Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[palsch]

Drones and targeted killing: defining a European position.

A new ECFR policy brief – “Drones and targeted killing: defining a European position” by Anthony Dworkin – argues that the EU should now take a stronger stand on the issue of drone strikes. At the same time, it should undertake an effort to work with the United States to set a new standard for when drone attacks are permissible. The EU’s position should be based on the idea that outside conventional military theatres lethal force should only be used when there is a serious, imminent threat to innocent life.

- Although President Obama has embraced a similar position as a matter of policy, he interprets it more loosely. But changes in US policy mean there may be a greater chance for transatlantic dialogue on drones.
- The EU should press him to follow through on his rhetoric and restrict US drone strikes, and explore the idea of self-defence as their legal basis.
- The EU should encourage greater transparency and accountability over US drones, and work to end the notion of an unbounded war against terrorist groups. Otherwise there is a danger that China, Russia, and others could use the US drone campaign as a precedent to justify targeted strikes against groups they declare to be enemies.

“Attempting to ban drones is a false choice that would also deprive Europeans of a useful technology. But Europe needs to play an active role in clarifying rules and standards for the use of drone attacks. If not, the benchmark for killing alleged enemies of any state using drones will be too low.” Anthony Dworkin

[shadenight123]

I have a question to ask:
How is using a drone different from sending a 'special task force' into the same area to solve the problem?

[palsch]

I have a question to ask:
How is using a drone different from sending a 'special task force' into the same area to solve the problem?

The obvious is that there is no risk to the lives of your own troops.

Now I'd guess that most people see that as a positive thing, but I have seen arguments that the risk of losing lives should always be hanging over any military decision to give them greater moral (and, frankly, political) weight and put politicians off using military force in marginal cases. That is, it makes killing other people harder and so is a good thing.

There are further worries that distance from the target leads to dehumanisation and flippancy about making the strikes from those whose job it is to minimise collateral damage, etc. I'd argue that the whole "Collateral Murder" video, along with dozens if no hundreds of reports of pilots from various wars, suggest that distance already exists for air strikes, which is where the main comparisons to drone strikes should be made.

[da_nang]

Not to mention that drones can be programmed to not require human input. Sure were not at SkyNet levels yet, but still, we'd be moving into a strange legal world.

[Dutchling]

Not to mention that drones can be programmed to not require human input. Sure were not at SkyNet levels yet, but still, we'd be moving into a strange legal world.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

[palsch]

There has been a lot of debate on the topic of autonomous warfare on Lawfare, with obvious biases. The tagging isn't great so that's a fairly broad search. This post, in addition the podcast discussion (which needs selecting from the episode list), has links to a serious debate around a petition HRW circulated against 'killer robots'. It's worth looking at those posts to understand the nuance and details behind each side's points rather than the broad language used in the headlines and petitions. An interesting passage from the third of those posts;

Ben is right that there are civilian protection benefits to some aspects of automation.  He doesn’t actually describe what those benefits are, but let me state a few:   Machine soldiers will never act out of anger or panic or fatigue, which are common causes of war crimes.  Since they do not fear for their lives, they can more closely approach and better observe a target, to make sure that it is lawful and to determine if civilians may be harmed.  Robots also would be able to process information from multiple sources much more quickly than human beings, which could be helpful in making correct targeting decisions in high pressure battlefield situations.

But what Ben fails to consider is that all of these benefits can be had by deploying remotely controlled robotic weapons, which would be automated in many or most respects, but would still keep a “man in the loop” for decisions about firing on human beings.  Today’s Predator drones, when appropriately used, have all the advantages I describe above, but a human being must still decide when to pull the trigger.  The same will be true of future generations of airborne and ground based weapons operated remotely by human controllers.  The unmanned submarines that Ben envisions would work just as well if, once they autonomously identify their target, a human controller must approve the launch of their torpedo (a safeguard that I imagine the Pentagon would insist on in any foreseeable future, given the danger that malfunction or malware could result in the sinking of a civilian vessel).

Full automation, with no man in the loop, might have military advantages, in that machines can act more quickly if they don’t have to wait for a human being to make a decision.  But it’s hard to imagine what additional benefits removing the human controller would give us from the stand point of civilian protection.  Once the robot has done what it does best – identifying a target, calculating the likely effects of possible courses of action, and so on — why would we ever not want the added check of a human being exercising judgment?

