Comment by nwallin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nwallin | Hacker News Reader

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Regarding man in the loop: if you're a bystander, (and not the target) you want a drone attacking the primary target as opposed to a manned platform.

With a manned platform, you have a chance of getting hit by a platform with a rear weapons officer, (F-15E, F/A-18) to verify minimal bystanders. But they're probably concentrating on not missing. Or you can get hit by a single occupancy aircraft (F-16, F-35) who will be dropping pre programmed ordinance.

With a drone, you have three separate teams of people watching the video steam. Anyone in that loop can say, "hey there are a lot of civilians here" and everything's on pause until the target moves.

And now we have an explosiveless munition with limited opportunities for collateral damage and this outlet is falling over themselves talking about gruesome it is.

Having worked in the field makes me really sick of ignorant journalists reporting on it. The outrage the antiwar press tends to carry makes their ignorance more annoying than the journalists talking about AGI, quantum computing, or deep learning.

Anti-war? Ignorant? That’s a weird take of one of the most in-depth military newssites out there. Also not the impression I got reading the article, more like a military geek describing every detail of this new ‘toy’ than anti-war.

Agreed, I think the article says "beware gruesome" because you normally don't expect a Twitter video to be of a dude that's been mangled by some flying knives into some horrible mess.

Agreed. While I believe the article points out the gruesomeness, it also carefully notes how much less collateral damage is likely.

I came away from the article a bit sickened by the concept, yes, but also proud we have a weapon whose purpose is to avoid accidental civilian deaths. And I have to admit, as gory as this weapon sounds, it's no worse than explosives.

I don't like war. I figure no one in their right mind should. I do acknowledge there's a time for it, and even a time for assassination (i.e. al Qaeda and similar).

I pray our leaders are able to make the right decisions regarding when these things are needed, and I'm nervous that some of our leaders don't fit that bill (moreso, that a future crop of leaders might abuse these powers to terrible ends).

Are the after-effects of an explosion any less gruesome?

> this outlet is falling over themselves talking about gruesome it is.

But they're not. The warning they gave was a trigger warning in regards to the video, where it quite prominently showed a man beheaded. The article itself was level-headed and seemed to portray the developments with interest and a healthy dose of respect.

I understand your general sentiments and while I would usually agree with you, it seems your criticism is misplaced here.

If you’re a bystander, what you want is for foreign governments to stop firing ammunitions at you. No ones saying that precision targeting isn’t the lesser of two evils, but the “anti war press” is outraged for a reason: the number of innocent people the United States should be murdering is not “fewer,” but zero

Yes, and better precision is how you get that, especially with the targets deliberately using said innocents as shields.

I mean sure, precision is one way to get that. Not firing missiles is the other way. I like my way because it doesn't cost millions of dollars and assume that the US government is qualified to judge who should live and die in other countries.

Just to be clear...the war zone writes pieces that are almost universally positive towards the military and are often targeted at military porn type folks. They write for their audience...who love the military and want to know all the details about their cool toys so they can feel closer.

I'm unclear if you are referring the them specifically in your final paragraph, but if you are, you are way off base.

I want to agree with you, insofar as that being outraged over what appears to be a more precise weapon makes very little sense.

On the other hand, it still seems horrible to kill people by remote control. Supposing it becomes possible to very, very precisely kill exactly who you want, from far away, with no judicial process, etc., is this good?

War should be painful for both sides, because if it is not, what stops us from engaging in it?

> insofar as that being outraged over what appears to be a more precise weapon makes very little sense.

There is a rational sense to be outraged over more precise weaponry: precision incentivizes super-states to use it more, which in turn incentivizes things like surveillance. At the long tail of this shift of incentives one can see a a quite spooky/sinister picture emerging.

Aerial bombardment of places known to be in use by civilians has been par for the course for most the 20th century and so far all of the 21st century. I think the ship has long sailed on death by remote control. The subject has been studied and the gap between the destruction a bomber pilot causes and how they feel about it is well documented.

What is new is the use of signals intelligence to choose whom to target in a non-combat zone. I think that's the novel piece that should horrify people.

