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U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

eminetra.co.uk

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Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#101

Post by squarefoot »

Zenst wrote: post #55

When we often look at drones and the advent of AI and the fear of automated killing drones but lets take another perspective. AI that assists in preventing innocents being killed. Still manually controlled but an AI to override hostile action when it deems it wrong. We all focus upon AI to identify and select targets, but an AI to help identify and prevent innocents being impacted - surely that approach would be a wo…

The worst part about the use of drones is not the collateral killing of civilians and their children; if done far away it has in the long run next to zero impact on the perception of the war among the attackers families. By using drones, the attackers are safe; their families won't mourn their beloved ones who won't return back from war zone, therefore they won't experience what war really is about, which has nothing to do with heroism and defending the homeland and other propagandistic idiocy commonly depicted in war movies. Every country should count their losses after a war, including winners. If we take away that, we eliminate the number one thing that can discourage the creation of an eternal state of war, so all is left is 100% business, which is something the weapons industry and their elected puppets in charge would absolutely love.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#102

Post by salawat »

wayoutthere wrote: post #87
ricardobeat wrote: post #71

Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was. The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.

We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people. We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians . We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how…

Until you can actually pierce the National Security curtain to have a frank discussion involving details on Ways and Means in the Intelligence Community, this is a "pointless act of hyperbolic futility". The answer will just be "Need to know, and you don't" or some other platitude. As what you're asking in the end is what are the inputs that drive these decision making processes. This will never be a public conversation.

Note, I think it's an absolutely sound and necessary thing to happen, I just never see it happening.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#103

Post by scoopertrooper »

Zenst wrote: post #55

When we often look at drones and the advent of AI and the fear of automated killing drones but lets take another perspective. AI that assists in preventing innocents being killed. Still manually controlled but an AI to override hostile action when it deems it wrong. We all focus upon AI to identify and select targets, but an AI to help identify and prevent innocents being impacted - surely that approach would be a wo…

An AI can't see more than the human eye looking at the same video feed. They need higher quality optics or lower flying drones.

It's not like this is a hard problem for a human to solve given an image of sufficient quality.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#104

Post by [deleted] »

Laremere wrote: post #96
ceilingcorner wrote: post #12

I wonder if Facebook Twitter etc. banning violent and bloody content has prevented the public from protesting these things more widely. It is well known that TV broadcasts of Vietnam led to outrage growing against that war.

In a similar vein, I wonder if medical privacy laws are hurting us in this pandemic. If every time the hospitals filled up with patients, camera crews went through and documented all of the people suffering and dying, would those who aren't taking the pandemic seriously have their mind swayed? Obviously those medical privacy laws exist for a reason, but perhaps there should be more effort to ethically document suffer…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#105

Post by BeFlatXIII »

Nursie wrote: post #36
ceilingcorner wrote: post #12

I wonder if Facebook Twitter etc. banning violent and bloody content has prevented the public from protesting these things more widely. It is well known that TV broadcasts of Vietnam led to outrage growing against that war.

Did they broadcast violent and bloody content from there? Genuine question. The downside to fb/Twitter etc allowing bloody/violent content would be that you’d get gore trolls and it would turn into /b

Downside for the Twitter/FB stockholders, for sure. Downside for everyone else? In the short term, also yes. In the long term, total upside as we all log out due to said gore trolls.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#107

Post by wayoutthere »

salawat wrote: post #102
wayoutthere wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people. We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians . We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how…

Until you can actually pierce the National Security curtain to have a frank discussion involving details on Ways and Means in the Intelligence Community, this is a "pointless act of hyperbolic futility". The answer will just be "Need to know, and you don't" or some other platitude. As what you're asking in the end is what are the inputs that drive these decision making processes. This will never be a public conversat…

Yep, as you can see now any discussion of it is downvoted into oblivion / killed immediately. It’s not astroturfing but I think the cognitive dissonance between what we believe our country is versus what it actually does is too great. We all wonder how German citizens could have gone along with Nazi atrocities.. and the truth is that they largely didn’t know about them and what they did find out was considered “fake news”.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#108

Post by crazy_horse »

wayoutthere wrote: post #87
ricardobeat wrote: post #71

Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was. The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.

We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people. We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians . We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how…

Genuine question - how do you get that 1 million figure?

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#109

Post by wayoutthere »

crazy_horse wrote: post #108
wayoutthere wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people. We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians . We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how…

Genuine question - how do you get that 1 million figure?

It’s 800,000 direct civilian combat deaths and likely several times that from the ancillary dangers of war (starvation, land mines, etc). The designation of “non civilian combatant” was grossly overapplied (see OP about “he had a radio” or “he had an AK-47” as if every Afghan household didn’t have one after 40 years of war).

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#110

Post by ubermonkey »

wayoutthere wrote: post #107
salawat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you can actually pierce the National Security curtain to have a frank discussion involving details on Ways and Means in the Intelligence Community, this is a "pointless act of hyperbolic futility". The answer will just be "Need to know, and you don't" or some other platitude. As what you're asking in the end is what are the inputs that drive these decision making processes. This will never be a public conversat…

Yep, as you can see now any discussion of it is downvoted into oblivion / killed immediately. It’s not astroturfing but I think the cognitive dissonance between what we believe our country is versus what it actually does is too great. We all wonder how German citizens could have gone along with Nazi atrocities.. and the truth is that they largely didn’t know about them and what they did find out was considered “fake…

I'm reminded of a bit Stephen Colbert did, about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal back when he was on the Daily Show. "Even if this is something we did, it's not something we would do."
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