DRONES: Build a Foundation for Our 3-D Future

The future is now
"French high-tech venture Parrot's Japanese PR staff demonstrate a
mini-drone 'Rolling Spider,' equipped with four propellers, a camera
and detachable wheel protector in Tokyo on August 12, 2014."
(Photo: AFP-Yoshikazu Tsuno on Al-Akhbar English)

This week, audiences in Chicago and around the country will be able to see Autómata, a film about a future society in which there are explicit rules about what robots are and are not permitted to do -- and what happens when the rules get broken.

The current decade may well be remembered "The Decade of the Drones," because of the way unmanned aerial vehicals (UAVs, or "drones") have come to dominate the public discourse on national defense and domestic security, as well as beginning to dominate the imagination of university researchers and business innovators and anyone else who likes to ask, "What if . . . ?"


No Drones Network

"Make the drone killing 100% visible."

Several years ago, I began working with activists around the country to lift up the work being done to contest the current U.S. policy of killing with armed drones. There are groups of people working on this problem in nearly every state in the country, and there are websites that help the public learn more and get involved.  People can get a birds-eye view of what's going on at the central No Drones Network site.

People working in the network were able to share strategy and tactics . . . but also some very fundamental realizations.  Perhaps the most fundamental was recognizing that, at the level of phenomenology, something very significant was happening when drones were used to injure people.  For a variety of reasons, the injuries tended to be rendered 100% invisible to the general public. The response that we needed to make as activists was clear: "Make the drone killing 100% visible."

For my own part, I started thinking and writing extensively about this difficult issue. In particular, I began to focus on how drone use had come to undermine the idea that active popular consent is a prerequisite for acts of war -- and, more broadly, for government action of all kinds. (See more links to my posts about drones.)


The Snowden Reset

The major development of 2013 was the set of revelations by Edward Snowden and realization that we have a massive surveillance problem in the U.S.

Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are
YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE
Department of Homeland Security

What this meant for the public discourse on drones was that two large categories of concern came to be discussed together: concern about violence and concern about surveillance.

There had long been groups working to oppose drone surveillance in the U.S., focusing on the problem of local law enforcement use of drones. Now it became clear that everyone who was concerned about one particular aspect of the drone problem -- e.g. opponents of drone killing -- needed to make common cause with those concerned primarily with other aspects (such as surveillance).

This encouraged a lot of us to connect the dots between the use of military and police force, surveillance, and broader systems of oppression.

Moreover, this development encouraged us all to become much more attuned to unseen possibilities and risks associated with drones.  Of course, it is obvious that physical injury to innocent people is deplorable; but now we started to think more deeply about the effects of drones and drone use that are not so obvious.

How are drones changing us in ways that we aren't even thinking about?


I, Robot

At the same time, we began to see more and more talk of "good uses of drones." The watershed moment was probably the announcement by Amazon that they hoped to deliver packages via drone.  That particular idea may not have been ready for prime time, but it captured people's imaginations.

Of course, when you scratched the surface you found that drone research is going on in a large number of universities.

September, 2014: Drones-eye view of protests in Hong Kong

And now, just in recent days and weeks, I've noticed more and more mainstreaming of talk of use of drones:

September 30, 2014 - "Hong Kong protests: Mesmerising drone footage shows scale of pro-democracy demonstrations " by Lizzie Dearden in The Independent. "Swooping over the Admiralty district, where demonstrations are focused around the Government headquarters, the drone captured images of protesters milling around, distributing food and making signs on Monday."

October 2, 2014 - "Drones vs. Kidneys: Google Autofill on the Economy" by Conor Dougherty in The New York Times. "Mr. Colas has been tracking Google autofill data for a while, and for most of the last three years the top three positions for completing the query, 'I want to buy…' have been won by 'a house,' 'a car' and 'stock.' . . . Last quarter, the top spot went to 'a drone'"

October 5, 2014 - "Regulation Clips Wings of U.S. Drone Makers: FAA Ban, Export Controls Weigh Down American Entrepreneurs, Even as Foreign Rivals Fly High" by Jack Nicas in The Wall Street Journal. "Outside the U.S., relatively accommodating policies have fueled a commercial-drone boom."

