Scott Horton Interviews Nick Turse
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Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, discusses his article “A Drone-Eat-Drone World;” the Pentagon’s eager anticipation of autonomous drones that decide when and where to rain death from above; why drones are rapidly proliferating even though they aren’t effective in fighting and winning wars; the 1-to-1 UAV flight time to maintenance ratio; and the ability of drones to evade rifle-wielding tribesmen – but not semi-modern air defenses (or Pakistani public opinion).
MP3 here. (19:20)
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the just published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook.
Roger Lafontaine
June 7th, 2012 at 3:45 am
I don't think the US military-government cares if or why 'they hate us ' anymore than a bully cares if he is hated. They see their victims as being impotent and powerless and they see themselves as becoming increasingly more and more powerful. All they have to do is scare the 'little people' (voters) and take their money to build more and more weapons.
guest
June 7th, 2012 at 7:30 am
By making the drones autonomous to that degree is a cynical end run around accountability. But since when did the Pentagon give a damn about that?
DavidDaoud
June 7th, 2012 at 9:27 am
Scott, I enjoy your youthful prattle, but please try to cut down on the coffee.
Claus Eric Hamle
June 7th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
The World must unite against the evil impire.
RICK DAPRICK
June 8th, 2012 at 1:53 am
WHAT HAPPEN'D TO THE [ANTI-BULLY'N]LAWS?
John Ellis
June 9th, 2012 at 3:45 pm
Deceitful robots — May never happen
Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of a computer to have human intelligence, namely the ability to rationalize problems and take corrective action.
A relatively simple task if the computer is programmed to keep all humans out of harm’s way by never allowing one human to enrich himself upon the misery of another. But that is the reverse of the way our government functions, and to program a computer to do things like causing those with much wealth to enrich themselves upon the misery of those with less wealth, and to generate a pretense of good to hide the corruption of it, well you can see that the deceitful mind of man may be a thing we can never duplicate.
John Ellis
June 9th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Deceitful robots — May never happen
Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of a computer to have human intelligence, namely the ability to rationalize problems and take corrective action.
A relatively simple task if the computer is programmed to keep all humans out of harm’s way by never allowing one human to enrich himself upon the misery of another. But that is the reverse of the way our government functions, and to program a computer to do things like causing those with much wealth to enrich themselves upon the misery of those with less wealth, and to generate a pretense of good to hide the corruption of it, well you can see that the deceitful mind of man may be a thing we can never duplicate.