Drone Warfare: Lets talk Ethics
The historic Trump – Kim Jong Un Singapore summit was a welcome breather for peace lovers all over the world, coming after months of child-like war mongering and posturing between the President and commander of the world’s most advanced military arsenal, and the Leader and commander of the words most reclusive State.
By Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson, Public Domain, Link
It leaves us with a good measure of confidence that maybe we are not that close, at least not yet, to a military showdown that would certainly change the world. The summit was in many ways timely, and is hopefully, with the promise of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, in the wider context, a timely reminder of the necessary checks to military technological advancements we should put in place.
Of course if it were in the old days, we would have simply ignored the Trump – Kim squabble with a wave of the hand, or maybe even asked them to solve their differences in a personal bout somewhere in Nevada, or wherever the h*ll they would both agree to, or at the very worst, to a cowboy like duel in some open Singaporean grassland.
But now we can’t, can we? Technology has made sure of that, and Trump and Kim can simply sit back in some air conditioned room with binoculars and computers, and give orders that somewhere in some far off country, results into tears and destruction and everything bad you can associate with war. This advanced, has warfare become from since the days of the early man, I am moved to reflect on the current technological advancements in warfare.
Am I my brother’s keeper?
Man’s being is explained by two classical schools of thought: creation and evolution. To whichever you subscribe, one fact remains, namely that man has waged war from the onset of setting foot on the world stage. The story of creation tells of his first acts of disobedience against his creator, of rebellion, and then of conflict against his fellow man, among kinsmen and between communities. You know how the story goes: a quarrel between two brothers ends with history’s first recorded murder. And the poignant repudiation of responsibility – Am I my brother’s keeper?
Evolutionary science follows an identical script, telling of how man had to adapt to his surroundings, it narrates of how over thousands of years, only the fittest of his kind survived. Indeed, archaeological history dates us back to the days of his earliest migrations and settlements, of his earliest conquests, the first of which, according to some archeologists, was genocide, the systematic eradication of the Neanderthals from the face of the earth.
The spoils
It follows that man’s innate aggression has been engine to his dominance over all the other species on earth, and now of communities over other communities, nations over other nations. It is following from this context, in the bid to extend, to perpetuate that dominance, that many a modern nation has invested a huge chunk of its resources, human and material capital, to weapons’ development.
One can with hindsight, maybe even with foresight, reliably say that much of our sociological and technological advancements from since the dawn of recorded history, including our future exploits are the spoils of warfare, both directly and indirectly borne of war efforts. The requirement to ease communication and have the advantage over its enemies, for example, inspired and led the Germany Reich to launch the public radio in 1923.
Fast forward to the 21st century and despite our faith and belief in the moral and ethical development of the human race, man’s taming evolution from the basic animal instincts of his earliest versions, you only have to look around you, read the dailies, listen to the radios, and watch television to see how much war is still rampant. I don’t have to tell you of the effects, the losses and the deprivations everywhere war rears its ugly head.
From the massacres and genocides of Africa’s civil conflict areas – hear Rwanda, and Sudan to the Congo - the calamitous mongering in the Korean peninsula, the decapitations in the Arab interiors, to the destabilizations of foreign nation aggression in places such as Iraq, Libya and now Syria, War, one can say, remains very much a part of the human eco system as the escapement remains a part of the clock. Only this time, man using the sophistication of technology, has become better and more adept at it.
Evolution in Warfare
In a nutshell really, the art of warfare in terms of mobility and range, precision, speed and effect, more than any other area of human life, has thus far seen arguably the greatest technological advancements of our historic and present age.
By Michael Wuensch, on PixabayCCO License
What started with the simple whack of Cain’s stone gave way to the hunters spear and javelin, and then the bow and arrow of the Boer warrior. Along followed the skinning knife and it gave way to the sword of the Japanese samurai, then the catapult which gave way to ballistae and cannons alongside the gun powder and the bullet, and now the bomb.
By U.S. Army - Infantry Magazine, July-August 1981, Vol. 71, No. 4, Page 23, Public Domain, Link
In sync with such advancements slipped through the antique age of chariots, perhaps best symbolized by ancient Egypt, then the evolution into cavalry the pinnacle of which was muskets and the mounted knight in shining armor up until the machine gun, the armored Russian war tank which gave way to mechanized infantry and Armored Personnel Carriers (APC’s), long range artillery up until Modern America led development of chemical, biological (read Nagasaki and Hiroshima!) and now nuclear weapons cum supported air power of the 21st century, and God knows what else we haven’t yet experienced but is lying and biding its time in some weapons armory in Moscow, in Washington or in Seoul.
