The points of difference have a strong smell of machine translation. E.g. "Killing for the sake of killing" turns into "I’ll kill you for the killing"; "Connecting Vets" becomes "Veterinary connection".
@dang This article should probably replace the submitted URL (edit: or alternatively, that article in the top reply comments)
related discussion thread: (identifying abuse of machine translation in published journal papers)
Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was.
The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.
Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hiding. Noone was hurt luckily. My point being, it's not always malice: sometimes it's just a chain of people making small mistakes and bad decisions that end up adding up.
> “We killed two innocent men and a charger,” the U.S. official wrote in a personal journal that day, using the military jargon “charger,” which means child.
Got to wonder why the need to replace a 5 character 1 syllable word with a longer 7 character 2 syllable word, a little easier to stomach than saying, writing, or feeling like you just killed a child?
Google is complicit. In 2017-2018, Google Cloud division developed software for the US military to watch drone footage and classify things like "man with a radio". Diane Greene, Urs Holzle, and Jeff Dean got up and lied about it to me and other Googlers in a meeting in April 2018. Specifically, they said it was only a $9M project, but it was already negotiated to $18M and on track for $270M of extensions. They also said a lot of words trying to rationalize their moral failure, greed, and callousness.
> The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.
nothing new, there's a well known quote from a former NSA/CIA director: "We kill people based on metadata" [1]
We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people.
We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians. We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how this is basically the Islamic Holocaust.
I wonder if Facebook Twitter etc. banning violent and bloody content has prevented the public from protesting these things more widely. It is well known that TV broadcasts of Vietnam led to outrage growing against that war.
In a similar vein, I wonder if medical privacy laws are hurting us in this pandemic. If every time the hospitals filled up with patients, camera crews went through and documented all of the people suffering and dying, would those who aren't taking the pandemic seriously have their mind swayed? Obviously those medical privacy laws exist for a reason, but perhaps there should be more effort to ethically document suffering?
In both cases, as much as I like to think facts are what sway my opinion, an emotional connection is far likelier to motivate action.
Given that it's apparently OK to launch one of these at a single suspected enemy informant, couldn't we have saved a lot of time, money and lives by just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like?
The money for a missile could be given to the population, but then it would not go to the missile’s manufacturer. But the whole point of the war is to give money to arms makers. They are the only ones who benefit from the war and who lobby for it.
Infrastructure and industry were the solution to Afghanistan. A tribe which owns a large share in the local mining operation is a tribe which does its best to keep the peace.
The US could have built a lot of roads and propped up a lot of barely profitable enterprises with the money spent on all those military operations.
So like 30-50k per person for the total cost of the war. Or 1.6k-3k per year. I guess that's doable but it's probably not a lot of money. Plus the power structures still want to take advantage of any situation, it's not like 3k is going to pacify a warlord in the country.
As much as I love to check hackernews, I’m not normally able to chime in with relevant information on most topics. I feel like this may be one where I can actually do that though as I’m former military and my job directly related to drones on a daily basis. Depending on what’s asked, I may not be able to answer but I’d love to help by sharing any knowledge or information on the subject that I can as I’ve gained so much from others sharing on different topics on here. Ask away and I’ll check back in 15-20 minutes.
Editing to add on that I’ll continue to check back on this for at least the rest of the day in case there’s anything else I can potentially shed more of a light on.
How much accountability do remote pilots have for incidents like this? I.e., is there an ammo budget? What happens if a pilot decides to "go GTA" and destroy things for fun?
What did you see in your time in the military regarding drones and drone operations that don't have good equivalents in the civilian world (and that isn't classified and has real civilian world uses)?
Similarly, what does the civilian world do better?
Anything you wish someone would build to make life easier?
What's the mood like? Are people excited to plug in and kill the baddies? Or is it just another day in the office yada yada Mondays are the worst? Do you prefer operators with previous gaming experience? Were there ever any operators that refused mission orders? how hard would it be for someone(higher ranking) to override an operators mission?
