The DC Drones Conference: What I'll Be Thinking About

As I join people from around the world gathering in Washington, DC, for the  2013 CODEPINK Drone Summit "Drones Around the Globe: Proliferation and Resistance" (Nov 16/17) this weekend, here are some of the questions I'll be thinking about.

(UPDATE: To learn what I'm thinking about now that the summit has concluded, see The 2013 DC Drones Conference: 5 Big Takeaways )


Who decides?

If the public will join us in asking the question "Who decides?" about drone executions, I believe they will rapidly come to realize that they are utterly dissatisfied with what the government is saying.

(See Who Decides? (When Drones are Judge, Jury, and Executioner) )
 

When will we learn the truth? 

Until we have the facts, the U.S. government will continue to dance around the issue.

A new U.N. report makes it clear that the U.S. has to report fully on all its drone attacks.

(See 2014: The Year of Transparency (for U.S. Drone Use)?)








Where is the faith community?

 In particular, when will American Christians begin to see the problem of drones as the threat that it is to everything that they believe in?

After all, wasn't Jesus, himself, a victim of a wrong way of "seeing" by the agents of Empire?

(See Was the Crucifixion a "signature strike"?)

Will U.S. politics in 2014 address the drone problem?

Isn't now a moment when, instead of falling back into our existing habits of trying to change America's war-making ways, we should put our recent experience under a microscope? And ask what we can learn from this experience? Can we make 2014 the year that we sort the wheat from the chaff in Congress? And get the control over war and peace back into our own hands?

(See Election 2014: The Moment of Truth for the US Antiwar Movement?)

Will the opponents of drone surveillance make a difference?

One issue that has a key place in the midterm elections in 2014, I believe, is surveillance.  With each passing day, I am hearing more and more people say that the surveillance issue is something that a wide spectrum of people are deeply upset about. That includes people on the right as well as people on the left -- people who don't usually talk with each other, much less work together for positive change!

(See The Surveillance Issue: The Fulcrum of the 2014 Election?)


POSTSCRIPT: I guess I was still thinking about this question as the conference concluded. Drone Free Zone: At the second annual Drone Summit, Code Pink and Cornel West argue that all lives are equal. in In These Times quoted me the day after: "There is a wing of this movement that is concerned about surveillance; there is a wing of this movement that’s concerned about physical injury to people. If there is one area where there is not always full communication, coordination or agreement, that’s it. . . . If the people who feel most concerned about surveillance are actually successful at sitting together with the people concerned about physical injury, this is going to be an incredibly powerful movement."


Related posts

What I Learned: Five big realizations I'm taking away from the 2013 CODEPINK Drone Summit "Drones Around the Globe: Proliferation and Resistance" in Washington, DC.

(See The 2013 DC Drones Conference: 5 Big Takeaways )

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 )

Many of us who weren't in Pakistan to participate in the massive rally against U.S. drone strikes participated in this protest by holding rallies where we were (for instance, in London), or by participating virtually via the #PakistanAgainstDrones campaign on Twitter.

(See What Would a Global Movement to Ground the Drones Look Like?)

Design Drones To Guarantee No Humans Will Be Injured

[Part of the series: 10 Questions to Spur the Drone Debate]


"Those were the days of the first talking robots when it looked as if the use of robots on Earth would be banned. The makers were fighting that and they built good, healthy slave complexes into the damned machines." (Isaac Asimov, "Runaround," p. 117)

What design features can we reasonably require in drones to assure that we are safe?

I've proposed that this issue be debated, and that the robot literature created by Isaac Asimov has already posed numerous big question that can guide the debate.

This week, an unmanned fighter jet used as a target crashed in Florida. (It was thus a "drone," though not the same type being used in U.S. military and CIA operations in the Mideast.)

I was struck by this statement in the news coverage: "An explosive device in the plane destroys it if it becomes uncontrollable," according to an Air Force fact sheet. (See Air Force drone crash closes remote Florida highway.)

In other words, steps were taken to render the target drone "safe."  Those steps may have been inadequate, but the important thing is that a clear principle has been expressed. Design features have been put in place. When the drone becomes unsafe, it is sacrificed.

What design features would need to be in place in order to make drones really safe? What design features would need to be in place in order to assure that drones obey the 1st Law of Robotics ("A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") ?

It goes without saying that drones won't be safe until they stop firing missiles and killing people. There will certainly be regulations in the very near future prohibiting people from putting weapons on drones.

