Amnesty International recently reported on the 225th extrajudicial killing conducted by the U.S. government in its campaign against boats in the Caribbean. Boasts made by the U.S. Southern Command are that those on the boats are drug dealers or terrorists. Whether in international waters or the jurisdiction of other nations, the U.S. government kills under the writ of its own authority. The War on Drugs, like any moralist campaign against vice, allows those enforcing the law to do violent acts.
Targeted killings, even against delegates during peace negotiations, became an inevitability during the Global War on Terror, and are now a reality of policing. Advocates of these killings do not adhere to legal consistency, or hold any regard for the rule of law, and tend to cheer them on with bloody arrogance.
When Libertarian Institute Senior Fellow Laurie Calhoun wrote her book We Kill Because We Can, on the use of drones as killing machines, she predicted the inevitable dystopia often depicted in science fiction. The decision to kill criminals is another form of “mission creep” which justifies the existence of killing machines and their methods, while satisfying the jingoistic inclinations of governments to wage war against both abstracts and foreign enemies. There is no due process in the execution of those on the boats, let alone solid confirmation they are transporting drugs or contraband.
These concerns don’t really seem to matter. Just as in earlier iterations of the Global War on Terror, innocent people are “collateral” and of insignificant consideration. was shown in the war on terror, innocent people are ‘collateral’ and insignificant considerations for planners. A form of calculation is made to decide on how many innocent people may be killed in order to balance the value of an executed suspect. And it’s important to use the word “suspect” because even some terrorist targets are just that: executed without trial after intelligence assessments run by committee make an assessment.
The calculations used in the targeted execution of specific targets, from speed boats in South American waters to an aid worker transporting water through Kabul, are based on assumptions and the necessity to prosecute a war that’s already been started. Just as the mass bombing campaigns in Korea and Vietnam led to a constant need to find more targets—whether swathes of jungle or a lonely foot bridge that may be used by the enemy—the targeting menu has spread in Iran, where police officers at check points and seasonal bridges are hit by a military constantly in need of options. Without killing or blowing things up, there is a loss of purpose. And the War on Drugs has adopted a killer’s mindset.
The dangerous reality is that when this mindset intrudes from national security and “war time” measures into policing, the government develops the ability and confidence to execute any suspect, innocent or otherwise. Given that four U.S. citizens have been killed by the U.S. government during the Global War on Terror as suspects, it stands to reason that political pariahs with extremist ideologies or journalists and whistleblowers or human rights workers can be added to the kill list. All of those examples have been the case in Israel’s assassination campaign before and during the genocide in Gaza.
In her latest piece for TomDispatch, “It’s Time to Rein in Lethal AI Drones,” Rebecca Gordon reveals the ominous reality of current and future automated killers. At present Israel, Russia, and Ukraine have used these killing machines and it’s likely more governments and private organizations will in the near future.
The speed by which these killers may “fly” makes their detection even more menacing. Now that modern cars and public cameras act as instruments of surveillance, individual privacy is not only gone, but these killing tools will have a wider spread of information to not only hunt their prey, but also decide who should be killed. The human need to outsource responsibility to machines and software can remove moral culpability while also instilling a misplaced trust that artifical intelligence is in fact intelligent. This software is not intelligent and it does not reason. It may impressively calculate data and information it has at hand, but it also fabricates and “hallucinates.”
The killing robot is no longer a fantasy. It is here and now. It provides government with a power to kill not only enemies during conventional war but anyone suspected of a crime or who may be considered a threat. When a national government is in a fixed state of war, where most things are an existential threat, this can mean most people at any given moment are “legitimate” targets based on what they may have done, seen, said, or konw. The potential target can be wholly ignorant as to what makes them considered for execution.
How suspects were killed in the speed boats or how targets are selected in Gaza is based on software and small teams of human analysts. The days of preparing a mission to kill a particular person or eliminate a group are over. Drones will fly about in swarms, or a larger aircraft will carry pods filled with them. Small containers will be dropped and lie in waiting, ready to “erupt” when activated or when anyone comes nearby. These drones will select based on whatever information they accumulate and will target when the opportunity presents itself.
The theory is that this will perfect warfare; only uniformed soldiers or weapons systems will be targeted. Or perhaps only fighting age males. History has shown us that suburbs full of sleeping families can be determined as legitimate targets according to war planners, since these families contribute to the war effort by working in factories, or hospitals may be targets because insurgents could be inside receiving medical attention. The same total war theories will and likely already have found themselves inserted into this software.
+972 Magazine writes on the Lavenger software as used by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF):
“The Lavender software analyzes information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks the likelihood that each particular person is active in the military wing of Hamas or [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant. “
The rankings are imperfect and based on assumptions and suspicion or proximity and assumed association with others. Or, as is often the case, just whether they are a male between the ages of 10 and 70. The software used by both human and robot killers is being developed and improved upon. As it becomes the new normal, it will be directed inward with police forces, even as non-lethal drones whose purpose is to fly around all day every day spying on people, looking for infractions to deploy fines and court notices. Such a “Robocop” will lack the morality and charm of Peter Weller. Instead it will be as cold and brutal as the ED-209.
Drones have been a factor in war for some time, and now they will be automated. The continued extrajudicial killing of boat operators by the United States, the Israeli campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, and not to mention a history of total war and its many rationalizations, reveal a frightening future where such a technology won’t be deployed responsibly or with any regard to law or morality. Until such a time, wider awareness and wariness directed at the use of such weapons, surveillance, and software is crucial. The future does not need to be dystopian, despite the government’s best attempts otherwise.
