At the Gawker site Phase Zero, William H. Arkin conducted a very interesting Q&A with Harper’s Washington Editor, Andrew Cockburn, who’s just published what’s a sadly timely book Kill Chain, which focuses on the U.S. droning program. Although the author doesn’t believe military droning will become automated, he feels the bigger-picture machinery of the system already is. Remote war has been a dream pursued since Tesla and now it’s a global reality. One exchange:

William M. Arkin:

The CIA’s drone program, the President’s drone program, Congressionally approved, not approved, tacitly accepted: almost every description of the drone program makes it sound like it isn’t the United States and its foreign policy. Is that the consequence of something unique to drones?

Andrew Cockburn:

It’s interesting, drones and covert foreign policy seem to go together. In Operation Menu, Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, the B-52 flight paths were directed from the ground, as was the moment of bomb release. In other words, the B-52s were essentially drones. Maybe the drone campaign isn’t described as the foreign policy of the United States because there’s a tinge of embarrassment that we’re murdering people in foreign countries as a matter of routine.

Beyond that, maybe we should call it the drone program’s drone program, because it’s taken on a life of it’s own, a huge machine that exists to perpetuate itself. Just take a look at the jobs listed almost every day for just one of the Distributed Common Ground System stations at Langley AFB in the Virginia Southern Neck. On April 25, for example, various contractors (some of which you’ve never heard of) were asking for a “USAF Intelligence Resource Management Analyst,” a “Systems Integrator,” a “USAF Senior Intelligence Programs and Systems Support Analyst,” a “USAF ISR Weapons Systems Integration Support Analyst” a “DPOC Network Engineer,” whatever that is, and a few others. All high paying, all of course requiring Top Secret or higher clearances. Every so often we hear that the CIA drone program is going to be turned over to the military. I say, ‘good luck with that’ – is the CIA really going to obligingly hand over a huge chunk of its raison d’etre, and its budget, its enormous targeting apparatus? There’s a lot of talk about “autonomous drones,” which aren’t going to happen, but I think the whole system is autonomous, one giant robot that has become unstoppable as it grinds along, sucking up money and killing people along the way.•