Enter the Drone
Effectively, we now live in an age of Air power, whose development is conspicuously premised on making them unmanned as much as possible. It is at this point, and following from its advancement, that drone warfare comes in. Its technology spells a chilling picture of the first fundamental shift in the art and science of warfare. I say fundamental because throughout all war history, only the equipment and not the principle of war fare have changed. With drone warfare however, both the equipment and the principle change.
By U.S. Air Force photo by Paul Ridgeway - Public Domain, Link
The drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), an aircraft without a human pilot aboard but remotely controlled either by an off board human operator or autonomously by onboard computers. According to Aleksandar Fatic writing in his paper: The ethics of drone warfare: "The use of drones has changed this basic structure of effectivity which had marked traditional military ethics since the battles of Achilles."
Until it was first used by the CIA for a military strike against Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden (who as later turned out was not in the scene) on 4th February 2002 in Afghanistan, drones which we had known until then, as restricted to surveillance, had taken on a new military dimension. Successive US administrations would authorize hundreds more of drone strikes.
The bush administration officially as we know, authorized 50 drone strikes, Barrack Obama authorized a record 506 strikes over the course of his presidential tenure, and one of Donald Trump’s first acts as POTUS was to authorize three US drone strikes in Yemen.
What started as a flying camera for surveillance is now a weapon for deadly strikes. And it continues to evolve in its capabilities. Until recently, we had single predator or reaper drones operated from a video game like system interface, by a human pilot (s) hundreds of miles away. But today we have ‘swarm drones’.
In 2016, the US successfully conducted a ‘swarm drone’ test of 106 drones, nearly doubling China’s previous test of 67 drones in what is slowly building up into a global ‘swarm-drone’ arms race as other countries adopt the drone initiative.
Unlike single predator drones which have a pilot on the ground, albeit hundreds of miles away, making and effecting judgments, controlling and making its decisions, swarm drones (Perdix drones) represent a further and more advanced evolution. They are able to communicate autonomously between and amongst themselves, and to use collective decision making to coordinate and effect movement to and against targets without human judgment and direction. Overall, drone warfare however it is evolving, is now touted as the third revolution in warfare after gun powder and nuclear arms.
Ethics whither?
The pre-drone warfare age, to which we can clump and classify all warfare history until now, was characterized by proximity, some sort of meeting ground duels to which was central the human element. Drone war fare is the reverse. That is what I mean by a change in principle. To take away the human element, to put hundreds of miles between the victim and the aggressor, to eliminate the physical idea of a battle field or more conspicuously, to make it a one side experience, is to change the psychology and metrics, socially, economically and even politically, of war as we know and approach it.
It begs the fundamental question: is drone warfare ethical? It is the submission of its proponents that it is, provided bureaucratic and legal measures are followed prior to engaging drones in an attack.
Ethics by Nick Youngson, Link CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
But is it? And the answer, without beating around the bush, for me is NO a thousand times. How can a technology that takes away the human prerogative to make human life and death decisions be ethical? How can a video game mounted knight of shining armor whose exploits nonetheless lead to real life destruction of human life and property, whose emotionless trails are paved with widowed mothers, orphaned children, broken families, tears and pain, and suffering, be ethical?
The ethics of war (if there is any such thing) must rely on human judgment, and human judgment is a function of human conscience, of event proximity and experience. Otherwise you cannot properly evaluate the a war situation, correctly judge how far to step away from the fire, how much fire to counter with, if you cannot connect to the consequence of that fire, and are not in the vicinity and potential reach of the fire flame. You cannot make a proper life and death decision much less against another person/group, if you are disconnected from the pain or its likelihood.
History is ripe with examples of many ‘heartless’ and ‘reckless’ crimes of war perpetuated by men, moreover present and part of the battle field exchange, how much more does that become easy and swift, for a physically, and emotionally disconnected man hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away in some safe predator drone control room in Texas sipping coffee with one hand and with the other, pressing buttons whose impact is felt somewhere in Iran, far from himself, his family and friends?
There in front of a spotless computer interface, does not the target in Pakistan cease being a human individual but rather a screen object, a projection zoomed in and out for clarity and accuracy to be terminated and whose blood bath is almost a wonderful sight to behold in the animated confirmatory red spat screen dot? And this, besides dangers borne of poor/error prone human judgment in the split-second war circumstances where decisions are required to be made and effected.
