General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Guardian: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on [View all]LWolf
(46,179 posts)Technological advances can be used for good or for other. Unfortunately, there are always people willing to use them for other: to profit at the expense of others, to bully others, for power-mongering, to invade privacy, to wage war...
I have a bit of experience with drones myself. Sort of. Not personally, but I was once married to someone who was in the "drone program" before they carried weapons. He was deployed as civilian support. You see, drones used by the military at that time were given to those who weren't good enough for the bigger, more powerful, more lethal toys. The less competent, who resented assignment to a drone and weren't exactly careful and precise in their use. I don't know if that's still true; I've been divorced for 13 years now and don't talk to the ex, who still works with them.
At that time, they weren't talking about weapons. They were talking about surveillance. Not of our own citizens, but of potential enemies. They were operating out of Kuwait in the 90s, watching Saddam. They were in use for surveillance purposes in Kosovo, but they weren't carrying weapons. They were in use by NASA and other scientific organizations, gathering climate data.
Like most advances, or ideas that are promoted as "new," what people create is corruptible, and is almost always corrupted to serve the worst of human characteristics. The ultimate purpose of drone technology was probably always to deliver weapons or spy on people, whatever the original STATED intentions were. While I'm horrified at the use they've been put to, I have to wonder: are they LESS accurate than the bombs dropped by bombers? Per capita, are there MORE civilian casualties? Why the horror over drones, and not the practice of bombing people, and the planet, to begin with, regardless of the delivery system?
So the eternal question is: Should we NOT allow technology to advance, because of the use it will inevitably be put to, or should we embrace advances and do other things (what?) to evolve humanity in a more civilized direction?
One of the "whats," obviously, is to stop funding military technology and toys, and put that funding to better uses. We all know the argument against that, though, and there's got to be a strong rebuttal for that argument. Whose got one?