Moral dilemma for our times: drone warfare

I've been worried about the moral and practical implications of relying on robots rather than soldiers for three years now (an old post here). Roger Cohen is on the same wavelength in his latest New York Times op-ed piece, and Jane Mayer has a recent article in The New Yorker which I'm reading now.

From Cohen's op-ed:

When the United States went into Iraq in 2003, it had a handful of pilotless planes, or drones; it now has over 7,000. The invasion force had no unmanned ground vehicles; the U.S. armed forces now employ more than 12,000....

But as [Jane] Mayer notes, “The embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.”

These are targeted international killings, no less real, and indeed more insidious, for their video-game aspect. The thing about robotic warfare is you can watch people get vaporized on a screen in Langley, Virginia, and then drive home for dinner with the kids. The very phrase “go to war” becomes hard to distinguish from going to work. That’s a conflation fraught with ethical danger. The barriers to war get lowered.

President Obama has apparently ordered as many Predator drone strike in his nine months in office as George W. Bush did in his last three years as president. That's not the kind of change I voted for.

UPDATE

I finished the Mayer article. An excerpt:

Peter W. Singer, the author of “Wired for War,” a recent book about the robotics revolution in modern combat, argues that the drone technology is worryingly “seductive,” because it creates the perception that war can be “costless.” Cut off from the realities of the bombings in Pakistan, Americans have been insulated from the human toll, as well as from the political and the moral consequences. Nearly all the victims have remained faceless, and the damage caused by the bombings has remained unseen. In contrast to Gaza, where the targeted killing of Hamas fighters by the Israeli military has been extensively documented—making clear that the collateral damage, and the loss of civilian life, can be severe—Pakistan’s tribal areas have become largely forbidden territory for media organizations. As a result, no videos of a drone attack in progress have been released, and only a few photographs of the immediate aftermath of a Predator strike have been published....

Critics have suggested that unmanned systems, by sparing these combatants from danger and sacrifice, are creating what Sir Brian Burridge, a former British Air Chief Marshal in Iraq, has called “a virtueless war,” requiring neither courage nor heroism.... Meanwhile, some social critics, such as Mary Dudziak, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, argue that the Predator strategy has a larger political cost. As she puts it, “Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on . . . endless war.”

The article is worth a read considering the number of strikes and hundreds of people who are dying... they're not all terrorists, folks. What kind of people are we to simply turn a blind eye to a war being waged remotely in our names?

Also in the Mayer article, a quote from former Army Ranger Andrew Exum:

There’s something important about putting your own sons and daughters at risk when you choose to wage war as a nation. We risk losing that flesh-and-blood investment if we go too far down this road.

Unmanned surge

Wired magazine reports on the "unmanned surge" of small robots being used in Iraq for such tasks as clearing roadside bombs.

While they may be making roads safer to travel in the short term, this path we're getting on has long term risks. The task of killing is always easier when conducted remotely. Here's the old post which expresses my concerns.

More robots

Apparently The Onion shares my concerns... :-)

We're just asking for trouble...

by arming robots. More here, my original conspiracy theory here.

It's something I worry about!

Killer robots, that is. Here was my original post, here's a new article on the topic.

Ethanol and robotic warrior follow-ups... and birthday wishes

I wonder if anyone is following these stories that continue to intrigue me... maybe you're all tired of hearing about them. :-)

First, a couple of articles on ethanol as a gasoline replacement. (See my original post on the topic.) My concern here is simply that politics is behind the huge subsidies of ethanol, a fuel whose benefits are not all that clear cut. A waste of money most likely, and potentially worse: complacency in the public and Congress because "we seem to be doing something about the addiction to oil problem."

• From the November 27th issue of The New Yorker, "Deal Sweeteners." An excerpt:

Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less. And while most of the time tariffs just mean higher prices and reduced competition, in the case of ethanol the negative effects are considerably greater, leaving us saddled with an inferior and less energy-efficient technology and as dependent as ever on oil-producing countries. Because of the ethanol tariffs, we’re imposing taxes on fuel from countries that are friendly to the U.S., but no tax at all on fuel from countries that are among our most vehement opponents.

• From the January/February issue of Sierra, "Corn-Fed Cars."

And secondly, Steve Featherstone wrote an article for the February issue of Harper's about "The Coming Robot Army." Not available online yet... (But see my original posts one and two from May 10 last year.)

QUOTE FOR THE DAY (for Antonio :-)

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

-- Helen Keller in The Open Door

And for Mom...

Happy Birthday!!!

UPDATES

After I wrote my 5/10 robot conspiracy theory posting, I thought some more about the potential impacts of transforming our military into a predominantly robotic force.