October 8, 2014 - "State Farm considering use of drones" by Becky Yerack in the Chicago Tribune. "Property and casualty insurers play a major role in funding the restoration of businesses and communities after major incidents, and the integration of unmanned aircraft into USAA's operations will have immediate, positive effects on the lives of Americans and the business community."

It's hard to argue with. Don't we all want -- at least a little bit -- to be freed from our earthbound existence and start to live a truly 3-D existence?

That's why I think it is particularly important to, once again, ask, "What are the unseen possibilities and risks associated with drones?"

Isaac Asimov proposed "Three Laws of Robotics"

One way to do this is to involve more people -- including the work of thinkers who are no longer living -- that are good at imagining the future and considering previously unimagined possibilities. For instance, Isaac Asimov delved in detail into the need to establish rules -- he called them the "Three Laws of Robotics" -- if we are to be able to safely use machines like drones and robots. In his 1979 essay, "The Robot As Enemy," Isaac Asimov wrote, "Will human beings deliberately build robots without the Laws? I'm afraid that is a distinct possibility . . . " (p. 448). He specifically foresaw the exact developments in the robotization of the military that we are seeing today:

"computerized planes, tanks, artillery, and so on, that would stalk the enemy relentlessly, with superhuman senses and stamina. It might be argued that this would be a way of sparing human beings. We could stay comfortably at home and let our intelligent machines do the fighting for us. If some of them were destroyed -- well, they are only machines. This approach to warfare would be particularly useful if we had such machines and the enemy didn't." (p. 449)

In the end, however, Asimov concludes: "No, I feel confident that attempts to use robots without safeguards won't work and that, in the end, we will come round to the Three Laws."

A lot of people are excited about drones. 

They're enthusiastic about "good" uses, and 

inclined to say "We'll sort out any problems later." 

But "later" is fast upon us.

  

Let's lay the foundation in advance for

what is shaping up to be a 3-D future.

9 More Ideas You Won't Hear

at Chicago Ideas Week . . .

Related posts

I'm marveling at the adjacency of a piece of public art -- one with a very clear message about the risk of human ambition and self-absorption and heedlessness -- to the center of political power in the city of Chicago.

(See NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Who will bring us down to earth? )

In my opinion, the reason to focus on drones is this: when we focus on drones, the general public is able to "get," to an unusual extent, the degree to which popular consent has been banished from the process of carrying out state violence. (Sure, it was banished long ago, but the absence of a human in the cockpit of a drone suddenly makes a light bulb go off in people's heads.) It takes some prodding, but people can sense that drone use somehow crosses a line. And that opens up the discussion about how our consent has been eliminated from the vast range of US militarism.

(See "Why focus on drone attacks?")


Beyond recognizing the inherent contradictions of "pre-emptive violence," we must confront an urgent problem related to technology: the automation of "pre-emptive violence" -- e.g. via drone technology -- is leading to a spiral (or "loop" or "recursive process") that we may not be able to get out of.

(See When "Pre-emptive Violence" Is Automated ....)

The Futurists loved airplanes, and other fast machines. Considering how we, in the U.S. today have been seduced by drones and drone warfare, we would perhaps do well to reflect on why people find these things so appealing.

(See A Future Inspired by Kinetics? )

Foucault and Drones: "Surveiller et Punir" Indeed!

More at: Can we stop the DRONES?

It was several years ago that I first drew the connection between the work of Michel Foucault and drone surveillance and drone killing. At the time I pointed out that "Foucault understood [surveillance] to be symptomatic of the much larger project of societal rule. To Foucault, prior to the physical and bodily aspects of control and manipulation, there are aspects that have to do with seeing, knowing, naming, and categorizing."

We now know far more about how the Obama administration carries out drone surveillance and drone killing, especially in light of the New York Times article exposing Obama's "secret kill lists" several weeks ago. It seems like an appropriate time to revisit Foucault's dissection of surveillance and punishment.

