Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins • Hacker News Board

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#131

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #104

pjc50 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military is simply doing its job when presented with a task That was presented as a defense of My Lai and was a not successful argument. The military is achieving far more value You're going to need to quantify this statement, because from this distance it doesn't look like much is being achieved at all. Yemen has fallen to the rebels and ISIS still hold much of northern Iraq. answers like "don't invade other cou…

> That was presented as a defense of My Lai and was a not successful argument. I'm not sure how that's relevant. The "job" here being of far larger scope along the lines of "prevent future terrorist attacks". If you're the military presented with that task, you will go down generally the same route that US has, though perhaps without the same level of consideration for innocents. The real "solution"(which is only in…

same level of consideration for innocents

I'm trying to avoid Godwin territory here, but widespread ignoring of the Geneva conventions is not an excuse. It's not just a consideration, it's international law.

https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a4214125...

"Persons taking no active part in the hostilities ... [prohibited] violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds"

"the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples"

It is convenient for the US to deem anyone in the same building as a combatant to be "involved in hostilities". That does not make it true, and indeed it's a serious erosion of the concept of "civilian".

simply stop trying to fight them on their soil? Instead we hope they don't retaliate?

Are people more or less likely to retaliate if you murder their relatives and countrymen? This seems to be a fundamental point of disagreement.

In the end, coalition forces have withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. Drone strikes are ongoing in Yemen and Pakistan; I believe NATO airstrikes have been carried out against ISIS positions in Iraq but not Syria. Turkey are holding at the border with occasional sorties. Coalition forces should resist the idea of getting involved in Nigeria, Syria, etc. and withdraw from the internal conflicts in Pakistan and Yemen. Supply defensive assistance to places that request it (Kurdistan and the Yazidis), but no further.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#132

Post by Spoom » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

It's not long until US wars are fought entirely by remote.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#133

Post by bbradley406 » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

socialist_coder wrote: post #29

lazyjones wrote: post #9

I was a bit disappointed not to find any thoughts about the proliferation of smaller, affordable drones and their potential uses in assassinating people (by criminals) in the article. It's not hard to imagine this happening sooner or later and it's scary to think about even smaller (insect-size) and more autonomous (no RC operator nearby) gadgets and their potential effectiveness. How many years till a robotic fly ca…

I was also disappointed the article was not about personal drones being modified to kill. It's going to happen, sooner rather than later.

Having seen a video[1] of a drone armed with a paintball pistol (and its precision), I would say that it will be much sooner than expected. Despite the fact that I'll probably be put on a watch-list for saying this, it would be the perfect crime. There would be no weapon left at the scene (provided the drone returns to its base), as well as no DNA samples. Anyone who could rig and pilot such a drone would probably be smart enough to leave minimal evidence related to motives, purchases, etc.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jplh7uatr-E&t=138

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#134

Post by ccvannorman » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

In the article: "Bizarrely, the technology was less efficient than the Taliban’s."

From BB comments: "Actually people are shocked because this isn't what war has always looked like. Never has so little personal risk on the part of the invaders been accepted for the privilege of killing people in another country."

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#135

Post by ccvannorman » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

karmacondon wrote: post #21

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #2

It is always intriguing that people in the West are so sheltered from the fact that this has been going on for over a decade. And they then are, not surprisingly, surprised that the people at the receiving end of this and those that are from the area are very upset about it. What if some other nation had been bombing remote villages in your country whilst attempting to target "terrorists and extremists", but often ki…

The links you posted reference Iraq, which was not a very nice place over the last decade. In many cases, a strong personality would emerge as a local leader. He'll usually have access to several small arms and enough money to feed and pay several dozen militia fighters. To legitimize his power he'll coordinate attacks on US personnel, usually ambushes, and make deals with people who have connections to global "terro…

>The question is, do you have a better plan? Because the guys at the Pentagon would really like to hear it.

Plan:

1: stop.