As if that is not bad enough, swarm drones now eliminate the human operator all together from field engagement decisions. The drone technology is now or is being driven to a point of autonomy, where despite claims to the contrary, it is being constructed, to make life and death decisions otherwise until now the preserve of the human element of war. If this is not cause for us to stop and reflect on how far and how much we are looking to cede to technology our human responsibilities, then I don’t what else is. Indeed, how we can even still talk of ethics in regard to this obvious rape of our human moral and ethical consciousness is itself perplexing?
This advancement, suffice to say, is a further complication of our failure to keep our technological development vis-à-vis war capabilities, ethically sensitive. What for example happens if an autonomous drone gets its target wrong and instead of killing a ‘terrorist’ kills an unarmed civilian? Who is to blame? Who is to answer? Is it the coder who got it wrong? Is it the flying drone of a machine? Is it the government that ordered the hit? Who is the government? This is how abstract, and inconclusive the chain of responsibility is, it leads to counter-productive legal and ethical quagmires.
Speaking of legal quagmires, some justify drone warfare by asserting that they will only be used upon being authorized say by the head of state, in line with well-established legal procedures and consistent to the postulates of the Geneva Convention. But of course that too is nonsense, and a shortsighted perpetuation of the Nazi-like mentality. To legalize drone strikes is to trivialize and diminish the ethical implication of loss of human life due to drone strikes; it is to dehumanize the victim in a manner reminiscent of how Nazi Germany constructed, asked and answered the ‘Jewish question’ using gas chambers.
Legal and bureaucratic procedures not only dehumanize the target, but above else, sanitize the conscience of the individual. It shifts blame, frees him from guilt, from personal responsibility. Accordingly, the control room pilot is given the leeway from which to effectively adhere to and carry out a drone strike kill order simply because it is legally sanctioned by the stroke of a lawyer’s pen or is an order from the President, despite it being obviously immoral in his personal human judgment. That is how the third Reich convinced and brain washed the likes of Adolf Eichmann to override their individual moral obligations and perpetuate recorded history’s greatest shame.
"Obeying an order was the most important thing to me...." Adolf Eichmann infamously and unrepentantly maintained to the end, declaring matter of factly in one of the sessions during his trial in Israel: "Where there is no responsibility,” he said, “there can be no blame and no guilt.”
Another really big part of the moral problem with drone warfare is that it offers the leeway for governments and leaders to fight whoever and whenever they find fit without the risk of a domestic political fallout. Until now, the requirement to send combat soldiers to the war front face to face with direct danger came with political consequences especially if, and it always does, many of them returned in body bags. With drones however, governments are able to attack remotely, diminishing the likelihood and numbers of causalities and thus eliminating any such likelihood of a poliitcal controversy.
This way, drone warfare undermines democratic accountability because as Douglas C. Lovelace, JR, the Director Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press observes in his forward to James Igoe Walsh and Marcus Schulzke's 2015 Report:"The Ethics of Drone Strikes: Does reducing the cost of conflict encourage WAR?
Final thoughts
In Drone warfare, the operator and/or the military in general, does not need to have courage, which means cowards and reckless but technological adept men and women get to be involved; two, no willingness is asked of the operator to make sacrifices for the cause they fight for as drone strikes confer no direct fire risk to soldiers, thus making them emotionally and psychologically distinct from the victims in such a manner as makes killing a routine experience.
Three, drone strikes are technological tasks to the operator who, disconnected from the war atmosphere, does not have justice as a factor in his or her work. When by the press of a button, he/she fires a missile, it is as though he is playing a video game. The immediate awareness of justice or injustice doesn’t factor in his decision making. Lastly, to conduct drone military offensives does not need one to have virtues, nor the feeling of being part of the military moral community. Exempt from the conventional military drills that instill physical endurance and discipline, Drone operators are in a way desensitized to extreme violence, making them more capable of perpetrating the same without remorse.
Looked at from whichever angle, drone warfare is unequivocally unethical. This is not to suggest a blanket stop to drone technology, far be it for me to suggest so, i think that drone technology should continue in such areas as look to save rather than to destroy human life, such as in the health industry, aerial photography, agriculture, deliveries etc.