This war is painful for both sides nonsense is immoral as the only way it works is if you put ISIS on the same moral level as a coalition of western democracies. What would keep these weapons from being abused would be the ability to arrest these criminals. But since we can’t arrest them, killing their generals is the next best option. And killing their generals without risk to our soldiers is mind bogglingly better.

Right. Roughly my concern. In the immediate, not killing civilians is great.

In the longer run, being able to take out who you want without killing innocents modifies the moral calculus. You don't have to justify the turpitude of your target against the lives of innocent bystanders.

So eventually the question approaches: how do you hold steadfast moral red-lines regarding the use of such weapons as PR costs and blowback approach zero?

> Supposing it becomes possible to very, very precisely kill exactly who you want, from far away, with no judicial process, etc., is this good?

This is only possible if the killing happens in total secrecy. The court of public opinion is a judicial process, and an important one, despite having only informal procedures.

The court of public opinion is open to desensitization and gaming. You can actually reach the point where people are killed merely to test limits within a safe backlash or to keep the public desensitized.

Why is it different or worse than low tech ranged weapons like a mortar or cannon that are also safe(ish) for the person firing, but also risk killing innocents bystanders?

We'll see what you think of it when foreign countries start flying strike drones in the US.

The U.S. has been attacked by contemporary equivalents since 1941 (incendiary balloons, submarines attacking land and sea targets, etc.)

(Edit: this happened to be submitted earlier today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738908 )

Same question to you: Should I feel differently if foreign countries fire a cannon, flies a plane and drop a bomb, or shoots a sniper rifle vs a drone strike? I don't want any of that, but if, for example, Putin decided he wanted to assassinate a Russian defector in the US, I'd rather he do it with a precision drone strike than a car bomb, or dispersing some poison that might affect bystanders.

It's like suggesting laser guided bombs are worse than unguided bombs.

I was absolutely with you until you broadly referred to the "anti-war press" and their "outrage" and "ignorance", and then I was absolutely against you. Being "anti-war" is not the issue of pragmatism you were originally criticising, and spreading hatred for generalized groups of people is the foundation from which arises anything and everything reasonable people criticise in the first place (this principle is especially important when the target is journalists, who have been murdered in a nation as "developed" as the US as a direct result of people who don't like what they print encouraging others to hate them).

Being sick of something does not equal hatred. This comment contains amplification of emotion and black-or-white thinking that is more apt to cause defensive responses than anything else. It's best to argue against the best interpretation of a post instead of the worst.

What kind of centrist take is this?

If I'm a bystander I don't want a country that I have literally never been to, or a country that's thousands of miles away from me operating drones in my country.

thank you.

I can't imagine how these same people would react if china started killing civilians in the US that they deemed to be terrorists through a secret process.

Maybe like an NBA GM or something.

It's not ignorance. Drone strikes are outright illegal under international law and quite frankly are unethical. Also they're extrajudicial killings when used against citizens.

Which specific law is being violated?

Pretty sure they don't have permission to fly in other people's airspace. Pretty sure you need permission to kill people in other countries unless you have a declaration of war.

You might be pretty sure, but that's not actually how international law works. Again, which specific law was violated?

I'm going to say that you're the one making the implication that the US can kill people wherever it likes, you can do the homework.

Maybe human right to live?

I don't think any bystander wants to see that typ eof actoin go down in front of them. And the effect of drone tech hasn't been to lower casualties, but allow us to bomb and blast more and more people without the heavy logistics tail of a manned platform.

The outrage is justified. Syria is on the other side of the world, and poses no threat to us. How many Americans can even locate it on a map?

Stated reason for involvment was chemical weapons attack--which is strongly reminiscent of Iraq's imaginary WMDs. To anyone who believes the official story on our involvement, I have a bridge to sell you.

Chemical weapons attacks by the government against Kurdish and FSA-held cities did indeed happen.

Not to justify US targeted killings, but it's not the same as Iraq's CIA-invented WMDs.

According to who? The OPCW? The UN? All of these organizations are compromised.

