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What Happens In Vegas Happens In Afghanistan
theodp writes "After the morning commute from his Las Vegas apartment, Air Force captain Sam Nelson sits in a padded chair inside a low, tan building in Nevada, controlling a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan, prepared to kill another human being 7,500 miles away if necessary. Welcome to the surreal world of drone pilots, who have a front-row seat on war from half a world away. 'On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat,' explained retired Col. Chris Chambliss. 'And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game.' No wonder why the Air Force is interested in the Xbox LIVE crowd and the Army's opened a new arcade recruitment center!"
The risk to them: We kill them. If we ever get Bin Ladin in the sights of one of these things, it'll be well worth the investment.
The risk to us: We lose a drone. Pilot safe, and he can move on to another drone to keep going.
Sure, they can try to kill the pilot in Vegas... but that's a mainland murder and that's a whole lot easier to solve and capture them here. Furthermore, they've got to be here to do that.
So, net result is we're bringing the war to them using technology we have and they don't. Now our fighter planes don't need to have the fighter pilot on-board. They might own the ground in the war zone, but we own the air.
I think the people of the world including the leaders would think twice if they (that is, all leaders and followers) had to do this old-style with rocks and clubs. The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face. It is highly problematic if you can kill as if it were a computer game. There is no better prevention than to have your own life on the edge. Yes, I do know there are people willing to do anything regardless the consequence, but I think there would be a net benefit for all if you had to kill face-on.
Very nice, but the AF will still not allow enlisted to pilot the drones. Must have at least a 4 year degree in something, even underwater basket weaving will do, and be commissioned in order to fly anything.
So, you wanna fly jets in the Air Force and be in the sky?
Read it and weep.
Drones: much much cheaper than a manned jet and you don't have to worry about pilots being beheaded on TV. And one day, they'll be completely automated.
I wonder if this will cause a decline in Air Force recruiting?
Not everyone can fly the F-22 or F-35 - there's only so many jets. And as I pointed out above, the politicians have incentive to send in the drones.
I'm surprised the Navy hasn't picked up on this more.
Remembers me of the movie Toys (1992), A military general inherits a toy making company and begins making war toys, and recruiting kids to "play" a war simulation game that was in fact a remote control of the real thing. It took less than ten years to make it happen.
My other signature is a car
I know the drones fly slower than a normal jet but wouldn't the latency to something on the other side of the world be a problem? I'd think you'd want someone who's at least on the same continent.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I wonder when we'll have remote controlled tanks.
Also, instead of these "Did you know that the US Army uses drones"-stories I'd be much more interested in the details on how this is made safe. How much equipment would I have to steal to take controll of a drone or the entire robotics section of the army? ;->
Just out of curiosity, of course.
I'm sure we'll hear lots about the technology, but when you're in the field, surrounded by your fellow soldiers, then blowing the shit out of a car full of people is a shared experience. You can rely on your friends and fellow soldiers to help you deal with the fact that you just helped end a bunch of lives. Yes, it was the right thing. Yes, it was you or them. But all the justifications aside there's an emotional price to be paid that every person who's been in combat or seen it, or similar.
Now we have guys sitting in rooms filled with computer screens blowing people up, and is there anyone there to talk to about it? Can they light a cigarette after, put a fist in the wall, and say "Goddamnit, I wish there'd been another way!" No. You're stuck in a sterile environment, air conditioned, quiet, and after blowing the fuck out of someone you can get up and go get yourself a soda from the vend, grab your coat, file some paperwork, and drive home.
Huge disclaimer -- I'm not in the military, I don't know what these guys to for stress relief, or to deal with the emotional consequences of what they're doing. But I do know the dangers of becoming emotionally numb to violence, and without advocating for or against what the military is doing, I want to ask -- what are we doing to help these soldiers deal with those issues? For that matter, is it even an issue? I don't really know. But I think it helps to look someone in the eye if you have to kill them. To know they were a real person. To remember what you've done -- even if it was the right thing to do, even if there was no other choice, it's a statement about the value of human life.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
We start to treat killing the enemy the way we treat killing chickens at the Perdue packing plant.
At the most fundamental level, war is still human beings killing other human beings...usually human beings who've never met. One of the damping feed-backs in the war loop is the ugliness and brutality of it. That loop needs more, not fewer, negative feed-backs. Further depersonalization and sterilization of war may incentivize the decision to engage in it.
> net result is we're bringing the war to them using technology we have and they don't.
