Det nya kriget, utan livet som insats?

En fascinerande och motbjudande artikel från New Yorker om när kriget börjar föras av obemannade flygplan, etc. Hela artikeln online, första styckena värda att citera:

On August 5th, officials at the Central Intelligence Agency, in Langley, Virginia, watched a live video feed relaying closeup footage of one of the most wanted terrorists in Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, could be seen reclining on the rooftop of his father-in-law’s house, in Zanghara, a hamlet in South Waziristan. It was a hot summer night, and he was joined outside by his wife and his uncle, a medic; at one point, the remarkably crisp images showed that Mehsud, who suffered from diabetes and a kidney ailment, was receiving an intravenous drip.

The video was being captured by the infrared camera of a Predator drone, a remotely controlled, unmanned plane that had been hovering, undetected, two miles or so above the house. Pakistan’s Interior Minister, A. Rehman Malik, told me recently that Mehsud was resting on his back. Malik, using his hands to make a picture frame, explained that the Predator’s targeters could see Mehsud’s entire body, not just the top of his head. “It was a perfect picture,” Malik, who watched the videotape later, said. “We used to see James Bond movies where he talked into his shoe or his watch. We thought it was a fairy tale. But this was fact!” The image remained just as stable when the C.I.A. remotely launched two Hellfire missiles from the Predator. Authorities watched the fiery blast in real time. After the dust cloud dissipated, all that remained of Mehsud was a detached torso. Eleven others died: his wife, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, a lieutenant, and seven bodyguards.

/Simon

Comments

[David]

Såg ett program om detta på SVT för inte så länge sedan, där de bland annat tar upp självstyrande robotar och flygplan.

http://svtplay.se/v/1657403/vetenskapsmagasinet/del_1_av_10_kan_en_robot_lara_sig_genevekonventionen

[Simon]

Intressant. Apropå Geneve-konventionen så var det härförleden en förälder som lät sin unge spela dataspel så länge han respekterade Geneve-konventionen...

http://boingboing.net/2009/02/22/parent-of-gamer-asks.html