Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people • Hacker News Board

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#51

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 12:55 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #39

pocksuppet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atomic bombs, maybe. Regular bombs, no. Drones, also no. If war meant thousands of American soldiers had to swordfight with thousands of Iranian soldiers and possibly get stabbed and die, instead of just flying planes overhead, we'd have a lot fewer wars. War is easy when you don't have to risk your life.

Looks at history…. There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?

Far fewer deaths. In those pitched battles it would mostly be about breaking the organization structure of the opposing line and having the soldiers disperse. Very few battles in history actually saw slaughter of tens of thousands and they remain notable as such.

Wars of the gunpowder age have been far more bloody. Far more destructive to civilian life. Far more lasting damage to the environment.

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#52

Post by Manuel_D » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 12:57 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #3

If we can get AI further into this process, we can fully launder all responsibility from the humans ordering these.

I don't think that's how it works. An anti radiation missile from the 90s had a pretty high degree of autonomy. I know the British ones could deploy a parachute when the radar stopped emitting and reacquire the target when it reactivated. The missile quite literally made targeting and engagement decisions on its own.

The human that launched the missile is still responsible for it. Weapons that have autonomy are still given engagement parameters (e.g. limit target to certain geo bounds, engage between two certain timestamps). The humans that set those parameters and choose to deploy the weapon are responsible for what the autonomous weapon does.

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#53

Post by MidnightRider39 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:04 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #19

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir is the seeing stone used by Sauron to do surveillance in LOTR

I've always wondered if they just didn't get the reference or if they are just self-aware that they are evil. In the books its not just that sauron uses it for evil, he also can use it to turn anyone else that uses it evil.

The Palantir themselves aren’t evil, they were made by the elves long before the events of LOTR. Essentially they are just a tool.

However I heard that Thiels favourite book is the rewrite of LOTR from the perspective of Sauron, where Gandalf and the elves seek to destroy humanity and technology (at least that’s how I understood the gist, haven’t read it)

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#54

Post by levinb » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #39

pocksuppet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atomic bombs, maybe. Regular bombs, no. Drones, also no. If war meant thousands of American soldiers had to swordfight with thousands of Iranian soldiers and possibly get stabbed and die, instead of just flying planes overhead, we'd have a lot fewer wars. War is easy when you don't have to risk your life.

Looks at history…. There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?

Much more frequent conflicts, yes.

Much less total death and dying as well, though. Battles were short and small scale until the Civil War (maybe the Napoleonic Wars prior? Debatable). The largest battles of history prior to the industrial revolution were in the thousands, 10s of thousands of people. Forces were usually broken and defeated or fled after brief engagements. Brutal in experience, but smaller in scale.

It was that perception of war as personal, intimate, chivalric, by old men that let to the peak atrocity period (PAP? Did I coin a term?) of ~1850-1950. WWI was really the first modern reckoning of industrialized, globalized war, that led to the staggering scale of suffering. Incomprehensible to the men that commanded it, as they were born and acculturated in pre-modern war era culture.

But then the epoch-defining tool of the atom came along, and war has gone back to smaller scale, focused, targeted, "precision".

So here we sit, straddling two eras again. Pre-drone and post drone. We have not fully reckoned with what the new era means. But it will come quickly, like most modern tool-culture cycles.

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#55

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:09 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #39

pocksuppet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atomic bombs, maybe. Regular bombs, no. Drones, also no. If war meant thousands of American soldiers had to swordfight with thousands of Iranian soldiers and possibly get stabbed and die, instead of just flying planes overhead, we'd have a lot fewer wars. War is easy when you don't have to risk your life.

Looks at history…. There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?

[deleted]

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#56

Post by ghurtado » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:09 AM UTC

havenbarnes wrote: post #44

adamiscool8 wrote: post #26

The title framing is weird when the report says maybe 5% of the 1250 were civilians, and the same rights group also reports more than 1500 civilians [0] killed over the same period in the horrific and rampant gang violence the government is using this technology to fight against. [0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/haiti

[flagged]

No, not dozens of Innocents. About 1500, which is a lot more.

You should read the comment that you replied to again. You're railing against a fact, not an opinion.

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#57

Post by oefrha » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:10 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #19

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir is the seeing stone used by Sauron to do surveillance in LOTR

I've always wondered if they just didn't get the reference or if they are just self-aware that they are evil. In the books its not just that sauron uses it for evil, he also can use it to turn anyone else that uses it evil.

Technically the Palantiri were a force for good in the hands of Elves and Men, and could still be used for good, like Aragorn using it to challenge Sauron and forcing Sauron’s hand. So that’s a defense to the self-awareness argument. In fact that ambiguity is likely intentional.

Btw I always wondered why I was seeing droves of Palantir swag on Stanford campus back in early 2010s. I wouldn’t wear something that has a 50%+ chance of being interpreted as evil.

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#58

Post by rexpop » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

SkinTaco wrote: post #35

cauefcr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should take a hard look at who really is the bad guy.

I suppose in the context of the article you're commenting on you're saying the bad people are the ones defending the women and children from being raped?

"The use of drones in these areas causes more collateral damage among the civilian population than it truly neutralizes gangs."

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#59

Post by lazide » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

levinb wrote: post #54

lazide wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks at history…. There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?

Much more frequent conflicts, yes. Much less total death and dying as well, though. Battles were short and small scale until the Civil War (maybe the Napoleonic Wars prior? Debatable). The largest battles of history prior to the industrial revolution were in the thousands, 10s of thousands of people. Forces were usually broken and defeated or fled after brief engagements. Brutal in experience, but smaller in scale. I…

Ghenghis khan?

Re: Human Rights Watch says drone strikes in Haiti have killed nearly 1,250 people

#60

Post by input_sh » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

logdahl wrote: post #4

throwaway5752 wrote: post #2

Of course it is Erik Prince's company. to clarify: Erik Prince founded Blackwater, of the Nisour Square Massacre infamy in the GW Bush administration. He is deeply tied to Republican politics, mercenary work, and particularly the Trump administration. He is IPOing an autonomous lethal drone company, Swarmer, and his other company, Vectrus, is behind the events of this article.

Haven't heard this name before, would someone care to fill me in on a tl;dr? Sounds horrendous.

Pretty much private mercenaries that work outside of the usual army structure as "private contractors". They're usually the ones the US contracts to do the worst atrocities, as that gives the government a thin veneer of plausible deniability because they were behaving "independently". The US also does its best to make sure they never face any legal consequences for their war crimes.

Also worth pointing out that, due to this "contractor" relationship, they never count towards official casualty figures. For example, if Iran were to kill 50k of them (I'm of course exaggerating to make a point), they wouldn't count towards US casualty figures, so it's also a way for the government to downplay the effects of foreign intervention to the general public.