Oh yeah. None of the old-fashioned junk like Stealth Bombers. Why, I picked one of those up from a neighboring cave for cheap, just last month. :)
It's powerful new tech, though, and useful--more because of the increased visibility and flexibility brought on by the drones than because of lowering the risk to the pilot of being shot down.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
This sounds like his pet project, brought to life! Wonder how many points each target is....
If you cannot bring us comfort then at least you'll bring us joy....
Soldiers that come home shell shocked, traumatized for the rest of their lives but on the other side some becoming writers or what not and sharing the horrors of war with the general public.
Or soldiers largely untouched, but treating their experience like it was a video they watched on digg or a video game, completely detached from the inhumanity of it all - heck, during their lunch break, they may go to Walmart to get a game that will be more exciting to play after work. Even a current fighter pilot faces death, if somewhat distanced to what his weapons do on the ground.
Similar, but different authors. Earlier story you point to does has more technical info and includes some cool photos, including one of the user interface.
care to explain your point of view?
weinersmith
There has to be a way to set up a game server for this, so the war in Afghanistan can be handled by the PS3 community.
#dronepilate: Got missile lock, about to fire
#badassbomber: Hold off dude, it looks like a wedding
#dronepilate: I hate weddings
Within 10-15 years many countries will have this technology. I find that terrifying.
When the soldiers waging the war are half a world away at an undisclosed location at no personal risk, then the barriers to starting a war will be greatly reduced - it is much easier for politicians to justify a war to their populace when the home side's soldiers won't be getting killed.
It's increasingly starting to look like the 21st century will have even more wars than the 20th, and that is not something to be proud of.
not looking forward to the further freedoms I'll lose as an american when the agents of these militias start killing these pilots, and probably some others in the attempt to, on US soil.
im confident the overzealous US government will use this as an excuse to 'protect me' by further tracking my identity and tabs on my life.
point is: keep these pilots who are killing people the fuck away from urban american areas, or we're all going to be targets. and in case you say 'we already are', i don't see any reason to make it worse.
damn mythical 'war' is getting to negatively impact my life more and more, and i'll happily vote for, pay money to, or pledge allegiance to whatever i can to not be involved with the warmongering that this country has been engaged in. pretty confident our behavior in iraq and afghanistan has not generally enhanced the safety for much of anybody, compared to the consequences...
overall, this is a step in the wrong direction.
Long live the BSD license
diden't they do this in a movie? but it was people playing pc games / arcade games controlling bots that where killing real people but it was billed as a game?
any ways what happens if the bot get's lagged out / jammed?
The subject of drone pilots was recently covered in a PBS Front Line documentary called Digital Nation, specifically Immersion Training, and Remote Control War.
Worth watching.
9/11/01 turned out as only yet another excuse as to why we still roam the world and kill people for resources.
9/11/01 was significant from similar events only in that it happened in the USA. Only in that it was *our* civilians that got slaughtered. The west have done worse many times, and many times after 9/11/01.
The only way to prevent war is to fight the reasons for them. Starting more wars only starts more wars.
We are all God's parents.
Scary thought comes to mind. It does not take much effort to put together a flying R/C plane or chopper, a camera with remote video feed and some nasty payload. If "us" can have this kind of tech, so can "they", even if lower grade with huge limitations.
Should radiowaves (and hence control of the flying object) be jammed near possible terrorism targets?
I joined two users too late.
The Bravery of Being Out of Range. Roger Waters called it 20 years ago.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
I can see this working on Terrorism because it is using technology to become smaller and more mobile than the terrorists. In essence, an attempt to out "guerrilla" the enemy. This is most likely the future of warfare because the benefits are huge, some of which are:
- Increased security forces in the home land
- Reduced causalities in war
- Mobility and Intel difficult for humans
You have to look at these drones as you would dropping bombs. They are essentially providing the same service but at a much smaller and detailed level, which is better than bombing in the case of terrorism. The notion that having drones will disconnect the emotional attachment of killing can be made for bomber pilots as well. The difference being one is in an office instead of a cockpit.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
What the hell happened on November 9th?
Couldn't agree more. Using drones will only lead to more innocent people getting killed.
And really, troll? I guess being against war as the solution to every problem is defined as trolling by some war hawk mod.
then assembled and killed thousands in an attack nobody had thought of defending against yet.
Are you sure?
I've got no problem with killing an animal in a fair fight[...]