Your family is walking into Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods and all get killed by a missile from the sky. Or you send your children off to school and the school gets accidentally hit by a missile. Killed in an instant and the family of those victims listed above have no idea why and have zero recourse.
If this started happening on US soil on a daily basis, I wonder if more people would care. The top comment here is talking about the article text and AI vs. the topic of the article.
FTA - 3,797 we’re killed by drones. They were killed by drones they had no chance to defend themselves against.
According to today's NYTimes, the proffered surrender wasnt quite unconditional - the Taliban requested amnesty in exchange for disarming.
Rumsfeld turned them down on the pretense of demanding unconditional surrender. My suspicion is America's persisting collective rage and the firehose of defense spending were beyond anyone's control at that point.
Per https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/news/rumsfeld-rejects-pla... which I think is describing the same incident it was not an "unconditional surrender", though it was somewhat close: the conditions were about immunity from prosecution or punishment for Mullah Mohammed Omar (Taliban's leader at the time).
In summary drones make it to easy for the countries like the UK and the US to kill with no risk to their own service men. The missiles are not magic, there will be collateral damage. Solders on the ground could mitigate this
> The missiles are not magic, there will be collateral damage. Solders on the ground could mitigate this
I have no data about this but my gut tells me a drone could operate more safely than a ground team. The drone pilot is under much less stress while foot soldiers have to make live and death decisions in split seconds.
Also drone strikes are easier to audit than opaque small team operations in enemy territory.
When we often look at drones and the advent of AI and the fear of automated killing drones but lets take another perspective. AI that assists in preventing innocents being killed. Still manually controlled but an AI to override hostile action when it deems it wrong. We all focus upon AI to identify and select targets, but an AI to help identify and prevent innocents being impacted - surely that approach would be a worthy goal?
After all - no military want's collateral damage.
We didn't use this term in Iraq, so I wouldn't call it "military jargon for child" like the article does.
It is common for units to come up with code words for various things, especially when the topic is emotionally charged or could be used for propaganda or intel. For example, almost nobody would use the term "FKIA" over the radio, even on a secure channel; they might say "flowers" instead.
It means someone who starts running towards a group of soldiers. This may mean they are carrying explosives, but it may just be a play to get the soldiers to shoot an unarmed child in broad daylight.
"protect your source?" We don't do that no more. Leakers are either heroes whose integrity must be honored and anonymity protected, or traitors who should be hounded beyond legal authority. Depending on who likes what they said.
Whole section about "Trump ended a rule requiring reports of all deaths from drone attacks" an not a single word about the fact that Obama made thous rules just before he left office.
This is not Journalism, if you fall for such political theater and intentionally placed stones for the next administration to look bad you are not a real journalist.
PS: I'm from Europe you can down vote anyway if you want ;)
The casualties of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were mostly on civilians. It is not war, it is a genocide or muslim people because they don't want to let the West take their land/resources.
[+] [-] perihelions|4 years ago|reply
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9924567/US-drone-pi...
The points of difference have a strong smell of machine translation. E.g. "Killing for the sake of killing" turns into "I’ll kill you for the killing"; "Connecting Vets" becomes "Veterinary connection".
@dang This article should probably replace the submitted URL (edit: or alternatively, that article in the top reply comments)
related discussion thread: (identifying abuse of machine translation in published journal papers)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107614 ("Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science")
[+] [-] ricardobeat|4 years ago|reply
The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.
[+] [-] dmos62|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_yOI_WVGdY
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JNuFPiTbs
[+] [-] blitzar|4 years ago|reply
Got to wonder why the need to replace a 5 character 1 syllable word with a longer 7 character 2 syllable word, a little easier to stomach than saying, writing, or feeling like you just killed a child?
[+] [-] mleonhard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moksly|4 years ago|reply
I’m not sure anyone really knows why or what has been achieved by it.
[+] [-] ghostwriter|4 years ago|reply
nothing new, there's a well known quote from a former NSA/CIA director: "We kill people based on metadata" [1]
[1] https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-base...
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|4 years ago|reply
It's not a war crime unless you lose the war.