And the counter;

Really? I’m not sure of that all. Imagine a robot designed for targeted strikes against individual targets. The target, a senior terrorist figure, has already been selected, but he’s living in a compound with large numbers of civilians—wives and kids, say—with whom he is interacting on an ongoing basis. Precisely to discourage drone strikes, he keeps himself close to these and other civilians. Now imagine that our new robot has a few advances—none of them unthinkable, in my view—over current technology. First, it is very small and quiet and thus hovers very low, allowing it to strike incredibly quickly. Second, it has very long loiter time, so it can watch the target for long periods. Third, its on-board weapon has an extremely small blast radius; maybe it crashes into the target’s head and explodes, but it’s specifically designed not to destroy the building (and the other people in the building) in doing so. And fourth—and critically—to make sure that the the strike does not kill the civilians in the compound, the robot decides autonomously when to attack, exploiting split-second calculations about the target’s distance from the civilians in relation to the weapon’s blast radius. If you think this robot sounds fantastical, consider this one—which already exists.

To use another example, what if we could program a Hellfire missile to abort its mission and slam harmlessly into the ground if, between launch and impact, it calculates a greater likelihood of civilian casualties than the humans who launched it deemed acceptable? Such missile would be, in effect, making thousands of autonomous firing (or not firing—which is really the same thing) decisions during the course of its flight.

[Scoops Novel]

Lawfare is commonly linked here, so could you tell me more about it and it's reliability (which i will be looking into otherwise).

[palsch]

Lawfare is commonly linked here, so could you tell me more about it and it's reliability (which i will be looking into otherwise).

Mostly just me linking it.

It's one of the few blogs that consistently looks into a number of issues with any real depth. In particular it's the most anal about tracking legislative and administration action around warfare and national security issues. Mostly American but they do look at international issues as well.

It's a group blog, so you have to take each author with their own biases and history. Generally I'd consider it conservative/administration/establishment leaning, but it's not particularly partisan and generally favours nuance over entrenched positions, especially compared to most of the explicitly liberal sites I follow. It's heavy on legal and academic debates, so when it does favour one side of the debate it still tends to be the best source for understanding the other side as well. In this case the debate over fully automated killing machines has never been so well laid out for either side as in that series of posts.

As far as accuracy goes, it's rare that they draw conclusions of their own. More often they are arguing a position or offering attributed statements. Treat it as a collection of sources and position statements and it's well worth reading. They even do daily and weekly round up posts that could be used as comprehensive national security news summaries.

[Scoops Novel]

Thanks for the information. I'll watch it.

[Scoops Novel]

Sakkas may die soon. We could be seeing the quiet beginnings of a Greek revolt.

I know nothing about Greece and it should have long since gotten it's own thread. If no one else will I'll make it.

[10ebbor10]

Stop the thread proliferation please. I mean, what's the point of these political regional megathreads if every issue gets it own thread.

I mean, it's not like anything else is going on in here right now.

[Scoops Novel]

Why, tell me about it talk about it then.

[Leafsnail]

We should hold a referendum on Greece thread independence.

Incidentally, isn't the UK government's threat to block Scotland's entry to the EU sortof empty when they're going to be holding a referendum on leaving it anyway?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

MetalSlimeHunt:

      -(Barter 78/60) They won't really do it. The UK would never risk trade sanctions and sour relations with a radically independent Scottish administration.
      -Doesn't matter, anything will do to keep those uppity Scots in their place.
      -Doesn't matter, when the Scottish people are finally free from the English Oppressors they won't vote away their autonomy anyway.
      -(Persuasion 20/80) Yeah, man, that's like....bad. You should totally.....conquer them for that.
      -(Occult Knowledge) Don't worry, I'll summon Owlbread so he can tell us: "Scotland! Scotland! Scotland!"
      -It's for their own good, they shouldn't suffer the EU's fascism if they leave or stay.
      -(American) Don't look at me, I've never understood how you socialist Eurotrash operate.
      -[Remain Silent]
      -(Attack) Gaaaaaaahhh! I can't take it! I can't take Novel and talking about EU bullshit on the same page! GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!

[Askot Bokbondeler]

We should hold a referendum on Greece thread independence.

Incidentally, isn't the UK government's threat to block Scotland's entry to the EU sortof empty when they're going to be holding a referendum on leaving it anyway?

only potentially empty. absolutely hypocritical though, and doubly dochebaggy