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That’s the problem with preemptive strikes against individuals who aren’t part of a nation that declared war against you.. who’s t say they wouldn’t have attacked you? The metrics are inpossible, and the government is free to redefine people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time as probably guilty anyways.

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Killing someone who, if left alive, might kill you is arguably a worst justification than those used by actual terrorists. It throws away the very pretext of correcting a wrong, perceived or otherwise.

As software developers we should see the problem here with "premature optimization". It's an incredibly inefficient use of resources with limited success in addressing unplanned situations. Sounds a lot like the war in terror.

Have you ever seen an engineer waste hours and days on a premature optimization? I have.

Have you seen the same thing sometimes turn later into remarkable prescience, correctly anticipating some future problem and solving it before it happens? I've seen that too.

Government and policy are rarely about certainty. They're generally and risks and probabilities, anticipated costs and expected values. That's the domain of statement and spies, and not for people who like clear certainties.

Ever seen Psycho-Pass? It explores some of these notions in greater depth.

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