PKSOI/GLOBAL TRENDS CASE STUDIES A Drone's Strike Away | Page 13

Case Study #1118-08
PKSOI TRENDS GLOBAL CASE STUDY SERIES
are not deterministic either, as evidenced by the large number of war crimes committed and military brutality statistics.
Even soldiers have trouble telling who is a civilian and who is not. Computers can perform gait analysis and eventually
more sophisticated algorithms involving emotion recognition etc., as computer vision advances and will one day surpass
humans in this area of judgment.” 101
In the heat of battle, the Stanford University experts argue, “fear, anger, and vengefulness can cause even the most
trained soldiers to commit war crimes that violate ethical standards laid down by Geneva and other international
conventions.” Looking to the future of automated warfare, they even see ethical benefits of machine over man: “There
is a possibility that machines may one day reach a point where they make more ethical decisions on the battlefield than
humans can in the short time they are given.” 102 However, in interviews, every one of more than 100 Reaper operators
agreed that “ultimately, it should be a human who pulls the final trigger. Take out the human and you also take out the
humanity of the decision to kill.” 103
Drone Warriors
“Like any other weapons system, drones have caused civilian casualties. But they also have the potential to dramatically
reduce civilian casualties in armed conflicts, and particularly in counterinsurgencies.” A drone’s ability to follow targets
for days or weeks contributes to saving innocent lives. Michael Lewis, a former Navy fighter pilot and now a professor at
Ohio Northern University School of Law, explains: “First, it confirms that the target is engaged in the behavior that put
them on the target list, reducing the likelihood of striking someone based on faulty intelligence. Second, by establishing
a “pattern of life” for the intended target, it allows operators to predict when the target will be sufficiently isolated to
allow a strike that is unlikely to harm civilians.” 104 Moreover, the fact that drones are controlled remotely allows for real
time review by lawyers or intelligence analysts without the imposition of a battlefield timeline. More importantly, drone
operators do not need to be concerned about personal safety, thereby eliminating anxiety and tension when making the
decision to fire the weapon. 105
It’s Like “Call of Duty”
But legal experts and some critics also point to the distance between drone operators and the targets. John Yoo, law pro-
fessor and former legal advisor to President George W. Bush, describes the operator’s sensation maneuvering a drone or
weaponized robot as akin to playing a video game and questions the lack of angst from the American public.
I would think if you are a civil libertarian, you ought to be much more upset about the drone than Guantána-
mo and interrogations. Because I think the ultimate deprivation of liberty would be the government taking
away someone’s life. But with drone killings, you do not see anything, not as a member of the public. You read
reports perhaps of people who are killed by drones, but it happens 3,000 miles away and there are no pictures,
there are no remains, there is no debris that anyone in the United States ever sees. It’s kind of antiseptic. So, it
is like a video game; it’s like Call of Duty.” 106
Actual drone operators tell a different story. They describe the blood and carnage as something seen in real time. Mark
Bowden of The Atlantic shares the story of one such drone operator:
He sees the carnage close-up, in real time—the blood and severed body parts, the arrival of emergency respond-
ers, the anguish of friends and family. Often, he’s been watching the people he kills for a long time before pull-
ing the trigger. Drone pilots become familiar with their victims. They see them in the ordinary rhythms of their
lives—with their wives and friends, with their children. War by remote control turns out to be intimate and
disturbing. Pilots are sometimes shaken… He witnesses it in a far more immediate way than in the past, and he
disdains the notion that he and his fellow drone pilots are like video gamers, detached from the reality of their
actions. If anything, they are far more attached.” 107
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