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Daniel Hale, a ‘Second Snowden’, Leaked Drone Wars Documents (nymag.com)
55 points by IfOnlyYouKnew on July 21, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments


Very well written article about one of the little-known heroes of our time.


Indeed, I tend to keep up with this sort of thing and have never even heard of him. Reading the article, I see,

>The intuitive argument against drones is that they introduce space between target and assassin, that they remove the element of danger from the act of killing. This is an argument that has followed every advance in military technology beyond the perfect reciprocity of the swordfight

Which I think direct attention away from the greater problem of drone strikes. It's not that it's no longer dangerous to the pilot. It's that the pilot cannot disobey immoral orders, even if he wants.

If a pilot in a bomber refuses to bomb children, then he might face consequences upon his return to base, but the children are not bombed. If a drone pilot refuses to bomb children, the controls can be switched to another pilot who will bomb the children while he faces the consequences for disobeying the immoral order.

He can still disobey, but doing so becomes pointless as the children will still die. So he doesn't. He bombs them, watches them die, and then tries to cope with the fact that he's the bad guy.




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