Serious question: Which is worse -- hundreds of B-17s or 1 drone

[Robb]

12. The problem with drones is that warfare didn't end when it was supposed to.

At least I suspect that's the feeling from a lot of folks who consider themselves "anti-drone." Sort of like being "anti-bullet," we say, but it's not quite the same. The drone represents a big failure on the part of human beings.

Consider how much more of warfare we see in our homes, through television and the internet, than we did in the days of Dresden. We're not going to see bombing runs like that any more -- because we'd see bombing runs like that on video later, and wars are fought and won in the news now as much as the battlefield.

Drones are as much a product of the 24-hour news cycle as they are a product of the technology they need to fly. That warfare did not end under the closer scrutiny of the latter part of the last century -- but rather morphed into something we could shunt away and hide from our own eyes -- suggests we've collectively decided warfare is necessary. At least, necessary enough to craft elaborate ways of deluding ourselves about the horror of it all.

That's really, I think, what bothers us about them. Not that they're somehow a worse weapon, but rather what their proliferation says about us.