I took an assignment for a on-page summary of an on-campus event and turned it into 2 pages of rambling. But more than just being something that should be garnering our interest, we should be looking past the fancy names (really – who doesn’t like the name ‘Beast of Kandahar’…?) and gleaming tech painted matte gray and started getting a lot more concerned about the blowback that will be coming from this. We abandoned mujahedeen fighters and there was blowback. We stationed Navy bases all over the Middle East (blowback) and Japan (blowback) and now, instead of simply stationing troops, we’re actually sending in armed unmanned drones, using faulty – or at best weak – intelligence and we just assume that things are going to work out in our favor?
It has been said (and repeated ad nauseum) that ‘war is the extension of policy by other means.’ What does this drone war that the US is waging all over the world say about our policy failures?
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