Per Wikipedia:

It was argued by The Guardian's columnist George Monbiot that Director-General José Bustani was being forced out by the U.S. government, despite the convention insisting the OPCW "shall not seek or receive instructions from any government"; the US had tried to persuade Brazil to recall Bustani. Monbiot wrote that the U.S. had tried other measures, although the convention also indicates that states should "not seek to influence" staff.

...

The removal was subsequently determined to be improper by an Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization and consequently Bustani was awarded €50,000 in moral damages, his pay for the remainder of his second term, and his legal costs

What would it take to persuade you that chemical weapons attacks were made? What would it take to persuade you that the government of Syria wanted/controlled/launched those attacks?

There seems to be lots of sources that think these things are true. The top search result for `George Monbiot chemical weapons syria` yields [0] in which the third paragraph starts : "There is nothing surprising about this. The Syrian government has a long history of chemical weapons use, and the OPCW’s conclusions concur with a wealth of witness testimony. But a major propaganda effort has sought to discredit such testimony, and characterise the atrocity as a “false-flag attack”."

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/lesson...

It would take a first-hand report from an entity that I trust. MSM deserves zero trust.

For the entire postwar period, we move from one false flag intervention to another--Korea, Iran in '53, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Iraq & Afghanistan, Libya--all mortal threats to the United States of America.

Tell me, in which one of these instances did the media tell us to hold our horses at the outset, rather than the aftermath?

How Bashar al-Assad Gassed His Own People | NYT - Visual Investigations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2X84JZINcI

Also..

[Elliot Higgins] previously worked in finance and administration. In 2012, when Higgins began blogging the Syrian civil war, he was unemployed and spent his days taking care of his child at home

So I guess we're every bit as qualified to look at warzone videos in our underwear, make claims about whodunnit, then send off to the NYT?

Bellingcat has received grants from Adessium, Digital News Initiative, Open Society Foundation, Pax, Porticus, National Endowment for Democracy, The Dutch Postcode Lottery, Zinc Network (funded by British foreign office)

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a U.S. non-profit soft power organization that was founded in 1983 with the stated goal of promoting democracy abroad.

Bellingcat also receives funding via PAX which is directly funded by Netherlands Foreign Ministry.

Soft-power apparati for three NATO members, funding some rando to look at videos and offer opinions on them... still have that bridge to sell.

We know for certain that none of the pasty fucks at the NYT spent enough time in Syria to do their own actual investgation.

If anyone has time to trace funding for the other orgs, I'm sure that even more gold will be struck.

As a bystander, I imagine I would want people like you to stop participating in ongoing legitimized murder, please.

Another point to consider:

For better or worse, each US drone strike requires an in-the-loop officer to authorize each weapon release. So whether it's a targeted assassination of HUMINT-confirmed high-value terrorist or the indiscriminate slaughtering of a funeral procession of innocent villagers based on HUMINT-free AI speculation, the US military's policies stipulate that, theoretically, there should always be someone to hold accountable for these successes and these crimes.

See also: Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars (2013)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...

> The aim of the missions was to track, and when the conditions were deemed right, kill suspected insurgents. That’s not how they put it, though. They would talk about “cutting the grass before it grows out of control”, or “pulling the weeds before they overrun the lawn”.

> And then there were the children. The airmen would be flying the Predators over a village in the tribal areas of Pakistan, say, when a series of smaller black shadows would appear across their screens – telling them that kids were at the scene.

> They called them “fun-sized terrorists”.

[..]

> Toward the end of his service, Haas switched to training new recruits in the technology of drone warfare. That shocked him anew, as he discovered that many of the younger intake were gung-ho about the power they wielded at their fingertips. “They just wanted to kill,” he said.

> He remembers one training session with a student in which they were flying live over Afghanistan. The student said that a group of people on the ground looked suspicious.

> Why? Haas asked. Because they look like they are up to no good, the student replied.

> Would you act on that? the instructor asked. Sure, the student said.

> Haas immediately pulled him from his seat, took over the mission himself, and promptly failed the student. “I tried to get the students to understand that preservation of innocent life had to take priority.”

> Because he failed the student, Haas was later rebuked by senior officers. They told him that they were short of bodies to keep the drones flying, and they ordered him to pass students in future so that there would be a sufficient number trained and ready to go.

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