You strap on antlers and go head-to-head with rutting stags often? Hunting ain't exactly a fair fight...not even bow hunting, really.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun
The irony of military robots is that we are using them to enforce a global economic system that is based on forcing humans to do labor in exchange for the right to consume the fruits of industry. Why not just build robots to do the work directly instead? Why not use global networks to freely share information about how to make the world a better place that works for everyone? The same is true for nuclear missiles intended to fight over oil and land instead of using the same technologies to build nuclear power plants (or solar ones and wind ones) or to create self-replicating space habitats or seasteads for endless new land. We need to start thinking in 21st century terms now that we have 21st century technology. Otherwise, we will likely accidentally kill ourselves with the tools of abundance.
As Albert Einstein said:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Or further:
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/nuclear1.htm
"""
"Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort -- concern for the big, unsolved problems of how to organize human work and the distribution of commodities in such a manner as to assure that the results of our scientific thinking may be a blessing to mankind, and not a curse."
"""
Or more on how Einstein was more than the disconnected absent minded professor he is made out to be:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/eins-s03.shtml
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
It is not the nukes and drones that may kill us all eventually, it is the unrecognized irony.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Never thought of that, makes perfectly sense.
how long until
RC airplane flyers already have planes with real-time video feeds and some of them even have head-tracking goggles. Of course, they tend to be much smaller and short-range than a military drone.
You can search Youtube for 'fpv flight': http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fpv+flight&search_type=&aq=f
One guy already weaponized one for the 4th of July: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBn1h0x-37E
Ender's Game, found that book in high school it's long been one of my favorites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game#Plot_summary Interesting how back in '85 sci-fi had already locked on to this emerging tech... and possible abuses.
I can't be the only one who wants to know: Is he missing a tooth, and why?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This is really cool to read about - looks like an extremely interesting project from engineering POV. How they deal with latency alone must be damn impressive. I guess the drones must have some sort of autonomy and the pilot basically says "go west, kill spider" or something to the tone. Probably an AI-like engine similar to those in RTS games - point and click but the low-level details (like actual flying!) are handled locally. So cool...
-- Sig down
Our country, our rules.
Anonymous Coward
One should always avoid a fair fight. The object of a fight is to win, not to make it fair. Next, I expect you to tell me that in a boxing match, the one who is considered a strong boxer should have to fight with one arm tied, or under the influence of a CNS depressant, or with weights on the upper arms to cause slower punching, in the interest of fairness?
Uh-uh. If you have to fight somebody, you make it as unfair as possible in your favor. If somebody pulls a knife and demands your wallet, pulling a gun would be a good move. Pulling a knife yourself would not be a good move.
If it's a war, you bring the biggest, best-equipped army you can, get the best battlefield intelligence you can, and fight from the most advantageous terrain you can and with the best air support you can bring.
Next, you'll want us to not use medicine when we're sick because it's not fair to the bacteria?
About eating stuff I've killed and gutted myself? Check.
Wanna see something that really makes you not want to eat meat that you didn't kill yourself? Tour a slaughterhouse.
You've underestimated that. The U.S. government has bombed or invaded 24 countries since the 2nd world war. The U.S. government has killed or caused the deaths of more than 11,000,000 people since then. In some ways, the U.S. government is the most violent government that has ever existed.
If by in some ways you mean barring the Red Chinese, the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandans, Imperial Britain, or just for Godwin's sake the Nazi's then yes you are correct. Otherwise you're a troll.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Does this seem oddly similar to Ender's Game to anyone else?
I got the RSS feed for this story, and thought the same thing. I came to this page late and wondered why no one had tagged it as such.
"I've got no problem with killing an animal in a fair fight while respecting the animal. It's natural carnivore behavior."
"Fairness" has nothing to do with the animal kingdom and is purely a human fantasy.
If animal competition were "fair", the slowest zebra wouldn't be lion shit because the lion would want a fair fight instead of dinner.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Wow this article is coincidentally so close to the September 2009 Popular Science story titled The Future of Remote-Control Warfare. Pg;36 Change the name to Captain Adam Brockshus, drive 45 minutes instead of 40 and these guys should carpool unless they are on different shifts. I guess there isn't much new to tell that hasn't already been written before so it really boils down to as long as it is a different Captain acting as tour guide then it isn't the same story. These remote control pilots must get the same briefing notes on what to say and not say when being interviewed by some hack. Is there really any point of sending out different reporters? It really is a waste of money but what else is there ti do on slow news days. I was at first almost convinced that this Los Angeles Times story was a reprint, or mostly plagiarized. Then I realized this is the military, of course anything printed would have the same look and feel..
