3 October 2020 | New Scientist | 33Book
The Drone Age: How
drone technology will
change war and peace
Michael J. Boyle
Oxford University Press
MACHINES are only as good as
the people who use them. They
are neutral – just a faster, more
efficient way of doing something
that we always intended to do.
That is the argument wielded by
defenders of technology, anyway.
Michael Boyle, a political
scientist at Rutgers University
in New Jersey, isn’t buying it.
From commerce to warfare, spy
craft to disaster relief, our menu
of choices “has been altered or
constrained by drone technology
itself”, he writes at the end of this
concise, comprehensive overview
of the world the drone made.
Boyle manages to be nuanced
and terrifying at the same time.
At one moment, he is pointing out
the formidable obstacles in the way
of launching a major drone attack.
In the next, he is explaining why
political assassinations by drone are
just around the corner. Turn a page
setting out the moral, operational
and legal constraints keenly felt by
upstanding US military drone pilots,
and you are confronted by shadowy
handlers in government, who
operate with virtually no oversight.
Though grounded in just the right
level of technical detail, The Drone
Age describes not so much the
machines but the kind of thinking
they have encouraged: an approach
that no longer distinguishes
between peace and war. In some
ways, this is a good thing. Assuming
war is inevitable, what isn’t to
welcome about a style of warfare
that involves working through a kill
list rather than cutting swathes
through the enemy’s population?
Well, two things. For US readers,
there is the way a few careful drone
strikes proliferated under President
Barack Obama (and even more so
under Donald Trump) into a global
counterinsurgency air platform.
And peacetime living is affected
for all of us, too. “It is hard to feel
like a human... when reduced to a
pixelated dot under the gaze of a
drone,” Boyle writes. If information
gathered on us expands, but not the
understanding or sympathy for us,
where is the positive for society?
Boyle brings proper philosophical
thinking to our relationship with
technology. He is indebted to French
philosopher Jacques Ellul, whose
book The Technological Society
(published in English in 1964)
transformed our thinking. Ellul
argued that in applying technology
to a problem, we adopt a mode of
thinking that emphasises efficiency
and instrumental rationality, but
also dehumanises the problem.
Applying this to drones, Boylewrites: “Instead of asking why
we are using aircraft for a task in
the first place, we tend to debate
instead whether the drone is better
than the manned alternative.”
The UN has been known to fly
unarmed surveillance drones low
to the ground to deter rebels. If
you adopt the thinking that Ellul
described, this must be good: it
means hostiles have been scattered
efficiently and safely. In reality,
there is no reason to suppose
that violence has been avoided,
only redistributed. Remember how
al-Qaeda, decimated by drones,
reinvented itself as an online brand.
Boyle warns us that drones vary
so substantially that “they hardly
look like the same technology”.
And yet The Drone Age keeps
this heterogeneous flock together
well enough to give it historical
and intellectual coherence.
The book is just as valuable on
surveillance, the rise of information
warfare and the way that the best
intentions can turn the world we
knew on its head. But, ultimately,
if you read only one book about
drones, this should be it. ❚The US Air Force operates
military drones such as
this MQ-1 PredatorAGEFOTOST
OCK/ALA
MYThe power of drones
Drones are waging a stealth war on how we see society and
rewriting how we think about war and peace, finds Simon Ings
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