"THE MEANS OF CORRECT TRAINING"
The fundamental insight of Foucault's work, "Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison" (published in English as "Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison") is that through a set of practices (observation, norm-imputation, examination), extra-legal compulsion in diverse forms comes to permeate society. These practices are, in part, mimetic of the truth-finding and justice-dispensing practices of a true legal system, but fall far short of judicial due process.

Why speak of "rights" and "justice" when you have the means to impose power -- i.e. "train" your subjects -- unilaterally?

"HIERARCHICAL OBSERVATION"
According to Foucault, one of the principal marks of modern social organization is that observation is so important that whole categories of roles are reserved for simply watching what others are doing; in fact, organizations now institutionalize armies of watchers, as well as watchers of the watchers. (Got supervisors?)

Drone operators are certainly quintessential "watchers" of this kind. But Foucault's insight that these systems tend toward hierarchical (and total) observation alerts us to the fact that what lies ahead will almost certainly be worse. Work is being done to make drones "autonomous," that is, fully computer-controlled. "Signature strikes" -- in which observations are processed according to an algorithm to determine if a strike should be carried out, independent of human judgement about the actual identities of the people observed -- are a first indication of how this will be done.

In other words: "drone surveillance"? You ain't seen nothing yet!

"NORMALIZING JUDGEMENT"
All of the surveillance done by the watchers can only be put to use if there are standards of "normal" or "right" or "acceptable" behavior against which to compare the observations. This sets up both a fiction that there is a "right" way to be, and that the watchers are qualified to sit in judgement over the judged.

As the New York Times' description of Obama's secret kill list makes clear, Obama and his national security team sit as judge, jury, and executioner over a process of judgement of people subject to drone observation in Pakistan.

What is less clear is the "norm" against which the people there are judged. Is any adult male in the relevant areas of Pakistan assumed to be a "militant," unless proven otherwise?

What is similarly unclear is the qualifications of the "judges." As Eric Holder made clear when he (partially) divulged the rationale for the Administration's killings during his speech several months ago in Chicago, "due process" does not necessarily mean "judicial process."

"THE EXAMINATION"
Inherent in the scheme of "training" that Foucault understands to be at the heart of modern imposition of control is a third step: examination. If everyone is subject to observation, and everyone is subject to comparison to some "acceptable" measure of behavior, there must be some ritual(s) wherein the individual is required to stand and prove that they "pass the test."

The strange thing about the current state of U.S. drone killings is that they do not yet hint at what the "examination" stage will look like. At present, people are observed, and judged, and then unilaterally killed. But is that where it will all end?

If Foucault is right, the killings are just the beginning; they are just the leading edge of a much broader pattern of social control.

* * * * *

In the old order of things, power places itself on display, and hopes that the population sees fit to obey. In the new order of things, power compels every member of the population to display himself or herself.

In the old order of things, individualism is the way of the world. In the new order of things, individualism is relegated to the margins - the abnormal - and the cost of extreme individualism is extermination.

In the old order of things, all of society's capability for science and humanism is focused on the operating of due judicial process. In the new order of things, the courts are bypassed and the instruments of discipline -- observe, classify, examine -- run rampant.


Related posts

The biggest idea coming out of the 2013 Drone Summit? We will only deal successfully with the crimes being committed using drones when we understand them as part of the much larger war against communities of color . . . .

(See Drone Gaze, Drone Injury: The War on Communities of Color )







The panopticon was a prison design that reversed the old paradigm, in which prisoners were stored away, "out of sight, out of mind," and instead arrayed them in a way in which they could be observed as efficiently as possible by the fewest number of managers.

(See Drones, 1984, and Foucault's Panopticon)






Re-reading George Orwell's 1984 recently made me see at least 15 ways 2013 is like the world he describes in the book . . . .

See 2013 = 1984 ?






More at: Can we stop the DRONES?

* * * * *

Image sources:
Predator cockpit from Drone Wars UK
Situation room from Churls Gone Wild

Drones, 1984, and Foucault's Panopticon

Are drones such a menace because of their weapons? Or because of their surveillance? Or is it even bigger? Ask Foucault . . . .

