I for one would rather have a drone strike program that actually actively avoids civilian casualties as much as possible. There are certainly gray areas here as far as the use of that program from a political standpoint (whether the strikes are warranted or whether it is part of regime changes). On the other hand, by not helping the military become more efficient we also risk losing existing lives (our own and civilian casualties) due to a lack of efficient analysis. We already use statistical analysis and many other methods (human and otherwise) to determine where to make military strikes, might as well improve on this to make fewer mistakes where possible (as gray as that may seem).
I am not able to understand because I'm stuck at "the government uses autonomous robots to kill people extra-judiciously with missiles from the sky and nobody seems to care."
And you want to make the program "more efficient."
This is the gulf which I cannot seem to bridge.
Extra-judicial killings of "terrorists" in "bad places" using flying killer robots is just batshit insane to me. I cannot for the life of me understand how that conversation would go with, e.g. Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton. Or really anyone who believes in human rights.
A non-military entity (the CIA), which should not be operating military hardware (but does), assassinates targets without due process (or really, any hard evidence at all), in countries we aren't at war with (formally or otherwise). Depending on our relationship with the country in question, we may or may not bother to let that country know we're going to kill some of their citizens ahead of time.
Putting aside moral issues with the CIA, what's the legal reason that they should not be operating military hardware?
As far as I know, CIA assassinations of foreign citizens aren't illegal as long as they take place outside of the US.
There was at least one instance of a drone strike killing one or two American citizens which is definitely extra-judicial. Most drone strikes do not kill American citizens so referring to drone strikes in general as extra-judicial doesn't seem accurate to me.
I would like to clarify that I don't necessarily think that the US's use of drone strikes is morally correct. I just think it's not correct to refer to it as extra-judicial.
It certainly is illegal in the country in which they do it. As far as I know, pretty much all foreign intelligence work is technically illegal where it's conducted.
Because there was no involvement of the judiciary system. See the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, and more to the point, his son. Oh, and also his daughter now, I guess.
I'm familiar with that specific case but it's an exception to the rule. The OP seems to think that extra-judicial killings by drone strike are a common occurrence and the evidence does not support that.
I'm not saying I support it from a moral standpoint but I don't think it's fair to call them extra-judicial except in a few cases.
> I'm familiar with that specific case but it's an exception to the rule. The OP seems to think that extra-judicial killings by drone strike are a common occurrence and the evidence does not support that.
No, it is the rule.
Drone strikes are incredibly high in collateral damage. The estimate is 28 unidentified people for each 1 target;
I'm fairly sure the push-back to this kind of point is thus: if you make it less costly (in the form of "civilian" lives, money, or whatever measure) to do drone strikes, more people are killed overall. Our government hasn't exactly been good about reporting casualties from strikes or careful in targeting (a group of people gathered outside of a city may just be considered up-to-no-good and bombed).
I wouldn't. The end-game of having governments with the hyper-selective power to kill a particular individual is not pretty. This is the sort of thing that we want to keep expensive as long as possible, not cheaper and easier.
Yes and thoroughly yes. Because our military's allegiance is to the Constitution not to any single executive administration; because the military have far more resources to purchase bots or counterbots than the police do; and because only an idiot would actually have that tech and yet fail to also have, at minimum, an equally-maneuverable ablative countermeasure drone.
That's like saying only an idiot would have a nuke and not have a counter weapon for a nuke. It's not a given at all.
The video implies that people will have to hide behind iron curtains for (partial) security.
As usual, the devil is in the details. These are drones, not nukes. Nukes have effects for miles away and are so powerful that their detonations cannot be shaped at all; whereas suicide-drones have to fly directly to their target and reach it intact.
The same amount of shaped-explosive that can crack a skull, can neutralize one of these drones. As such, the braindead countermeasure is to retarget these same drones at the stolen drones. At worst, the IFF radios might add a negligible amount of mass ... but that won't matter for long, because once the enemy knows you're deploying counterdrones, they'll need their own IFF radios in order to try to avoid your counterdrones. (Or the enemy could add armor to their drones, but that will make them massive/unmaneuverable enough that you can increase your counterdrones' explosive payload to penetrate their armor, while still being able to intercept them.)
If you're looking for historical analogy, try military aviation in general. During the first World War, bomber planes would have been game-changing ... if not that there were fighters, too. A slaughterbot is a bomber; a slaughterbot that seeks the enemy's slaughterbots is a fighter.