Those are my thoughts, the end to which i will cap with the chilling warning of an open letter from AI and Robotics researchers, including the likes of Elon Musk:
"Unlike nuclear weapons , they (autonomous weapons such as drones) require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc:
Congratulations @mirrors, your post has been selected by the @asapers for a resteem and a feature in our brand new curation post. Issue 66
What does this mean for you? Well first an upvote from some members of the team, we are no @curie or @ocd but who is going to be unhappy with some extra upvotes. Also each post featured in the article will receive a 10% share of the SBD generated from the curation post.
Keep up the great work and please consider supporting the @asapers with an upvote and/or a resteem on the post you feature in. Please wait seven to ten days for payout.
Your friendly @asapers
Giving back A.S.A.P
P.S. We left Singapore the day Trump arrived, we were very happy of this fact as though it went well, I can't say I wanted to be there in case it didn't. @insideoutlet
Really interesting and very well written @mirrors. It's somewhat mind-boggling how technology has changed, but the intentions behind war hasn't changed very much over the years. And I must say, the idea of drones "in the wrong hands" does open up a lot of horrible images.
Thanks for the quality post!
True. The idea of them in wrong hands - a high likelihood- as their pursuit proliferates, and given their comparative cheapness for major military powers, is the most disturbing part.
An African dictator acquiring the drone-enabled capacities...surveillance, and engagement would for example not portend well for a continent already devastated by low level weapon conflicts.
Even more worrying is the fact that there is still a lack of universal consensus on how and to what extent Drones should be weaponized.
What would be the moral position to hold, if trigger-happy North Korea elected to pursue the same in such a manner as would afford them the same engagement capacity? So far, largely the US has the monopoly of using drones militarily, how much longer before other countries that are already jumping into the wagon such as Russia, get hold of them, and in effect use them against domestic rivals and neighbors such as Ukraine?
And speaking of intentions, yes, they haven't and probably will not change, s warfare seems an innate part of man. At most, we have only become better at actualizing those intentions, and Technology is making sure of that...
There is just so much i feel need to be in place, checks, limits and whatever restraint can help keep drone technology in safe hands or indeed, at best, out of any hands!
So true! And just so you know, c-squared's comment below is an offshoot of curie (I just did a post with the full explanation), but I dropped your post in their discord channel in the hopes of it getting noticed (as well as to insideoutlet :) So glad they made it here! You deserve recognition for work like this @mirrors. Bravo!
Thanks @lynncoyle1. I am grateful.
There is no such thing as Drone warfare . Drones are a tool just like artillery , bombers or rockets . The Cruise Millel is autonomous once launch . Artillery once fired are autonomous . Yet no complaints about them . So you see my confusion .
As far as the BS between Trump and Rocketman is concern only the ignorant and thoes who follow every word from the commentary of the so called News were worried about it .
Your main point as I see it is to ban drones . Chemical weapons have been baned . Yet they are still used on babies and children . Yet I see no outcry on chemical weapons as I see on drones . Why do you think that is ?
I am aposed to War . more so then you can posible imagin . Until the people who enslave others are taken care of before it escolates to such high levels , I see no other way around it . Identify the problem and drones are not the problem only a simtom
The chilling issue about drones is the context in which they kill. When a missile strike/rocket is for example used, a target, physical or geographic, is chosen beforehand. Drones however linger, looking for a target - human, the way you do in a video game and yet the perpetrator of the violence is not physically present and his/her role is indeed obscured. That makes drones more than just ‘any too’ like missiles….
your statement above just lost you your argument
"targets of opportunity " is what you are referring to and are not limited to only drone platforms . You argument is that it depends on distance and time on target . Or whether the impact was observed .
I am not emotionally involved in this subject . I also have vast knowledge and experience . I do not have any concerns about drones or any other platform . That is most likely that I am more based in facts.
I do reserve the right to object on individual usages "attacks,targets" as I do with any platform that might be used . And have demonstrated my disagreement in the past Resulting in changes to procedures and policies .
Killing is not by any means a video game no matter how many time you hear that talking points . The men or women who carry out this horrible task suffer from doing so . I don't know of any video game that inflicts such damage to any of its users from playing their video game.
I enjoyed you post . Even though I disagree with some of your points I support your post and your position . I am of the opinion that more post like this need to be done . I will support all your post that are in this manner . You keep it up , Put your opinion out there I like hearing it .
You have put forth, respectfully i might add, counter-thoughts that make there own strong case, and widened, if not revealed the scope of 'contention' and 'polarities' associated with this sort of subject.
You should know i too respect your opinions/position, @wolfart. All the more so because you give it with as much 'information' as can possibly be sufficient to stand one's ground.
