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

theguardian.com

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

#81

Post by RankingMember »

sleepyK wrote: post #50
k-mcgrady wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "There's a high cost in both money and American lives" There's a high cost in both money and human lives - nationality should not be a consideration.

But unfortunately, it always is. American life, and American citizenship is more precious than any other life. I know it's not the same issue, but throughout the whole NSA snooping revelations, Americans have only been concerned by the legality of spying on their own citizens. All of us foreigners are fair game. This is similar. The value of an American life is much more than that of a foreigner's life.

Rest assured that not all of us Americans think it's a-ok that the NSA is spying on other countries' citizens either.

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

#82

Post by DominikR »

dreamfactory wrote: post #29
fit2rule wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

And what should we do with such people if we have no wars where we can direct their activities to?

Randomly start wars just to keep them occupied with something?

I'm pretty sure that those people are actually very rare and that most people that join the military do it because of patriotism and propaganda.

Most soldiers probably don't know what they will be facing and how it will affect them in a negative way, which would explain the high suicide rate.

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

#83

Post by sneak »

sleepyK wrote: post #50
k-mcgrady wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "There's a high cost in both money and American lives" There's a high cost in both money and human lives - nationality should not be a consideration.

But unfortunately, it always is. American life, and American citizenship is more precious than any other life. I know it's not the same issue, but throughout the whole NSA snooping revelations, Americans have only been concerned by the legality of spying on their own citizens. All of us foreigners are fair game. This is similar. The value of an American life is much more than that of a foreigner's life.

> All of us foreigners are fair game

Americans feel this way, sure. But Americans are only 4% of humans, and soon 100% of humans will be on the Internet.

This worldview is not an economic survival trait.

I suggest relaxing, brewing some tea, and waiting for this to play out in the global market. Either they'll change, or they'll go out of business.

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

#84

Post by rossjudson »

neals wrote: post #14
ck2 wrote: post #4

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…

I think the innocent victims that we make today will get us on track to developing better drones with more resolution and less errors and doubt. I imagine a perfect drone without any human controller, doing it's business by AI, actually making the world a better place. [edit] lots of hate and naive comments. Fact remains that human progress has always come through sacrificing some of us for the greater good. Innocent…

I'm upvoting your comment because you should have to deal with its dehumanizing effect. You imagine the victims of drones to be, perhaps, no different from those voluntarily participating in medical trials.

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

#85

Post by yeukhon »

hobs wrote: post #74
yeukhon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who claims to have the right to kill others - for any reason whatsoever - should be treated by greater society as anti-human Sorry, this is rubbish. This society we know of is built and established with guns and blood. We shall not have police, army or even guns. We fought wars. Your ancestors, my ancestors all fought in war one way or another. If you think that self-defending yourself against some murderer…

The argument that society was built on foo can also be used for arguing for slavery, the oppression of women, child labor, etc. Just because we did do something in the past does not justify doing it in the future. The right to defend yourself is not the right to kill, especially on a mass scale. The places that these drones are being used are not places that have a credible military threat to the united states. (unle…

> The right to defend yourself is not the right to kill, especially on a mass scale.

He is not asking not to kill at a mass scale. He is against killing others, regardless of what the reason is. There will be no ground for fighting for democracy. There will be no ground for protecting my life, my lover's life, or anyone's life. There is no mechanism to defend the things I cherish when a murderer comes to my doorstep with an AK47.

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

#86

Post by macspoofing »

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?

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

#87

Post by 6d0debc071 »

ck2 wrote: post #4

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…

> If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.

Mistakes are going to happen whatever you use. It's not clear that sticking better cameras on the things wouldn't give you enough information to make it comparable with other attack vectors.

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

#88

Post by opinali »

1457389 wrote: post #57
atrus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same thing happens with soldiers on the ground too. There confusion and accidents when people are shooting at each other all the time. That entire article could have easily been replaced with a marines perspective, a bombers perspective, or a sailors perspective.

The difference is that we don't deploy our soldiers in the contexts and use-cases that we do with drones, because the risks are too great. Drones are expendable, so they are used in hostile conditions where the intelligence isn't as clear. That's why in practice they lead to high false positive rates. The real question is whether we should be using this technology to be waging war in areas where we wouldn't have done…

Well said. Removing risk implies removing accountability.

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

#89

Post by 1457389 »

sleepyK wrote: post #73
1457389 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to drones is counterinsurgency. For example, the wedding party in Yemen, if it were a target of actual importance, would have been captured and interrogated, with suspected insurgents detained for further questioning. The problem is that we don't have the manpower or the political latitude to do that in all these regions, so we send in killer robots instead and hope we hit the right people. This is a…

What right does America have to kill a wedding party in Yemen? Indeed, what right does America have to kill any "suspected terrorist" in Yemen? This is just another example of how the convenience of drone strikes has led to the belittling of war.

Just as in the past we outsourced our repression to client states in the region, those same regimes are now outsourcing their counterterrorism to us in the form of drone strikes. We are helping to consolidate the power of creatures like Saleh, at the eventual ruinous cost of American lives and global legitimacy through the inevitable blowback.

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

#90

Post by pc86 »

ihsw wrote: post #34
yummyfajitas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act as if the alternative to drones (20 year old kids with guns) never kills the wrong person. Yvain's essay asking "what if drones came first" is highly relevant here. http://squid314.livejournal.com/338607.html?thread=9878703

The 'kids' part deserves emphasis. In recent times the military has been lowering its admission standards, and as such all manner of emotionally immature and mentally unstable are being allowed in. This isn't new, but it's been on the rise. The soldiers we're sending over there aren't trained professionals, they're glorified mall-cops with sub-machine guns. The ones with special training are involved in special opera…

This true, except for the part where the US military is cutting forces[0] and it is becoming harder and harder to join[1]. It's probably easier to pretend the majority of the military is comprised of barely pubescent country bumpkins with no training past the Boy Scouts, but that's just not the case.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/army-to-cut-its-forces-...

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/15/news/economy/military-recrui...

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