With the X-47B the game changes....
It can fly and fight with the man observing the "loop" on a few planes.
Autonomously fly,
Autonomously or on designation fight air-to-air
Autonomously or on designation carry out ground attacks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbbMMAThTiYVideo advertisement for X47B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajFZleD4_lk&feature=relatedVideo of test flight of the proof of concept X47A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlRR2MPU0UVideo of unveiling
BTW several have already been delivered to the Navy for testing and certification.
X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Taking Shape On Board USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72)
http://www.sofmag.com/wp/2010/02/x-47b-unmanned-combat-air-system-taking-shape-on-board-lincoln/SOF Mag on the X-47B
It is going to be sweet.
I am a USMC combat vet of multiple OIF and other operational deployments. This is a big issue, but from what I've read everyone seems to be focusing on the wrong parts of the issue and its results. By using remote technology, what we do is remove the horror you feel from seeing the end result of what you have done. Shooting someone from afar (or bombing with a drone) is one thing, but shooting multiple people, including accidental civilians, and then after-wards having to walk around in the carnage you have produced and is very different. But this is not the real problem, it is that the military and governmental officials use tactics like this to keep the amount of morale high, the main result being a lack of questioning of the most important question in war. Why? This is why I could no longer serve the military. I grew up as your traditional war guy. I was a southern baptist from Texas, I had a long family military history, as my dad is a Marine, both my grandfathers were in the military, my great uncle was wounded on Guadalcanal and died on the 2nd push on Iwo Jima. I believed in god and my country with a great bit of idealism, and joined not long after the initial Afghan invasion. The more war I experienced, the more I questioned things, and eventually started looking into them. The deeper I looked, the more and more I felt betrayed by my country. The very moral fabric of my life was ripped out from under me, I now no longer believe in god, in my country, and especially I hate patriotism and nationalism for their use as tools to blind young men. These wars are about two things, money and power, make no mistake. But I digress, (I could go on for ages about the subject, I am currently doing a rough outline for a book, but it is more for me than anything else) The point is you remove the horror of war, and you remove the main reason that people should realize why it is so horrible and should be avoided if at all possible, creating a culture that views war with a distant afterthought, bound with the strings of selective justification. To this day though, I have not come up with an answer of how to prevent this. It seems to happen regardless. We have a war, we have tons of vets with PTSD, and we forget our lessons, and 20 years later we are in another war that creates the same problems. The first step I can think of, is to at least try to educate our young population about war. I see things like Army propoganda trailers in the movie theatres that make war look like an exciting episode of Call of Duty. We should start showing films of you buddy dying from an IED blast, from another being trapped in the Humvee as it is on fire, films of insurgents blown to bits, about how some of us can barely leave our apartment or keep a job because we are so on edge or paranoid, how the VA treats you like a pile of shit. We must do anything and everything to stop the politicians and the powers that be from inflicting this on a new generation later. Fuck the politicians and all the things that keep them there and all their benefits.
If it's a war, you bring the biggest, best-equipped army you can, get the best battlefield intelligence you can, and fight from the most advantageous terrain you can and with the best air support you can bring.
Or you simply hijack the other guy's planes and crash 'em into the biggest, most important buildings you can find. Small losses for you, *huge* damage to the enemy, what's not to love?
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
You're forgetting (or never knew) the many times that Westerners have been slaughtered by Muslim extremists in the last century. Hint: it didn't start with 9/11 and has been going on for a very, very long time (with Islamic adherents as the antagonists).
The US has been fighting Muslim barbarians since shortly after its founding. Hell, the very first action by the USMC was against Muslim pirate-lords who were doing much the same thing as current Muslim extremists are doing today. (Look up the Barbary Wars, in the event you haven't heard of them. I doubt you'll find reference to American Imperialism like you're surely hoping for, as there wasn't any. I should note: if we were to handle things now the way we did then, there would be no further issues with these cultural primitives.)
The bulk of Islam may be peaceful, but the people in their lands who control the power are not, and never have been. They have been a nuisance for the West for at least 200 years. It is only recently, since Western technologies such as air planes, telecommunications, modern weaponry, and cheap commercial transit have made it possible for them to strike us at home, have they become a threat.
