Matthew Bellamy, lead singer for Muse, described the album to the BBC as “a modern metaphor for what it is to lose empathy … through modern technology, and obviously through drone warfare in particular, it’s possible to actually do quite horrific things by remote control, at a great distance, without actually feeling any of the consequences, or even feeling responsible in some way.”
Rolling Stone reports:
Bellamy first got the idea about two years ago when he read the book Predators: The CIA’s Drone War on al Qaeda by Dartmouth professor Brian Glyn Williams. “I was shocked,” he says. “I didn’t know how prolific drone usage has been. I always perceived Obama as an all-around likable guy. But from reading the book, you find out that most mornings he wakes up, has a breakfast and then goes down to the war room and makes what they call ‘kill decisions.’ He makes that decision based on a long chain of intelligence people who, as we all know, can be very unreliable.”