Glenn Garvin | Apr 28 | Miami Herald
The real danger of robot armies is not that they will replace human judgment, but that they’ll replace human blood. ”œIt changes the politics of war in potentially terrible ways,” O’Meara said. ”œIt’s easy to go to war when there are no body bags coming home.”
Politicians will likely find shooting a seductively easy alternative to talking when the only casualties (at least on their side) will be diodes and microchips. In fact, they already have. Since President Obama took office, the United States has launched more than 250 aerial drone attacks in Pakistan alone. The cost in Pakistani lives reaches at least into the hundreds, probably the thousands; their judge, jury and executioner was some CIA kid with a joystick.
Obama has been able to keep this process largely secret because there have been no American casualties to generate controversy or open prying eyes. But a Washington Post poll earlier this year showed a whopping 83 percent approval rate for his drone war, including 77 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our robots but in ourselves.
Recent Comments