
New whistleblower steps forward on drones - pavornyoh
http://www.chelseamanning.org/featured/dronepapers
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636)

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roel_v
Granted I haven't read the linked documents, but how does the cited 90% link
or compare to other tactics? If the target of your operation is to kill an
enemy commander, and you kill 9 of his bodyguards as well, then 90% of the
people killed weren't your targets, but I'd say that they weren't even
'collateral damage' \- more an 'extra bonus' (sorry if that sounds callous). I
mean I can think of several different ways to spin this number just being an
uninformed citizen who knows nothing about the topic at all, so I'm hesitant
to take the implied claim that drones kill many more innocent civilians than
alternative methods do at face value.

It could very well be true, intuitively I'd even say that yes drone strikes
will have lower precision, I'm just saying that if this is the smoking gun -
then it's not very convincing.

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rdtsc
> but I'd say that they weren't even 'collateral damage' \- more an 'extra
> bonus'

I think that exemplies exactly what is wrong here. The attitude that once we
push a button and kill one Yemeni person, we won't feel a lot guilter if we
kill 9. We are already killing, might as well "err on the side of caution" and
kill more, just in case those are dangerous body guards there.

~~~
roel_v
Well no, I don't think that's true. I don't think you'll find many people in
the military who think 'oh I'm already killing this guy with the AK74 who's
shooting at my buddies, I might as well shoot the pregnant woman with the
3-year old on her arm as well, just to be safe'.

I don't know about operations procedures, but I would imagine it's standard
procedure to take out any armed people in the vicinity of your target. With
drones you can't really just stun them or whatever, so yeah you have to kill
them. But those aren't 'innocent bystanders'. They're enemy combatants in all
meanings of the concept, and 'fair game' (sorry again if that sounds callous
again).

Furthermore, I think it's easy but simplistic to say 'all these soldiers are
remorseless killing machines', neither for on-the-ground troops, drone
operators or generals who take the high level decisions. I think all of them
have thought and think much more and harder about what it means to kill a
person, and the fact that most of them in some form or another assist in
killing people 'by accident', than you or I do. I also think that for the vast
majority of them, this is a major psychological burden, something that
literally haunts them at night. Yet they do what they do despite that, and I
don't think that the majority of them do it because they're sadistic subhumans
who get off on the idea of making children in an already bad situation on the
other side of the world orphans.

So, if we can get past the 'killing people with drones is immoral no matter
what' rhetoric, we can come back to the real question: what is the effect of
drone usage on warfare, and more to the point of the OP, is the implied claim
that 90% of drone killings are of innocent civilians accurate? And how does
that compare to more conventional tactics, e.g. airstrikes by regular bombers,
mortar attacks, or 'plain' action-movie style Special Forces droppings who
engage in closed quarters shootouts?

~~~
rdtsc
> don't think you'll find many people in the military who think 'oh I'm
> already killing this guy with the AK74 who's shooting at my buddies,

That is exactly what's happening when they act on incomplete intel, don't care
to double check, (we just attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital last
month). Yet we still pull the trigger.

So I think we'll find quite a few in the armed forced would and did approve
those kind of actions.

> But those aren't 'innocent bystanders'.

You seem to be very sure of that. I am not.

> They're enemy combatants in all meanings of the concept, and 'fair game'
> (sorry again if that sounds callous again).

Now with a bit of pr gymnastics we can of course say "anyone near this person
who may or may not be our target is an enemy combatant", and then we solve the
problem and sleep better at night. And I think that is pretty much what's been
happening. That is why I pointed out to your comment as an example of the
problem.

> I think all of them have thought and think much more and harder about what
> it means to kill a person

Why would they? Their lives are not in danger. It is fun to do mission and pad
stats. Are the people who blew up the Doctors Without Borders going to jail at
least for manslaughter? Nope. So why stop?

> this is a major psychological burden, something that literally haunts them
> at night.

Unless there is a draft going on that I am not aware of, they got into it on
their own will. Not sure what they expected? Travel, see the world? This is
especially true for those signing up after the Iraq War. Still looking for
WMDs I guess...

> do it because they're sadistic subhumans who get off on the idea of making
> children in an already bad situation on the other side of the world orphans.

Yet they keep making children o the other side of the world orphans. Do you
know in Yemen what mothers tell their children will happen if they don't go to
sleep on time or don't pick up their toys? They tell them "the drone will get
you".

> So, if we can get past the 'killing people with drones is immoral no matter
> what' rhetoric,

That's not the argument here. But we can at least talk about why are even
killing anyone in Yemen to start with, with drones or otherwise.

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liquidise
> _Among the leaked info is the startling revelation that, “nearly 90% of
> people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.”_

Granted this is a cherry-picked time period, this remains a damning
revelation. As far as i have heard, even the most pessimistic grumbles have
not suggested such numbers.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wonder how it compares to boots-on-the-ground operations. It seems to me
that what US is doing here is not reducing the risk for their own troops (thus
minimizing total combatant deaths), but _shifting_ it towards the civilians of
the other side.

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sitkack
Cloudflare reports down in Chicago.

Edit: Now Chrome reports a redirect loop.

This isn't _new_ news for most of us. [https://theintercept.com/drone-
papers/](https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/)

~~~
lemevi
That reads less like new information and more like an activist campaign to
stop the use of drones.

~~~
tedks
The OP article is commentary on the intercept piece. You can see that the logo
on the intercept piece is the picture from the OP article.

This might be surprising to a technologist who thinks that all information can
be objective, but sometimes, when humans learn information, they are compelled
by the morality that we evolved so long ago to protect one another and
establish our species, not as a sequence of individuals but as cohesive units,
to act based on that information, to change the world so that the information
they have learned is possibly more or less true. It is not always possible to
remain on the sidelines. Information can compel you to act, or at least,
compel moral humans to act.

So, to many humans, this "activism" is not a blemish, but a point of pride.
Try to understand why and you will grow towards humanity.

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rdtsc
When Snowden, Manning and Binney happend I was hoping that one good thing it
might produce is encourage others to do the same.

So it is good to see this happening.

I looked at a few parts from the link. Some parts I liked:

\---

... 75 percent of operations in the region were strikes, and noting that “kill
operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and
captured material"...

\---

It looks like these drones besides being controvercial are also pretty crappy
when it comes to gathering extra intelligence for other future missions.

Also interesting is this: targets seem to come from 33% CIA, 40% NSA SIGINT,
17% NSA partner (presumably other countries' intel). So a good chunk of info
used to kill comes from other countries telling us who when and where, and we
use that to blast away people.

One more interesting excerpt:

\---

Hellfire missiles—the explosives fired from drones—are not always fired at
people. In fact, most drone strikes are aimed at phones. The SIM card provides
a person’s location—when turned on, a phone can become a deadly proxy for the
individual being hunted.

\---

Hmm, I remember Russians in Chechnya killed the first president of a Chechen
republic that way. Intercepted his satphone signal and used that to target
him.

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CaioAlonso
In case it is down: [https://archive.is/MdnQY](https://archive.is/MdnQY)

