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Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, by Andrew Cockburn
Review by Ed O’Loughlin: Are drones the new wonder weapons, or an expensive and dangerous waste of time?[URL=
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These are important issues. But in Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins Andrew Cockburn doesn’t spend time on them. Instead he seeks to pre-empt the ethical debate by posing two seemingly pragmatic questions.
First, is assassination a useful policy? Second, does drone technology, along with its multibillion-dollar suites of surveillance and processing add-ons, and its growing thousands of support personnel, do what it says on the tin?
The ultimate trigger for the attack – which claimed 23 innocent lives, including those of two children under four – came when the travellers got out of their vehicles at dawn to pray. According to the Americans’ sketchy training, this proved that they were terrorists about to attack.
Compounding this inbuilt cultural ignorance are grave technological failings. The drones’ vaunted intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance cameras – the “unblinking eye” of the American war effort – turn out to be so low in resolution and so narrow in focus that they are seldom able to tell people from bushes, let alone terrorists from civilians.
Sceptics compare it to watching Google Earth through a soda straw. Yet the delusion of God-like knowledge has captivated senior military and political figures in the US, allowing them to participate in operations from the comfort of their offices.
First, is assassination a useful policy? Second, does drone technology, along with its multibillion-dollar suites of surveillance and processing add-ons, and its growing thousands of support personnel, do what it says on the tin?
The book begins with a transcript of drone communications as a convoy of unarmed men, women and children drives through rural Afghanistan in the early morning. Watching from above, US-based drone operators wilfully misinterpret every innocent action as evidence that this is a group of armed men with belligerent intent.
The ultimate trigger for the attack – which claimed 23 innocent lives, including those of two children under four – came when the travellers got out of their vehicles at dawn to pray. According to the Americans’ sketchy training, this proved that they were terrorists about to attack.
Compounding this inbuilt cultural ignorance are grave technological failings. The drones’ vaunted intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance cameras – the “unblinking eye” of the American war effort – turn out to be so low in resolution and so narrow in focus that they are seldom able to tell people from bushes, let alone terrorists from civilians.
Sceptics compare it to watching Google Earth through a soda straw. Yet the delusion of God-like knowledge has captivated senior military and political figures in the US, allowing them to participate in operations from the comfort of their offices.
Full review: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/kill-chain-the-rise-of-the-high-tech-assassins-by-andrew-cockburn-1.2324249
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