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syshum|4 years ago|reply
CIA considers any Adult Male over 16 and under 65 to be "the enemy" in most of these places...
[+] [-] wayoutthere|4 years ago|reply
We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians. We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how this is basically the Islamic Holocaust.
[+] [-] ceilingcorner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Laremere|4 years ago|reply
In both cases, as much as I like to think facts are what sway my opinion, an emotional connection is far likelier to motivate action.
[+] [-] marcus_holmes|4 years ago|reply
Given that it's apparently OK to launch one of these at a single suspected enemy informant, couldn't we have saved a lot of time, money and lives by just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire
[+] [-] dpatru|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merpnderp|4 years ago|reply
The US could have built a lot of roads and propped up a lot of barely profitable enterprises with the money spent on all those military operations.
[+] [-] gccs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rscoots|4 years ago|reply
Lol we also did that.
[+] [-] randomopining|4 years ago|reply
So nope let's go with teh hellfire.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] queuesorcs|4 years ago|reply
Editing to add on that I’ll continue to check back on this for at least the rest of the day in case there’s anything else I can potentially shed more of a light on.
[+] [-] whydid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illgenr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilippkumar|4 years ago|reply
What did you see in your time in the military regarding drones and drone operations that don't have good equivalents in the civilian world (and that isn't classified and has real civilian world uses)?
Similarly, what does the civilian world do better?
Anything you wish someone would build to make life easier?
[+] [-] juanani|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cies|4 years ago|reply
On purpose is a war crime now, so it has to be accidental.
Starting/continuing a war is not accidental though. It sure can be baseless (imho most if not all recent US wars were baseless).
[+] [-] cameronh90|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x14km2d|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iJohnDoe|4 years ago|reply
Your family is walking into Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods and all get killed by a missile from the sky. Or you send your children off to school and the school gets accidentally hit by a missile. Killed in an instant and the family of those victims listed above have no idea why and have zero recourse.
If this started happening on US soil on a daily basis, I wonder if more people would care. The top comment here is talking about the article text and AI vs. the topic of the article.
FTA - 3,797 we’re killed by drones. They were killed by drones they had no chance to defend themselves against.
[+] [-] actually_a_dog|4 years ago|reply
Talk about a waste: of lives, of money, of time, of effort that could have gone to far more productive purposes.
[+] [-] dayofthedaleks|4 years ago|reply
Rumsfeld turned them down on the pretense of demanding unconditional surrender. My suspicion is America's persisting collective rage and the firehose of defense spending were beyond anyone's control at that point.
[+] [-] bzbarsky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SandunGunn|4 years ago|reply
In summary drones make it to easy for the countries like the UK and the US to kill with no risk to their own service men. The missiles are not magic, there will be collateral damage. Solders on the ground could mitigate this
[+] [-] inglor_cz|4 years ago|reply
Reducing the risk to your own troops is a fundamental concern of most armies out there and has been for millennia.
Robot warfare is a logical endpoint of such development. I cannot see anyone opting out of this race and remaining militarily relevant.
[+] [-] lixtra|4 years ago|reply
I have no data about this but my gut tells me a drone could operate more safely than a ground team. The drone pilot is under much less stress while foot soldiers have to make live and death decisions in split seconds.
Also drone strikes are easier to audit than opaque small team operations in enemy territory.
[+] [-] Zenst|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ubavic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belter|4 years ago|reply
https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa...
[+] [-] slezyr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuaissac|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] torstenvl|4 years ago|reply
It is common for units to come up with code words for various things, especially when the topic is emotionally charged or could be used for propaganda or intel. For example, almost nobody would use the term "FKIA" over the radio, even on a secure channel; they might say "flowers" instead.
[+] [-] eurasiantiger|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kzrdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noxer|4 years ago|reply
This is not Journalism, if you fall for such political theater and intentionally placed stones for the next administration to look bad you are not a real journalist.
PS: I'm from Europe you can down vote anyway if you want ;)
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] coliveira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikkinana|4 years ago|reply
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