More: "Why focus on drone attacks?"

For those of us who have been focused on the boots on the ground in Afghanistan, data published by the New York Times yesterday added a whole new dimension: it published statistics on drone sorties and strikes in Afghanistan in 2009.

The article is an important counterpoint to the headline-grabbing drone strikes by the CIA in Pakistan, and is worth reading online. What you miss by looking at the online version of the story, however, is the graphs of month-by-month activity, which show several striking trends. Strikes by missiles and bombs from drones were up sharply in the first half of the year; the second half of the year, by and large, showed a slight tapering off. (This was consistent with the overall trend in attacks by aircraft and drones.) At the same time, the number of drone sorties -- that is, missions of all types, including "just surveillance" -- showed a very steady upward trend month by month throughout the year. As the article reports:

"Predators and Reapers [are] now supplying more than 400 hours of video a day to troops in Afghanistan . . . Some of the Reapers will soon carry 10 cameras instead of just one, and 30 by 2011, adding to the profusion of video."

Up until now, when I have thought about drones, I have thought about the ethics of drones as a weapon in general, including the specific problem of whether drone strikes constitute extrajudicial executions under the Geneva Conventions.

I have always also had a nagging sense that there is something wrong with the surveillance aspects of drones, as well. But I didn't become so focused on it until confronted with the numbers.

Science fiction? 15 Ways George Orwell Was Right . . .

There is perhaps no more powerful portrayal of the problem of extreme surveillance than George Orwell's novel 1984. One of my strongest memories of 1984 was the efforts that Winston had to make simply to find a place in his own apartment where he could escape the observation of Big Brother. Perhaps it was because I, like so many other people, encountered the book as a teenager, when privacy suddenly becomes simultaneously so important as well as so hard to come by, that I remember this so clearly.

While popular culture makes frequent explicit references to "Orwellian" situations that involve doublethink, Newspeak, the Thought Police, and the other ideological nightmares of 1984, I wonder if the real nightmare isn't simply the constant surveillance. I, for one, have always thought that lack of privacy is not an absolute evil, but can only be evaluated in the context of what happens as a result of loss of privacy. I'm beginning to rethink that view.

The French philospher Michel Foucault, in his groundbreaking work Discipline and Punish, reviewed the history of society's efforts to isolate and control elements that caused it problems. Ultimately, Foucault zeroed in on the efforts of Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians to apply analysis and scientific thinking to prisons. The result was the panopticon.

Jeremy Bentham's "panopticon" (drafted by Willey Reveley)

The panopticon was a prison design that reversed the old paradigm, in which prisoners were stored away, "out of sight, out of mind," and instead arrayed them in a way in which they could be observed as efficiently as possible by the fewest number of managers.

Presidio Modelo prison, Cuba (2005),
followed the panopticon design.

Foucault understood this to be symptomatic of the much larger project of societal rule. To Foucault, prior to the physical and bodily aspects of control and manipulation, there are aspects that have to do with seeing, knowing, naming, and categorizing.

At the end of the day, is surveillance bad if no harm comes of it? Or is it even possible to separate the two? Consider this quote from the New York Times article. Speaking of Stephen P. Mueller, top air commander in Afghanistan, the article stated:

He said the strikes typically came when troops were caught in firefights or the drones came across people who appeared to be planting homemade bombs, the biggest source of allied casualties. The counterinsurgency strategy "isn't about going out and finding those," he said. "But when we do find them, we obviously do what's necessary."

Obviously.


MORE:

Foucault and Drones: "Surveiller et Punir" Indeed!

Drone Gaze, Drone Injury: The War on Communities of Color

Why U.S. Society is Caving in to the Lure of Wall-to-Wall Surveillance

When the President says, "The American people don't have a Big Brother who is snooping into their business," it probably means the American people have a Big Brother who is snooping into their business . . . .

Fed Up With Being Spied On

DRONES: Build a Foundation for Our 3-D Future

Drone Killings: Come Clean

Orwell Was Right