2: give civilians money directly instead of buying bombs.

3: Profit.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#136

Post by joyeuse6701 » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

zimbu668 wrote: post #128

josefresco wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolationism is not a winning strategy for any nation. Soon enough, the world comes to your doorstep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Switzerlan...

Effective for your own people, but not your neighbors. For example. Let's take WWII for example. If your neighbors house is on fire would you not try to assist them, or would you shut your blinds because that fire is too bright in the middle of the night. That was the official attitude of Switzerland while Europe burned under Nazi occupation.

Isolationism alone is not an end all be all answer, we must use our best judgement to assess if assistance is necessary in international relations. It is true, that it is sometimes best to do nothing, (suppose your neighbor is an arsonist) but time and again people seem to forget that leaving nations to their cruelty because of sovereign rule has lead to catastrophe. For all of Europe (Nazi Germany) for all of Eurasia (Soviet Russia/Stalin), Manchuria (Japan), Rwanda, Mao's Cultural Revolution, North Korea, Burma... the list goes on, and by sheer numbers the consequence of inaction cost more than action.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#137

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #118

Zigurd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"With Iraq we believed that they were still hoarding WMD's that they had from the 1980's." Nope. It was a straight up war of aggression. Bush and Blair outright lied.

You'd think that if they outright lied, many people would step forward to verify your claim. If not because it's the right thing to do, then for the money; book deals, etc. Especially in politics where they love to stick it to each other. CNN can run with the Hillary email server for days, and everyone will weigh in. Imagine what they could do with anyone who could verify that "Bush lied!"

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

'C' would be Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 at the time.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#138

Post by outworlder » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 5:20 PM UTC

tomaskafka wrote: post #110

outworlder wrote: post #59

I don't really think the drones are the problem. The problems are: - Lack of intelligence. The drone may be hovering overhead, but you still need local intel. Which is unrealiable - The weapons are not designed for the task. A hellfire missile is not the right weapon to target a single individual. There will be collateral damage unless the target is standing in a deserted area by himself. Also, while the hellfire may…

Neither of your arguments is the problem. The real problem is a system, where it only takes three mutually self-assured groupthinkers, under stress, who have never seen a dead man, woman or child, to push a button and kill. It might seem like unhappy accidents, but under these circumstances they are inevitable, and whoever set this system up should be judged and found guilty. (The next level is that these systems gro…

No, the problem is that there is an armed robot equipped with hellfire missiles in a foreign country dispensing capital punishment.

We are way, way past the point of talking about a 'moral code' for people pushing the actual buttons. There shouldn't be any buttons being pushed at all.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#139

Post by sosborn » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #78

kordless wrote: post #56

Can we seriously stop using 'drone' for both remote controlled multi-million dollar military grade weapons and quad-copter plastic toys that cost $20? It's fucking stupid.

We use 'plane' for all kinds, from toy to passenger to freight to fighter. Perhaps 'fighter drone' or 'armed drone' would be better.

Drone also implies autonomy.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#140

Post by outworlder » Thu, Mar 12, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #129

sschueller wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armed drones is terrorism. Imagine for a moment that drones were flying over the US and at anytime may strike. You don't know where or when but you are in constant fear of an attack. Next time you go to an outdoor wedding take a moment and think about how that would feel. Do you absolutely know that everyone attending is not a 'person if interest' or even just related to one?

With that kind of argument all kind of warfare is terrorism, which means the word terrorism is redundant and useless. Fact is we are at war with some bad people and when we do so innocent people are getting hurt - however we try really hard to minimize their numbers and one of the ways we do that is using drones. And if you feel bad about it think this way: we try to avoid killing civilians, they use human shields.

> however we try really hard to minimize their numbers and one of the ways we do that is using drones.

Nope. That's how you minimize US casualties.

Which I suppose is an improvement compared to dumb bombs dropped by fighter jets, which could be shot down and the pilots captured.