The Standard Review

June 6, 2011

"‘I spend a lot of time explaining to pilots that we’re not trying to get rid of their job—it’s just changing,’ says Missy Cummings, the former Navy pilot who runs the Humans and Automation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her lab tries to help people and automation benefit from each other’s strengths and account for each other’s weaknesses. One of her grad students built an iPhone application to fly little robo-copters, and in three minutes taught people off the street how to use it. She says it could just as easily operate multi-million-dollar UAVs [TO KILL PEOPLE]."

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*Pilot Not Included

addendum mine. three thousand words, much hand-wringing about the implications of unmanned aircraft on military pilot culture, and not a single mention of the larger, you know, ethical issues raised by the notion of combat with zero risk to one of the combatants, or more specifically, the difference between “combat” and, well, um, MURDER.

then again, there is this:

“As a young man, I would have said, ‘Gosh, they’re trying to take my job,’ ” says Hubbard, who has flown more than 26 years as a Navy pilot. As a commander of more than 500 pilots, he now takes a longer view. “The unique thing in the future is I won’t have to put my blood and treasure forward to do the nation’s business. I think that is a brilliant concept in itself. But there will always need to be men in the loop to make those decisions that are critical.”

…such as deciding which brown person to remotely kill from your air conditioned cubicle in nevada in order to do your nation’s business while protecting your blood and treasure.

who am i supposed to be rooting for again?

(via superdiscochino)

Yeah, if fighting a war against a nation with fewer or lower-grade weapons than us is a pretty immoral action (it is), doing it like this is basically 100% gross.

10:01am | URL: http://tmblr.co/Z9_IVy5qhSXs

(Notes: 6)