Americans right now can read or watch video coverage about drone warfare in distant lands while we continue our consumerist lives and wait for the economy to improve. We'll be fine. Meanwhile, companies like New Hampshire's own Sig Sauer are rolling out drones controlled by artificial intelligence and armed with machine guns, so that targets on the ground can be strafed without even bothering with a human operator. Don't worry. It's mostly being used on Palestinian civilians. Don't bitch about that or you're antisemitic.
Civilians in the United States are not allowed to own weaponized drones. But our military and law enforcement will definitely have to have them to keep up with rival military services and whatever the illegal scourge of the month is domestically.
Armed forces conduct exercises to practice fighting against the weapons they expect to face, and to develop proficiency with the ones in their own arsenal. The armed citizens who bray loudly about needing personal armament to fight off their tyrannical government do not uniformly follow this practice, partly because so many of them are posers, and partly because they can't possibly keep up in the arms race against lavishly funded government forces.
No doubt a determined citizen resistance could keep up an endless unconventional warfare campaign to stymie a truly oppressive government from exerting absolute control, but that ability dwindles with every advancement in surveillance technology and ruthless killing machinery. No need to nuke. Just hunt relentlessly from the sky and nearby space so that no one can move on the surface of the planet at any hour of the day or night without being spotted and zapped.
The weird, artificial nature of modern warfare becomes more obvious every day. Every conflict now, from the war in Ukraine to the Hamas attack that triggered the retaliatory genocide against the Palestinians by Israel, to the pesky Houthis and Iranians features drone technology guided by communication satellites. Elon and Don just turned down the power on Ukraine to favor Russia just by ordering it and having corporate and government offices far removed from the fighting implement it. Ukrainians die who might not have, at the whims of two greedy, selfish men, serving a third greedy, selfish man, Vladimir Putin. The war is real. The wounds and property destruction are real. But they can be dialed up or down at the speed of a text message.
The 2A crowd in this country needs to figure out -- and fast -- how to practice shooting down computer-controlled drones developed to anticipate their every move and deliver death from above at distances far out of range of return fire.
It might be a good idea at the same time not to scorn and sneer at efforts to direct humans away from the time-honored practice of trying to annihilate each other before we get terminally good at it. We have choices that were not available to our ancestors, who started and perfected the practice.
Peaceful coexistence may be impossible, simply because our troubled selves represent every force in the universe, both creative and destructive. We may simply be forced to act out with our flesh these abstract principles of physics in an endless clash. I'd like to think not, but I'm not placing any bets. Just do what seems right and hope for...I was going to say the best, but even that is subjective. Hope for my peaceful vision of a fun place to be human, anyway.
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