by Nick Mottern
Introduction
The chart below, provided by Drone Wars UK, shows which nations have large, reusable, weaponized drones. So-called “suicide” drones, that crash into their targets and explode, and relatively small, multi-rotor drones carryingarms and munitions, are even more numerous and more widely distributed around the world. (Appendix B lists the types of weaponized drones now in use, their nations of origin and key manufacturers.)
Drone killing has become a major feature of the Ukraine War and of the genocide against the Palestinian people. Drone killing has been embraced by political and military leaders as essential to their control over people outside and inside the borders of their nations, as is evidenced in President Trump’s push to use drones to kill citizens of Mexico whom he describes as criminals.
David O. Sacks, Chair of President Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said recently:
“There’s no question that the armies of the future are gonna be drones and robots, and they’re gonna be AI-powered…I would define winning as the whole world consolidates around the American tech stack.”
This casual description of a horrifying future of relentless mechanized slaughter, which totally ignores the gruesome reality of nearly 25 years of drone killing, maiming and indiscriminate terrorization, makes it clear why we must make every effort to stop further use of weaponized drones.
In briefly presenting arguments for disarming drones, we will refer from time to time to Gregoire Chamayou’s “A Theory of the Drone”, in which he brilliantly analyzes aspects of the political/emotional appeal of weaponized drones that entrance those who use them.
Why we must stop the use of weaponized drones:
- SPREADING AND PROLONGING ARMED CONFLICT.
While drone attacks may give the users the impression of superior technological military power, the raw, unchallenged power to kill, history shows that the ability to launch drone attacks and kill people does not translate into the control of territory and populations.
For example, possibly more than 10,000 citizens of Afghanistan were killed by U.S. drones, between 2001 and 2023, when the U.S. was defeated by the Taliban. Far from bringing victory, the drone onslaught resulted in progressive loss of control of land and population by the U.S. and its puppet government, as more and more Afghans turned into enemies of the U.S. There is evidence that as many as 90 percent of Afghans killed by U.S. drones may have been non-combatants.
Retired commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal, is quoted saying: “The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.”
The press frequently trumpets that drones are a “game-changer” in the Ukraine war, giving Ukraine a fighting chance of turning back the Russian invasion. But, Ukrainian drones, however numerous and ingenious, have not prevented the steady loss of territory to Russian ground forces.
Indeed, it appears that the power to kill with drones may have given Ukrainian commanders, and their U.S. handlers, a disastrous illusion of eventually “winning” that has prolonged the war in the face of the reality of Russia’s willingness and ability to commit superior numbers of ground forces to combat, the Russian use of drones notwithstanding.
The omnipresence of Israeli drones in the skies over Gaza and other occupied Palestinian land since 2000, the killing in these areas by drones armed with missiles, grenades and rifles, the Israeli drone attacks outside it borders, in Lebanon and Iran, — none of this has overcome Palestinian resistance, most importantly Palestinian spiritual resistance.
In the epilogue of “Rise and Kill First”, a deeply researched history of Israel’s assassination program, Ronen Bergman reports that within Israel’s military and intelligence corps, after decades of successful killings of enemies, by agents and drones, essentially without consequences, there was a disturbing recognition that the so-called tactical successes of assassination had postponed or prevented the Israeli leadership from perceiving and achieving a long-term strategic victory involving compromise.
“Because of the phenomenal successes of Israel’s covert operations at this stage in its history,” Bergman writes, “the majority of its leaders have elevated and sanctified the tactical method of combating terror and existential threats at the expense of true vision, statesmanship, and genuine desire to reach a political solution that is necessary for peace to be obtained.”
“The partisans of the drone war as a privileged weapon of ‘anti-terrorism,” promise a war without losses or defeats,” Chamayou writes. “What they fail to mention is that it will also be a war without victory. The scenario that looms before us is one of infinite violence, with no possible exit; the paradox of an untouchable power waging interminable wars toward perpetual war.”
- KILLING, SURVEILLANCE AND TERRORIZATION OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS.
“The command and control systems, the war rooms, the methods of information gathering, and the technology of the pilotless aircraft that now serve the Americans and their allies,” Bergman reports in “Rise and Kill First”, “were all in large part developed in Israel.”
Israel’s assassination policy, described by the title of Bergman’s book, is, in fact, the guiding principle of Israeli military policy: kill anyone and destroy anything even suspected of presenting a threat to Israel, regardless of who or where the possible threat may exist. All Palestinians, regardless of age or sex, are viewed as threats.
The Israeli assassination program, which dates to the founding of the state, was super-charged in 2000, Bergman reports, with the first use by Israel of weaponized drones against suspected suicide bombers, dramatically increasing the number of assassination missions, not only in Gaza but across the Middle East.
“In 2001,” Chamayou reports, “U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld had become convinced that ‘the techniques (assassination) used by the Israelis against the Palestinians could quite simply be deployed on a larger scale.’”
Assassination and pre-emptive war, of course, violate international law, regardless of the legalistic nonsense foisted on the global public by Israel and the U.S. in an attempt of justifythe slaughter of Palestinians to an anguished global public. Nevertheless, the determination of Israel and the U.S. to pursue pre-emptive war and the use of killer drones in doing so, has led to growing disregard for international law by other nations, including the individual rights to life, privacy and due process affirmed in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.
Bergman notes: “…two separate legal systems have arisen in Israel – one for ordinary citizens and one for the intelligence community and defense establishment. The latter system has allowed, with a nod and a wink from the government, highly problematic acts of assassination, with no parliamentary or public scrutiny, resulting in the loss of many innocent lives.”