Thanks for the valuable discussion, and the support.
I am glad that you know that I brought this forward with respect .
There is a problem with the use of drones . It needs to be descussed . I do not have a problem with drones and support them themselfs .
However I do have a problem with how and why the targets are selectived . Who selectes them and if used for political gain or opinion making . There should be no hidden facts with the use of them outside of military action . I beleive that they are used by different agencies outside of military action and this I strongle disagree with because there is no court or judicial process . ( due process )
Deep state does the drones. Deep state is stopping Trump. Deep state is destroying the world with the drones and through Big Pharma and more.
Then the problem is the deep state and not the tools used they use. To solve the problem the deep state itself (the people behind it ) needs to be addressed .
Agreed.
How are drones destroying us
Hi @mirrors....unethical indeed. But is drone warfare not in fact now just revealing the true nature of war mongers in general - is it not telling us that war is in essence unethical, that it's promoters have no conscience?
War is evil and has always been. It should just never happen.
Man apparently has this innate nature and proclivity for 'violence'.....but yes, i agree. war should just never happen.
I believe we have embedded in our code two conflicting modes of interaction in society...of interaction with "our neighbors", our fellow human (and other) beings in this world. Both modes have evolved into their present day forms from earlier stages in the coming into being of 'modern man', and both have the same end-goal, namely security of life. One of these modes, however, needs to be phased out, in favor of the other.
The one mode springs from our earliest phases of existence as living creatures, being those instinctive actions and reactions focussed on 'survival of the fittest'. The second mode comes from where, in our line of development, we came to find security in herd/communal advantages, from shared awareness to shared production and shared shelter.
Mode 1 has retained aggression and deceit as its main components and has added exploitation of fellow humans to its menu, thereby becoming counterproductive to community welfare as a whole. In contrast with this, Mode 2, based on the basic advantages of community, has added refinements and explicit objective expressions of it's comparative advantages for everyone to its repertoire - too many to mention in this brief reply.
And this is where our perception of 'good' and 'evil' comes from....from remnants of "Mode 1" still being subconsciously present to such a degree that it can be invoked by different means and circumstances to dominate in dictating behavior. On the other hand our fledgeling "Mode 2" means of survival, which, if properly employed, could mean an enormous leap forward in terms of quality of life for all, without the risk of exterminating ourselves, and can be our key to complete fulfillment in life.
Thanks for responding to my comment @mirrors!
Edited
There is genocide in 2018 in South Africa. You can talk to #LaurenSouthern and @Stefan.Molyneux in regards to that. Soros is helping bad people murder #FreeTommy and deep state is messing things up in America and all over the world. Trump is not a king. They're stopping Trump from many things. But Trump has been helping so much and we all can choose to help or we fall too like Rome did.
Thanks for your thoughts, @joeyarnoldvn and for the references.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
Technology has helped man amass heights unimaginable but on the flip side, has also made man an enemy of himself.
an adage says "with great power comes great responsibility" having the drones is not the problem, using them responsibly is the issue.
With drones, having them too, for me is a problem. Because then we are confronted with the quintessential question of the right to possession. And when you realize, as warned the AI troupe, that:
Then you have to appreciate the fact that maybe not having them in any hands for that matter is the ideal and the concept of 'using them responsibly' is defactored.
Congratulations! this post got an upvote by @steemrepo and was manually picked by the curator @veryspider to be added on STEEM REPOSITORY, simply comment "YES" and we upload it on STEEM REPO Website.
Want to know more about the Steem Repo project? Contact us on Discord
YES
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Mirrors from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Excellent piece!
I do have to say that I think Trump has done an amazing thing in being able to talk to Mr. Kim when months ago, it was just a lot of cage rattling by two world leaders - one who has real power (for good or for bad) and another who just wants more power (for good or for bad.) I don't like Mr. Trump very much, but I can respect what he has done in this situation - defusing a ticking time-bomb!
As for drones. Well, we on Steemit can see what happens when bots "get loose" and take on a mind of their own... And it's not just the US who use them. In the UK, drones are regularly used to help police huge events such as the massive solstice gatherings at Stonehenge. What happens when one "gets loose" and starts attacking people just because they get a little rowdy - as people do...? You take that to warfare and even nuclear-capable drones... I shudder - and so should we all.
Drones have a wide range of uses, from medical to agriculture - i only wish their use was restricted to such constructive works. But of course our reality is that we now have to contend with them as weapons....One must shudder, no question.
Thanks @viking-ventures