IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018 - 8

Book Reviews
Jacob Ossar

Drone Warfare
Drone Warfare (War and Conflict in the Modern World)
By John Kaag and Sarah Kreps. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014, 188 pages.

ver since the discovery of the rock, military technology has
made it possible to
kill from a distance.
While rocks remain in use, millennia of design iterations have brought
us the laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missile, which can be fired by
remote control from a MQ-9 Reaper
drone by an operator as far away as
1150 miles. Already, thousands of
people have been killed in this way.
Drone Warfare, by philosopher John
Kaag and political scientist Sarah
Kreps, invites us to consider the
implications of this for politics and

First up for consideration is
how drones undermine political
accountability.
domestic accountability, for international law, and for ethics.
Despite its title, Drone Warfare
is not a comprehensive treatment
of drone warfare. There is very little
discussion of the technical aspects
of drones beyond what is necessary
in order to understand their uses.
With that information briefly established, the book focuses squarely
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2018.2804962
Date of publication: 2 March 2018

on normative questions about drone
warfare. Moreover, the book's discussion addresses these questions
almost exclusively with regard to the
United States, the largest and most
prolific user of drones. The U.S. is
also, the authors hope, in the best
position to establish norms and best
practices regarding drones by virtue
of its military might and international stature.
While drones are still a developing
technology, the drone arsenal possessed by the United States already
encompasses a wide variety of drone
types with a correspondingly extensive range of potential missions. The
authors have wisely narrowed their focus to perhaps
the most troubling mission,
the one most fraught with
legal, political, and moral
i mplic at ions: the use of
drones to kill suspected terrorists. These attacks can be
"targeted killings," aimed at
a known individual, or "signature strikes," aimed at someone whose behavior fits a "signature"
or profile of suspected terrorists.
A recurring frustration I encountered with the book (one no doubt
shared by its authors!) was the paucity of detailed, accurate data about
drone use. While much of the book's
discussion is therefore unavoidably
speculative, the authors do their
best to lay out what facts are available about drone strikes on suspected terrorists. The U.S. Department
of Defense carries out drone strikes
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

in combat zones (Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Libya). Outside of combat zones
(chiefly in Pakistan, Yemen, and
Somalia) these take place under the
aegis of the CIA. The U.S. began using
drones to kill suspected terrorists in
the aftermath of the September 11th
attacks when Congress enacted the
Authorization for the Use of Military
Force (AUMF), handing the George
W. Bush administration extremely
open-ended authority to target those
who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."
The Obama administration continued and expanded upon the drone
policies of its predecessor, conducting more than one hundred drone
strikes in Afghanistan alone in
2008 and more still in the following
years. Drone strikes outside of combat zones also increased markedly
under Obama. Some of those killed
have been American citizens, most
famously Anwar Al-Awlaki. The AUMF
remains in effect, and is now being
used to justify operations against
groups that did not even exist when
it was passed.
With some basic facts briefly established, the authors turn to normative matters. First up for consideration
is how drones, which enable governments to engage in covert warfare
with minimal risk of loss of life on
the part of their service members,
undermine political accountability.
According to one influential strand of
democratic theory (which the authors
trace back to Kant's essay on perpetual peace), the high cost of war
∕

March 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018