If you want to blame someone for it, British Imperialism would be the most logical target. After that, Mohammed himself or the very nature of Arab tribal culture and politics which has become so infused with Islam as to be inseparable.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Announcing a new on-line game for all of you armchair warriors: YouKILL.com! With the U.S. Airforce now introducing new Predator drones with 10 cameras each and more and more battlefield "robots" (like BigDog) everyday, there is far too much sensory data for our overtaxed professional soldiers to process. So, now we allow YOU the average citizen to partake in this wonderful way to defend democracy and earn gaming points at the same time!
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Second stage TARGETING - Can you take out an insurgent at 3km without harming the orphanage next door? Here again, you (and 10 newly selected random fellow citizen targeters) will wait for "the perfect moment" to pick off the bad guys. In this level, you'll need to consider range, airspeed, armanent, cover and, of course, COLLATERAL DAMAGE. When a majority of you and your teammates think the time has come to fire your feed will be instantly passed to the final stage: FIRING. If you, as measured by the our computers, are consistently picking the best time to shoot compared to your colleagues, we'll promote you to...
Final stege FIRING - Here's where the fun REALLY begins! Now, you'll be able to take out bad guys FOR REAL! Feel the excitement as you unleash high speed rockets tipped with explosives at the enemy! Not only will you get to keep your online footage of each kill but you'll receive a commemorative coffee mug! (Just don't get too trigger happy otherwise you might get a visit from some of our military lawyers.)
Not a U.S. Citizen? No problem, we have a bunch of other suppression activities... I mean games available. If you're British you can play YouCOP which takes advantage of England being the video surveillance capital of the world. Here you (and 10 other "Brits") watch for illegal activity and report it! For now, no weaponry involved. But don't worry about it!
Not a U.S., or British citizen? Care to remain anonymous? Through special arrangement with some other governments we also have a new gaming site: YouREPRESS! Here you can target Tibetans, punish the Palestinians or any other group that our clients want to suppress. All we need is your eyeballs and a good twitch reflex! Remember, points you earn in our games will be tradable for virtual items and maybe even induction into the armed forces of your choice!
NeoOCP - crowdsourcing for the benefits of Big Governments worldwide! (Not a big government but a big corporation instead? Don't worry, we'll be announcing new crowdsourced spy products for you too! Like our new YouDRM; we'll make it profitable for people to snitch!).
We had George Bush telling us that he saw the world in terms of 1950s American cowboy films. Clearly he wasn't alone. This is why we're frightened of some Americans having so much power.
If you see your moral and ethical guidance regards something as brutal, immense and destructive as war in terms of fantasy cowboy films, the world needs to live in fear and terror of you.
Tell us your experience of war.
Are you saying that only fights between members of the same spieces are fair?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
And the West has been a nuisance to Islam since the Crusades. Most of the modern trouble the US has with the middle-east originates from American imperialism and terrorism. You can only overthrow so many democratic governments, and murder so many innocent people, before they start hitting back.
I'm surprised by there isn't more terrorism from Latin America, they have more reason than anyone to hate the US.
And the West has been a nuisance to Islam since the Crusades. Most of the modern trouble the US has with the middle-east originates from American imperialism and terrorism. You can only overthrow so many democratic governments, and murder so many innocent people, before they start hitting back.
I'm surprised by there isn't more terrorism from Latin America, they have more reason than anyone to hate the US.
Please, don't give them ideas.
Since they stopped financing dictatorships in the nineties, we in Latin America are a lot better socially and financially. Their involvement hasn't ended, but it slowed down enough to be less harmful.
In Latin America there has been a lot of fratricide, although externally funded, so the real enemy is not perceived to be outside. There is a lot of resentment for what the US are responsible of (things like Plan Condor here in the south) , but not irrational hatred towards the US. I live in Uruguay (far south), and most people here don't like US foreign policies, but there is probably no one here willing to lift a finger against them.
Anyhow, some Latin Americans are getting back at the US by colonizing them back. Illegal, legal immigration and faster birth rates are a peaceful and inevitable invasion.
Whatever, Red Foreman.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Except historically, there was still plenty of risk of being a crossbowman, even from the "safety" of castle walls. Indeed, being under seige in a castle was a very dangerous situation to be in.
Can you cite me an example of where a remote operator in Vegas has been at risk from the enemy? No, thought not.
The Crusades were relatively minor an irritation to the Moslem world - until they were coincident with the Mongol onslaught from the east.
