Abstract
It is a widely accepted claim that whether a given technology is being justly used in the real world is a separate question from moral issues intrinsic to technology. We should not blame the technology itself for immoral ways it happens to be used. There is obviously some truth to that. But I want to argue that what we see in the real world cases of drone killings is not merely an accidental or contingent use of drone technology. The real life use reflects to a large extent features that are inherent of the dominant drone systems that have been developed to date. What is being imagined "in principle" is thus to a large extent drone killings in dreamland. I use an historic example as a point of reference and departure: the debate over the lawfulness of nuclear weapons.
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Notes
In Letter LXXXVII.
I am indebted to an anonymous referee for making this point.
I think the broadness of this spectrum (a factor 6) should temper our trust in bold claims about the superior precision of drone strikes in terms of discrimination between combatants and noncombatants.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me on this point.
An indication of this kind of influence can be found in Strawser as well when he uncritically canvass the producers' laudatory descriptions of drone capabilities of discrimination and precision.
In The Madness of Hercules, lines 403–05.
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Dige, M. Drone Killings in Principle and in Practice. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 20, 873–883 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-017-9827-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-017-9827-9