Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous

Chapter 7 argues that drones will enable international organizations, NGOs, and advocacy groups to monitor human rights abuses, deliver relief, and pressure governments for change. Small surveillance drones are ideally suited for taking on the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” jobs that are needed in these situations. In the future, drones will be able to transport and drop food and medicine in response to crises in places where humanitarian organizations are reluctant to send their own personnel. Drones will ultimately give these actors another tool with which they can monitor events on the ground and possibly shame governments into stronger action. But drones may also increase the ambitions of IOs/NGOs to intensify the pace of humanitarian relief and social change, even if doing so is unsustainable.

Eyes in the Sky

Chapter 4 argues that drones accelerate the trend toward information-rich warfare and place enormous pressure on the military to learn ever more about the battlefields that it faces. Today, for the United States, war is increasingly a contest for information about any future battlespace. This has had an organizational effect as the ability for the United States to know more through drone imagery has turned into a necessity to know more. The US military is becoming so enamored of its ability to know more through drone surveillance that it is overlooking the operational and organizational costs of “collecting the whole haystack.” Using drones for a vast surveillance apparatus, as the United States and now other countries have been doing, has underappreciated implications for the workload, organizational structures, and culture of the military itself.

Death from Above

Chapter 3 argues that drones undermine the legal and ethical prohibitions on assassination and extrajudicial violence outside of wartime. It traces the emergence of the practice of targeted killing from its origin to its embrace by the United States after the September 11 attacks. It shows how the United States adopted the use of drones alongside the practice of targeted killing to control risks as it fought a new war against al Qaeda, but found itself gradually drifting into more conflict zones and fighting new enemies. While the United States used drones to protect its pilots from physical risk, it altered the nature of the risks they faced and created new ones for the population who live under the drones. Drones also subtly changed how the United States wages its wars, making it more willing to countenance killing people outside of active battlefields. It concludes by discussing how more countries are now experimenting with targeting killings.

The Future

Chapter 9 restates the major theme of the book: that drones change strategic choices for their users by altering their calculation of risks and expanding their goals. It notes that while drones have many peacetime and humanitarian uses, it is their destructive potential that haunts the general public. The apparent absence of risk when using drones in conflict zones changes the choices and behavior of users. It concludes that drones cannot be considered as politically neutral, but rather as irreducibly political and inclined to privilege specific modes of action and thinking. It also identifies future trends that might intersect with drone technology, including the rise of AI, autonomy, swarming, miniaturization and others.

Automated Warfare

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the history of the development of drones. It shows that drone prototypes were in existence at the turn of the twentieth century and that their gradual development and use—either as missiles, target practice, or later, modern surveillance drones—proceeded in fits and starts. In the United States, this creation of drones was possible due to sustained investment by military and intelligence agencies, who took a risk on supporting unmanned platforms when the funds could have been devoted to manned aircraft or satellites. It reviews the history of the use of drones in World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam, and shows how drones became used in combat in the Persian Gulf War and the Balkans. Finally, it discusses the birth of the armed Predator drone, which could play a central role in the counterterrorism campaigns of the post 9/11 era.

Terrorist Drones

Chapter 5 argues that drones will allow non-state actors like rebel and terrorist groups to begin to level the playing field with powerful governments and to expand their goals as a result of being able to take to the skies. The low marginal cost of drones will be a boon to non-state actors who will use them to blunt the advantages that governments currently enjoy. In conflict zones, drones enable groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State to watch the battlefield in a way that they never could before and to strike at their enemies in surprising ways. At home, drones will enable terrorist organizations to strike civilian targets and perhaps even assassinate world leaders.

The New Race

Chapter 8 suggests that drones will amplify the competition for power and influence between states in conflict zones and produce new risks of deterrence breakdown and crisis escalation. It shows how states are already using drone technology to test the nerves and strategic commitments of their rivals, as well as to conduct surveillance that would otherwise been seen as too risky in crisis zones. This is because drones have changed risk calculations; what was once too dangerous with a manned aircraft is now possible with a drone. These strategic gambits are possible because of their low financial and human costs, as well as the illusion that drones can be used without the risk of escalation. As drones are now being used in more conflict zones around the world, they will begin to quietly reorder the risk calculations behind deterrence and coercion and produce greater chances of miscalculation, error, and accident.

The All-Seeing Drone

In chapter 6, drones are described as transforming the dynamics of protest and surveillance in democratic and non-democratic states. The use of drones by law enforcement and private companies poses a serious challenge to the protection of privacy and could contribute to a creeping surveillance state. But drones will also empower other groups—civil liberties groups and activists—to identify and publicize human rights abuses and press democratic governments to act. In authoritarian states, the embrace of drone technology also raises the possibility that anonymous dissent may eventually become difficult, if not impossible. Drones may also provide another tool for governments to engage in surveillance and repression of their secessionist regions.

The Drone Age

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the growth of drone technology around the world and introduces the main themes of the book. It distinguishes drones from similar forms of technology and discusses their unique features. It describes how drones have now come into the hands of new actors, such as governments, terrorist organizations, law enforcement, and others. It argues that the possession of drones is altering the strategic choices of all of these actors by changing their calculation of risks and by leading them to expand their goals, sometimes in unsustainable ways. It identifies the six consequences of these alterations for war and peace, each of which will be explained in detail in the book.