This dual legal system is now global, with the drone and other pre-emptive killing rapidly undermining a wide variety of legal protections assumed to exist for “ordinary citizens”.
The foundational pillar of assassination and pre-emptive attacks is surveillance, an ever-expanding field of research, software and computer hardware that is based on wholesale violations to rights of privacy by corporations and governments and that increasingly make all civilians potential targets for pre-emptive killing.
Palestinians have become the examples of what all citizens can expect to be subject to. The U.N. report by Francesca Albanese, entitled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide”, reports:
“Repression of Palestinians has become progressively automated, with tech companies providing dual-use[78] infrastructure to integrate mass data collection and surveillance, while profiting from the unique testing ground for military technology offered by the occupied Palestinian territory.[79] Fueled by US-tech giants establishing subsidiaries and research and development centres in Israel,[80]Israel’s claims of security needs have spurred unparalleled developments in carceral and surveillance services, from CCTV networks, biometric surveillance, high-tech checkpoints networks, “smart walls” and drone surveillance, to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics supporting on-the-ground military personnel.[81]”
Palestinians find themselves observed, tracked and targeted by the police and military through computer programs named “Lavendar”, “The Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?” The latter allows a person, usually identified from a vast computer file on all residents of a given area, to be followed by the military using mobile phone tracking. The military is signaled when the person arrives home, where the person, and often family members, will be killed by drone or other means. Apparently, killing at home has proven to be the most effective.
Drone manufacturers, military commanders and politicians know the substantial shortcomings of this technology, the danger that its use presents to civilians. Drone cameras are limited in their scope of vision and fail to provide clear images. Computer programs, electronic surveillance equipment and drone cameras misidentify people and fail to discern their intentions.
The Albanese report identifies the following corporations as profiting from their involvement in the technological underpinning of the genocide against Palestinian people: Alphabet (Google); Amazon; HP Inc.; Hewlett-Packard; IBM; Microsoft; NSO Group; and Palantir Technologies.
The technological surveillance web that they operate in cooperation with Israel, intended to facilitate drone killing and other violent repression, is being used by governments globally to varying degrees, including in the U.S., particularly now at the Mexico-U.S. border and in ICE raids across the country.
Surveillance is itself a weapon that is being used daily In violent and non-violent ways in the attempt to control the global public. The mere knowledge of the existence of this vast, corporate/government surveillance apparatus indiscriminately generates varying levels of fear and withdrawal.
Fear, trauma and withdrawal are, obviously, generated with the greatest intensity in entire communities and regions in which even one drone killing has occurred.
In 2015, the Alkarama human rights organization published “Traumatizing Skies”, a study of population-wide psychological impacts of drone killing. Researchers found, in screening 100 men and women, boys and girls living in areas in Yemen subject to U.S. drone attacks “strong common patterns of anxiety, stress, paranoia, insomnia and other trauma symptoms…We concluded that the simple fact of living under drones has psychological consequences that derive from the constant fear of being killed or having a relative killed.”
The authors of the report noted that those subjected to drone attacks, and drone surveillance after attacks, were afforded no legal protection; that situation exists today:
“While the application of international Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Human Rights Law with regard to drone operations continues to be debated within the international community, what we call a ‘legal black-hole’ has instead come to dominate aspects of regulation, accountability and retribution. This scenario is but exacerbated by the peculiar nature of the drone technology that is yet to be engaged with adequately in legal as well as ethical terms and serves to facilitate trauma among civilians.”
- COMPARTMENTALIZATION AND INABILITY TO ACT TO SURVIVE.
Compartmentalization is a recognized psychology phenomenon in which we attempt to mentally separate and control certain fears and conflicting thoughts and emotions so that they do not prevent us from functioning.
Killer drone operators experience physical compartmentalization from war because of being located away from the battlefield. For many, this physical separation apparently allows for emotional compartmentalization as well. But, for some, the trauma of firing missiles or other weapons at people and watching them die on screen, however far away, cannot be controlled. These operators quit or commit suicide. Presumably, they could not control their empathy for those they kill.
Countries using weaponized drones in foreign wars may simultaneously use reconnaissance drones to surveil their own populations. This likely generates intimidation and fear within their own civil societies, possibly lessening the likelihood of public protest against rising use of weaponized drones.
When machines fight humans or each other, it becomes apparent that soldiers are viewed by the elites in the same way as machines, necessary and expendable. If drones are soldiers, human soldiers may be seen as drones and given no more care or respect than drones. Certainly, this is the fate of Ukrainians fighting in the so-called proxy war against Russia, funded by the U.S.
The U.S. and its allies are viewing weaponized drones, along with nuclear weapons, as critical to winning an anticipated war against China in the competition for profitable access to global resources and labor, particularly in the southern hemisphere.
Weaponized drones, and intensive drone and other surveillance, as evidenced in their use at the U.S. – Mexico border, in Gaza, and in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, have a global application for elites in containing and controlling large populations who are displaced and forced to move across borders, whether forcibly displaced or dislocated by intense temperatures and weather events resulting from climate transformation.
In short, we can anticipate that wealthy, technologically advanced nations will increasingly use weaponized drones for purposes of extortion, political control, and economic leverage. The use of these weapons increases the income inequality in our world, intensifying the burdens already oppressing those who live in less technologically developed areas of the world.
We must put away killer drones and the mass surveillance that guides them because they threaten our physical and spiritual existence.
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