But let's ask the deeper question. We all know that regulations on human behavior are not the ultimate answer, because people break rules. Shouldn't the drones, themselves, play a role in making sure that they are not abused? Why can't drones be designed to know whether they, themselves, have been armed with weapons, and, if armed with weapons, cease functioning (or self-destruct)? Why can't we have an Air Force fact sheet that says, "An explosive device in the drone destroys it if it detects the presence of weapons" ?

The answer, of course, is that drones can be designed that way. All that's missing is the will to do so.


Let's start debating the drones now. (Here are nine more questions to guide the debate.)


(Page references are to the 1990 Byron Preiss Visual Publications edition of Robot Visions.)

Independence Day - From SURVEILLANCE

A year ago at this time I was writing about my hope that people in the United States would start a movement to stop drones. I think it's fair to say that the movement has been started.

Part of that movement has been a growing awareness that we need to stop the use of drones for domestic surveillance. Now, with the Snowden revelations about the extent of domestic spying, it's clear that the time has come for a major movement to stop spying in the United States:

Independence Day - From SURVEILLANCE!

During the last several weeks, I've been writing about the way that George Orwell's predictions about surveillance and totalitarian control have come true in America -- and it's clear that many people are reading this material and getting mobilized to join the movement to stop the surveillance.

There are lots of ways to become a part of the solution.

Support the work of national groups like the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC).

Connect with in your area that are working to stop surveillance - like the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights (CCDBR) here in Chicago.

Join the anti-drones movement -- there are anti-drones groups in almost every state.

Or even -- do we dare? -- find groups working to get rid of the business-as-usual politicians and elect anti-surveillance candidates in the 2014 mid-term elections!

But whatever you do, start by equipping yourself with a vision. Read 1984.

Orwell Was Right

I've decided to read a book to ring in Barack Obama's second term. No, I'm not talking about The Audacity of Hope. I'm talking about 1984, by George Orwell.

In case you haven't read it lately, I strongly recommend giving 1984 a fresh read. My memory of it was of a book that was clever, but a bit shallow, and one that ultimately imparted a feeling of comfort because, after all, it was pointing a finger at the misdeeds of other societies. (Okay, okay, it's been a long time since I last read it . . . . )

NATO protests, Chicago, May 2012

What I'm finding instead is a book that is both packed with insight into the psychology of the public experience of repression, and startlingly prescient about the specific facts of our world today.

With respect to the latter of these, allow me to quote just three brief descriptions that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up:

In the distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a blue-bottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. (p. 2)

We in Chicago are the most electronically surveilled population population in the world. (Can you say "seventeen thousand cameras??) The proliferation of cameras makes the use of helicopters optional.

Of course, they're not really doing anything with all that surveillance, right?

It was always at night -- the arrests invariably happened at night. . . . there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. (p. 17)

Considering that progressive Americans are rejoicing today over the re-election of Barack Obama, despite his failure to close Guantanamo, reverse the legacy of night raids in Afghanistan, prosecute the torturers who carried out extraordinary rendition, and abandon his claim to be able to detain anyone indefinitely under the NDAA . . . this passage is chilling.

But it was the passage that seemed to describe drone strikes really made me stop short:

"Steamer" was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to rocket bombs. . . . The bomb had demolished a group of houses two hundred meters up the street. . . . Thre was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw it was a human hand severed at the wrist. (p. 74)

This description was quite startling to encounter, shortly after seeing the account of Pat Chaffee, recently returned from the Code Pink delegation to Pakistan to protest U.S. drone killings, entitled, "Body Pieces".

I feel quite sure that when I read this passage years ago, I thought, "Well, certainly, that will never happen . . . .

Never say never.

Orwell was right.


Page references are to the 2009 Plume paperback edition.
Image: @Deprogrammer9 Copyright Julie Dermansky 2012


Related posts

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 ? )

As the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights prepared to convene a conference on surveillance on October 19, 2013, it was a shock to find that the majority of the Illinois congressional delegation voted AGAINST the Amash Conyers Amendment -- the measure to curtail NSA surveillance.

(See In Chicago, Illinois: YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE!) 













"What are the unseen possibilities and risks associated with drones?" We need the insights of lots of people -- including the work of thinkers who are no longer living -- that are good at imagining the future and considering previously unimagined possibilities.


(See DRONES: Build a Foundation for Our 3-D Future )