One thought is this: robots don't find themselves in moral quandaries. It is far easier to send robotic forces against targets that human soldiers might balk at attacking. A soldier on the ground will likely question an order to shoot a child; a robot would simply follow its program. Even the use of a remote controlled drone makes a morally suspect action easier, as the human controller sitting in a far away command bunker sees only through the limited sensors of the drone, not with his or her own eyes. So much easier to push a button that launches a missile from a thousand miles away than to aim and pull the trigger with the target just across the street.

The April 2006 edition of Harper's included a panel discussion on the possibility of an American coup d'etat by the military. One of the arguments made against such an action ever taking place is that Americans aren't going to take up arms against their neighbors. Reading some of the statements in this article (excerpts here), as well as about the complaints of religious bias at the Air Force Academy, I found myself wondering if that is really the case, given that our all volunteer military is now hardly representative of the population.

But a robotic force has no allegiance to anyone, or any principles, other than its programming. How much easier to send a bunch of automated tanks and drones against a rioting crowd, a noisy minority, or a political opponent! What dangers to the republic will we experience 20 years down the road if DARPA's strategic plans are realized?

(For some related thoughts, see Michael Ventura's April 28th column "Wild Cards.")

THE SIERRA CLUB recently posted an article on the cost of transporting food, and they've also got a site focused on the True Cost of Food. For a more detailed look at the costs of transporting food, one of the themes in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, see "Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil." One interesting statistic: it takes 127 calories of fossil fuel energy to transport one calorie of food energy (iceberg lettuce is their example) from the U.S. to England. Hmm...

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, the new documentary on global warming featuring Al Gore, opens May 24. Let's all go see it (and don't forget your sunscreen).

I, robot

And speaking of conspiracy theories, I've decided it's time to publish mine. Sure, it contains elements that others have picked up on, but I have a twist that will surely chill you.

I've been following a couple of stories develop over the last few years. The first is our military's increasing development of unmanned weapons like the Predator drone aircraft. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored the "Grand Challenge" last year, a competition in which autonomous vehicles, using only onboard sensors and computers, raced their way across the desert. The military, in fact, is exploring a wide range of unmanned drones for future deployment, including a robot warrior.

In 2000, the 106th Congress passed a law which included the following goals:

SEC. 220. UNMANNED ADVANCED CAPABILITY COMBAT AIRCRAFT AND GROUND COMBAT VEHICLES.

(a) Goal.--It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that--

(1) by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned; and
(2) by 2015, one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned.

Until 2004, the military had actually been working to achieve a robot-reliant force by the year 2012, a plan known as Future Combat Systems. Now the drive is to first deploy some of the fundamental infrastructure for such a robotic army, including the System of Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE), a Linux-based platform providing common interfaces, services, and applications upon which computer-operated weapons will be based.

Also in 2004, I read an article about the Pentagon's plans for the Global Information Grid (GIG), envisioned as a military internet for linking our command centers, soldiers on the ground, and, alarmingly, all of these new robotic weapons.

Yesterday I found a DARPA document titled "DARPA's Strategic Plan" which summarizes the work on Future Combat Systems as well as other areas of research, including "network centric warfare," "enhanced system performance" (the creation of "new systems with the autonomy and adaptability of living things"), and the "brain machine interface program." Spookiest of all is the "cognitive computing" section, which includes this description of the program's objectives:

In response, DARPA’s Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) is returning to its “roots” to take on Licklider’s vision again in a strategic thrust called “Cognitive Computing.” Cognitive computers can be thought of as systems that know what they are doing. Cognitive computing systems will have the ability to reason about their environment (including other systems), their goals, and their own capabilities. They will be able to learn both from experience and by being taught. They will be capable of natural interactions with users and will be able to explain their reasoning in natural terms. They will be robust in the face of surprises and avoid the brittleness and fragility of previous expert systems.

I'm not the first to notice the eerie resemblance of all of this to SkyNet, the globally networked supercomputer system in The Terminator which was responsible for nearly wiping out humanity. But since 2004 I've also been following another thread which, together with DARPA's plans and the new Global Information Grid, began to have me believe that The Terminator movies weren't something more than your typical Hollywood action flicks. What if instead they were a sick joke from the future?

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has been talking up the Equal Right to Govern amendment which would remove the Constitution's restriction that only native-born Americans may become President. In its place, the Constitutional would now allow immigrants who have been naturalized citizens for at least 20 years to run for president and vice president.

California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a friend of Senator Hatch's, is widely seen as the intended beneficiary of this admendment. And Schwarzenegger, of course, starred as the killer robot from the future in The Terminator.

It all began to make sense. Arnold is the terminator. He really is a robot sent from the future. We're building our SkyNet, and he'll become president and push the button to activate the system.

Who says robots don't have a sense of humor?

The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th.

-- From The Terminator

[After I wrote this, some less humorous thoughts occurred to me... read them here.]