Tens of millions of moslems were horribly murdered - by Genghis Khan.
Those Mongols? Mostly Christian and Buddhist.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Drones are already being used in the USA for border patrol (including in my own state):
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=1727873
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/us/08drone.html
So, these killer robots are already being used within the USA. It is claimed they are unarmed for now (ignoring that the military could fly them into things just like Joe Stack did).
These incremental small things are just more steps to Skynet or worse. Why object to a few unarmed test drone flights in US border states? Such a big fuss about nothing, and the borders need to be inspected to prevent terrorists from coming in and taking our freedoms and lives and property. And, then, well, if we're guarding the borders, it would be foolish to not have the things armed, in case the next Joe Stack tries to fly in from Canada or Mexico, or if they found other real trouble and there was no one else around. And because they are so useful and give us such a sense of security, of course we need more of them... And with so many in the air, if they were more automated, they would be more reliable and one soldier could run more at once, more like an air traffic controller than a pilot... And since people make mistakes, well, why not automate the traffic control part as the next logical step to securing our airspace? Every step makes sense. Every step has no alternative.
And, most importantly, every step makes profits for somebody somewhere. ... A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war."
"War is a Racket: by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler"
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Major General Butler has some suggestions, but they did not work apparently. So, we may need to make other changes to our overall economic system to remove the profit motive from national security work before it destroys us all. We can move towards a basic income so people don't feel they have to turn to the military just for a basic living (and so anyone who does go into it will be interested in true national security, not a paycheck). Or we can move towards a gift economy, better local subsistence production by 3D printing, or better resource-based planning, or other possibilities. All of these would take the same sorts of technology that goes into Predator drones (like networked communications, advanced materials, computers, image processing, robotics, teamwork, nanotech, and more) and use them for more human ends as well as real mutual intrinsic security, not "security theater".
As Albert Einstein said of nuclear weapons, and is as true or more of smart killer robots:
http://www.heartquotes.net/Einstein.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watc
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Please see my other comment here on the irony of all this, which concludes:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1558202&cid=31228950
"The same reason we can put relatively cheap Predators in the air is the same reason we don't really need them much as a global society: the emergence of global abundance through technology produced collaboratively."
If you want to see the state of the art in robotics, here is a list of videos I put together (everything from driving cars, to pruning grapevines, to making pancakes, to milking cows).
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
What are we even fighting over?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
As I suggest in this other comment, the main reason the US is involved in so many wars is unacknowledged irony. :-) From:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1558202&cid=31228950
"The same reason we can put relatively cheap Predators in the air is the same reason we don't really need them much as a global society: the emergence of global abundance through technology produced collaboratively."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
When we British did it, it was naked Imperialism, but when you Americans do it, it's just protecting yourselves from those nasty foreigners, eh?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And the West has been a nuisance to Islam since the Crusades.
Very true, and true in the other direction as well.
Most of the modern trouble the US has with the middle-east originates from American imperialism and terrorism.
America is merely the symbol of the West. The American "imperialism" in reality is nothing compared to what countries like Britain did in the Middle East, yet America is the Great Satan.
Don't attribute too much rationality to the propaganda of Islamists. They make a case against American imperialism because they know that buys them a lot of support from leftists in the West, not because it makes any sense or is the true of their actions.
Fair enough, but in that vein, our response to 9/11, around 9/13 or so, when we were sure who did it, should have been to blanket Afghanistan with nukes and leave nothing much larger than a cockroach alive in the entire country and hold it up as an example of what will happen to you if you screw with us.
No, I'm not trolling. Or kidding.
As I point out in other replies, if you look at how hunter/gatherers lived, you will see that people can function quite well among relative affluence.
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
It's true that material affluence by itself can produce problems, as this study shows the general poor mental health of many wealthy families in the USA:
"The Culture of Affluence: Psychological Costs of Material Wealth"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/
But, I think that leaves out that our society in the USA has gone too far towards an extreme, and that trend has been amplified by competitive compulsory schooling:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
"""
And that is reflected in the dominant mythology of the USA:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
And US foreign policy around the world has actively tried to destroy anything that might have emerged as a possible alternative good example. For example, the first September 11, in 1973, in Chile:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-December/006458.html
So, people can live well together in abundance, and we have historical proof of that. Some people, one might even call this mental illness, can not. How to deal with that is an interesting question, but maybe, as a start, we should make sure the lunatics are not running the asylum? :-( And all it takes, in a democratic society, to do that, is to have good candidates and to vote for them, as well as to build positive alternative non-governmental organizations and better businesses.
So, respectfully, if you keep looking for better answers, you may sometimes find them.
As for robots, they
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Both are of the same vein. Any time you are using civilian deaths as part of your war strategy - in whatever flavour it is then you are basically a war criminal.
So you think that the winning side in WWII are war criminals (America killed entire cities of civilians with nukes, Britain firebombed many cities causing horrific casualties)? Total war renders civilian deaths part of the strategy, and if one side starts doing it, the other follows quickly, as not to do so would mean defeat. By your logic most participants in most wars (even arguably the most justified one of the 20C) were war criminals.
When you're talking about warfare, which involves killing and maiming other humans, very little is sacrosanct, and very little is honourable about it. That's not platitudes, it's a serious point about the hollow nature of boasts of 'honourable warfare'. There is no such thing.
It's just as cowardly to sit insulated from a conflict thousands of miles away and pull the trigger on a blurry image of a possible suspect fighter, as it is to plant bombs trying to provoke terror in civilian populations thousands of miles from a conflict. Just as cowardly to drop cluster munitions or radioactive munitions near civilian populations. All these actions inflict massive damage on innocent civilian populations, just as part of the strategy. In one case they are labelled as infidels and unworthy of consideration, in the other they are called collateral damage and considered an acceptable price of war.
War is not about who is right, but who is left.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
If you dig a little deeper, you may recall what caused the Crusades. Just a little deeper...
Care to explain how US "imperialism" and "terrorism" from America (pick a couple examples, if you will) have resulted in Middle Eastern hostilities towards the US? I'll forgive your supposition if you can substantiate it.
It should not surprise you that there isn't much terrorism from Latin America. They are not Muslims. Honestly, if anyone has an excuse to be terrorists, it's the people in South and Central America. I'm sure even the Polish have fucked them over. But they're not culturally hostile because, well, they're not Muslim.
We're talking about a part of the world here where it is not only commonplace but largely culturally accepted (the same way, say, driveby shootings are in S. Hollywood) - for husbands to kill their daughters or wives for disobeying them or having a relationship out of marriage.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Thanks. I've enjoyed our dialogue.
On your point, while I like the metaphor, we are not talking about real tapeworms. We are talking about human beings with a certain culture and a certain ideology that make them act like tapeworms. And we are talking about others who help them to be parasites through ignorance or not thinking they have options. How many kids join the military due to the "economic draft"?
http://www.workers.org/us/2005/economic-draft-0303/
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/Economic_Draft.html
And sure, many parasites got these wars going precisely so they could get a bit of the action, one dollar in their pocket for ever thousand dollars of tax payer money wasted. A key idea here:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
A good sci-fi book on this broader theme of abundance and war is James P. Hogan's 1982 novel "Voyage from Yesteryear".
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
As he points out there, the tapeworms as you mention will not get much support if everyone else has abundance. Besides, in a word of abundance, if some "lunatic" wants to build self-replicating space habitats on the Moon, why worry about it? There would be plenty of energy and stuff to go around, and it might provide some amusement.
So, ask yourself, why do people want to be tapeworms? And why do others go along with their plans?
I think key issues are "ignorance" and "want":
"A Christmas Carol: Ignorance and Want"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6MFN8yiVc0
But it is precisely abundance from the internet and robotics that may end ignorance and want.
So then, we are left mainly with the issue of mental illness to have people causing wars. Adequate vitamin D from supplements or sunshine can help relieve a lot of that too:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
More resources for families could help relieve some of it too:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene
"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail--but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people."
Hitler wanted to be a painter for example:
"Adolf Hitler painting may have hung in Sigmund Freud's surgery"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7221058/Adolf-Hitler-painting-may-have-hung-in-Sigmund-Freuds-surgery.html
Would he have turned to politics if he had not had to worry about selling his paintings?
Will the world always have a problem with bullies and the mentally ill who hoard w
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"War as a video game; what better way to raise the ultimate soldier?" - Solid Snake
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Umm...no...nope, if you look right back up there, I think it's pretty clear that I said a fight between a person and a deer, in which the person only used antlers strapped to its head, would be a fair fight.
(Conversely, if you could give a deer workable digits, a rifle, and basic knowledge of rifle use, then hunting might be a fair fight.)
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun