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Terror

Gun Drones

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Taking the obvious step in done technology, Duke Robotics has developed a small armed drone called the Tikad. One weapon loadout is an assault rifle that can be fired by the human operator of the device. The drone can presumably carry other weapons of similar size and weight, such as a grenade launcher. This drone differs from previous armed drones, like the Predator, in that it is small and relatively cheap. As with many other areas of technology, the innovation is in the ease of use and lower cost. This makes the Tikad type drone far more accessible than previous drones, which is both good and bad.

On the positive side, the military and police can deploy more drones and thus reduce human casualties. For example, the police could send a drone in to observe and possibly engage during a hostage situation and not put officers in danger.

On the negative side, the lower cost and ease of use means that such armed drones can be more easily deployed by terrorists, criminals and oppressive states. The typical terrorist group cannot afford a drone like the Predator and might have difficulty in finding people who can operate and maintain such a complicated aircraft. But, a drone like the Tikad could be operated and serviced by a much broader range of people. This is not to say that Duke Robotics should be criticized for doing the obvious—people have been thinking about arming drones since drones were invented.

Budget gun drones do, of course, also raise the usual concerns associated with remotely operated weapons. The first is the concern that operators of drones are more likely to be aggressive than forces that are physically present and at risk of the consequences of a decision to engage in violence. However, it can also be argued that an operator is less likely to be aggressive because they are not in danger and the literal and metaphorical distance will allow them to respond with more deliberation. For example, a police officer operating a drone might elect to wait longer to confirm that a suspect is pulling a gun than they would if their life was in danger. Then again, they might not—this would be a training and reaction issue with a very practical concern about training officers to delay longer when operating a drone and not do so when in person.

A second stock concern is the matter of accountability. A drone allows the operator a high degree of anonymity and assigning responsibility can be problematic. In the case of military and police, this can be addressed to a degree by having a system of accountability. After all, military and police operators would presumably be known to the relevant authorities. That said, drones can be used in ways that are difficult to trace to the operator and this would certainly be true in the case of terrorists. The use of drones would allow terrorists to attack from safety and in an anonymous manner, which are certainly matters of concern.

However, it must be noted that while the first use of a gun armed drone in a terrorist attack would be something new, it would not be significantly different from the use of a planted bomb. This is because such bombs allow terrorists to kill from a safe distance and make it harder to identify the terrorist. But, just as with bombs, the authorities would be able to investigate the attack and stand some chance of tracing a drone back to the terrorist. Drones are in some ways less worrisome than bombs—a drone can be seen and is limited in how many targets it can engage. In contrast, a bomb can be hidden and can kill many in an instant, without a chance of escape or defense.  A gun drone is also analogous in some ways with a sniper rifle—it allows engagement at long ranges. However, the drone does afford far more range and safety than even the best sniper rifle.

In the United States, there will presumably be considerable interest about how the Second Amendment applies to armed drones. On the face of it, the answer seems easy enough: while the people have the right to keep and bear arms, this does not extend to operating armed drones. But, there might be some interesting lawsuits over this matter.

In closing, there are legitimate concerns about cheap and simple gun drones. While they will not be as radical a change as some might predict, they will make it easier and cheaper to engage in violence at a distance and in anonymous killing. As such, they will make ideal weapons for terrorists and oppressive governments. However, they do offer the possibility of reduced human casualties, if used responsibly. In any case, their deployment is inevitable, so the meaningful questions are about how they should be used and how to defend against their misuse. The question about whether they should be used is morally interesting, but pragmatically irrelevant since they will be used.

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Bans & BS

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As this is being written, Trump’s travel ban remains suspended by  the courts. The poor wording and implementation of the ban indicates that amateurs are now in charge. Or, alternatively, that Trump’s strategists are intentionally trying to exhaust the opposition. As such, either the ban has been a setback for Trump or a small victory.

While the actual experts on national security (from both parties) have generally expressed opposition to the Trump ban, Trump’s surrogates and some Republican politicians have endeavored to defend it. The fountain of falsehoods, Kellyanne Conway, has been extremely active in defense of the ban. Her zeal in its defense has led her to uncover terrorist attacks beyond our own reality, such as the Bowling Green Massacre that occurred in some other timeline. In that alternative timeline, the Trump ban might be effectively addressing a real problem; but not in the actual world.

More reasonable defenders of the ban endeavor to use at least some facts from this world when making their case. For example, Republican representative Mike Johnson recently defended the ban by making reference to a report by Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security. He claimed that “They determined that nearly 20 percent of alleged facilitators in ISIS prosecutions, in our country, do involve refugees and asylees. I mean, those kinds of facts are not as widely publicized, but they should be. I think the American people have a right to know that.” This approach employs four rather effective rhetorical techniques which I will address in reverse order of use.

By saying “the American people have a right to know”, Johnson seems to be employing innuendo to suggest that the rights of Americans are being violated—that is, there is some sort of conspiracy against the American people afoot. This conspiracy is, of course, that the (presumably liberal) media is not publicizing certain facts. This rhetorical tool is rather clever, for it not only suggests the media is up to something nefarious, but that there are secret facts out there that support the ban. At the very least, this can incline people to think that there are other facts backing Trump that are being intentionally kept secret. This can make people more vulnerable to untrue claims purporting to offer such facts.

Johnson’s lead techniques are, coincidentally enough, rhetorical methods I recently covered in my critical thinking class. One technique is what is often called a “weasler” in which a person protects a claim by weakening it. In this case, the weasel word is “nearly.” If Johnson were called on the correct percentage, which is 18%, he can reply that 18% is nearly 20%, which is true. However, “nearly 20%” certainly creates the impression that it is more than 18%, which is misleading. Why not just say “18%”?  Since the exaggeration is relatively small, it does not qualify as hyperbole. Naturally, a reasonable reply would be that this is nitpicking— “nearly 20%” is close enough to “18%” and Johnson might have simply failed to recall the exact number during the interview. This is certainly a fair point.

Another technique involves presenting numerical claims without proper context, thus creating a misleading impression. In this case, Johnson claims, correctly, that “nearly 20 percent of alleged facilitators in ISIS prosecutions, in our country, do involve refugees and asylees.” The main problem is that no context is given for the “nearly 20%.” Without context, one does not know whether this is a significant matter or not. For example, if I claimed that sales of one of my books increased 20% last year, then you would have no idea how significant my book sales were. If I sold 10 of those books in 2015 and 12 in 2016, then my sales did increase 20%, but my sales would be utterly insignificant in the context of book sales.

In the case of the facilitators Johnson mentioned, the Fordham report includes 19 facilitators and 3 of these (18%) were as Johnson described. So, of the thousands of refugees and asylum seekers the United States took in, there have been three people who were involved in this facilitation. This mostly involved encouraging people to go overseas to fight—these three people were (obviously) not involved in terrorist attacks in the United States. Such a microscopic threat level does not justify the travel ban under any rational threat assessment and response analysis.

The United States does, of course, face some danger from terrorist attacks. However, the most likely source of these attacks is from US born citizens. While the threat from foreigners is not zero, an American is 253 times more likely to be a victim of a “normal” homicide rather than killed in a foreigner engaged in a terrorist attack in the United States. And the odds of being the victim of a homicide are very low. As such, trying to justify the ban with accurate information is all but impossible, which presumably explains why the Republicans are resorting to lies and rhetoric.

While there are clear political advantages to stoking the fear of ill-informed Americans, there are plenty of real problems that Trump and the Republicans could be addressing—responsible leaders would be focusing on these problems, rather than weaving fictions and feeding unfounded fears.

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Threat Assessment

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By now everyone knows about the terrorist who set himself on fire trying to blow up a plane on Christmas. The response was typical-a media circus and government officials leaping to swing the barn door shut after the horse had escaped (again).

While I am concerned about such incidents, the response to this one nicely shows how poor people are at proportional threat assessment and at coming up with effective security measures.

First, in regards to proportional threat assessment: people tend to blow terrorism far out of proportion. Yes, being killed by a terrorist attack is bad. But, so is being killed in a traffic accident or dying from an untreated disease, or being killed in a robbery, or perishing from contaminated foods. When we receive news of some new terrorist attempt, it is followed by a frenzy from the media and a surge in government activity. Money is pledged, new measures are dreamed up and so on. However, the odds of being harmed by a terrorist are astronomical and, as such, the response to such attempts seems to be way out of proportion. After all, think about all the people who died on Christmas from accidents, disease, crime and so on. Yet, the story of some fool who burns himself with a poorly made bomb is what dominates the news and spurs a strong reaction. I am not arguing that we should ignore the terrorists, but the response should be based on the number of people who are actually at risk and the seriousness of the threat.

Second, in regard to security measures: I actually do not have much to say here that has not already been said about the security theater that passes for a defense against terrorism. While some security is better than nothing, we should use only what really works and get rid of what does not. After all, it makes no sense to waste time and money to achieve (at best) a delusion of safety. The way the safety “planning” seems to work is that something happens and then the government folks present some absurd restrictions that are supposed to deal with the situation that has already happened. In the latest case, the new measures included such brilliant ideas as not allowing people to keep things in their laps and not allowing passengers to move around an hour before landing (better hit the bathroom before then). While this will deal with a terrorist who simply must have a bomb in his lap, this will not deal with anything else. No doubt if a terrorist attempts to smuggle a bomb in a Harry Potter book, Harry Potter books will be banned.

Security measures should be designed to deal with what is probable and to do so in advance. That is, likely methods of attack should be carefully considered and defenses set up to match those. The current system seems to be fool driven-that is, some fool tries to make explosive shoes or liquid bombs and then the politicians put on a clown show to try to re-assure the public that they are doing something. However, it seems unlikely that the security methods are really doing much. After all, it has been well established that it is easy to get weapons and other items through security. The main reason that there has been relative safety in the air is that the attempts seem to be very few and mostly incompetenlty done (with some horrible exceptions).

Ground War in Gaz

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After launching numerous air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza, Israel is prepared to launch a ground invasion. Israel has always done amazingly well in conventional warfare against Arab military forces. However, rooting out combatants who hide among civilians has never been something that conventional armies have done exceptionally well. Of course, an occupying army would help cut down on the rocket attacks-they can respond rapidly to launches. However, a conventional army also presents numerous targets for unconventional attacks and an occupation can be a political risk.

One risk is that Hamas can try to drain the resolve of the Israeli people by trying to bleed the ground forces. Losing friends and family in an occupation is never popular and Hamas presumably knows this. With the support of Iran, they can probably wage a fairly effective campaign.

Another risk is that the inevitable civilian deaths can be exploited by Hamas to bolster their support. As they gain local support, they can step up the attacks on Israeli forces and goad them into more retaliatory attacks. This will lead to yet more civilian deaths and thus further enhance the support given to Hamas. Of course, this tactic can be a risk for Hamas. People in Gaza might actually support Hamas less as things become more bloody.

There is also the general concern about how the rest of the world will react. Israel has never been a generally popular state and invading Gaza would generally not be seen as a positive action. Of course, the United States will stick with Israel-they are a critical ally.

From a moral standpoint,the ground war can be seen as morally acceptable in some ways and less so in others. On one hand, ground troops can be more precise in their attacks and can have better local intelligence (relative to air strikes). Of course, ground forces can still make errors and kill the wrong people (civilians). On the other hand, having ground forces invade Gaza escalates the conflict and can very well lead to more deaths. After all, the Hamas targets are not clear military facilities or locations. Rather, their fighters and rocket launchers are spread among the civilians. As such, the civilian population will be rather involved as Israeli ground forces move towards their targets. Unlike aircraft, the troops have to cover the ground relatively slowly and will no doubt be attacked along the way (thus increasing the odds of civilians being killed during battles).

Of course, Israeli cannot stop the rocket attacks simply by continuing to bomb from the air. While some people have argued that air power alone can win conventional wars, history (from WWII forward) shows otherwise. As such, unless Israel and Hamas can reach a political solution, Israel will almost certainly need to invade. And, once again, more people will die on all sides (Israeli, Hamas and civilians).

Rockets & Retaliation

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While the Russians have claimed that Hamas is willing to talk peace, rockets continue to rain down on Israel.

On the face of it, firing rockets into populated areas seems like a clearly immoral action. However, I have had enough debates about such matters to know that some people regard such tactics as morally acceptable. Outside of academic types, clearly the people who are involved with firing the rockets find their behavior acceptable. Either that or they are somehow overcoming any moral reluctance they might feel. It is worth considering what arguments might be used to morally justify such acts.

One main argument is that the rockets are being fired in retaliation for Israeli wrong doings. As such, the rockets are intended as punishment. In general, punishing people for their misdeeds is morally acceptable and can be argued for in terms of deterrence and retribution (see John Locke’s arguments as good examples of this).

To counter this, punishment is something that should be directed at the guilty party and not randomly inflicted. After all, to punish the innocent would simply be to commit a crime against them and would not be an act of justice.

It might be replied that the people hurt by the rockets are (usually) Israelis and hence they are not innocent. However, being and Israeli seems to be a rather weak basis for justifying such attacks. To use a analogy, imagine that professor Sally is fired from her job at Big University so that the university President can give her boyfriend Sally’s job. Now suppose that, in revenge, Sally started randomly slashing the tires of students’ cars because they happened to be students of the university. While the students are associated with Big U, they hardly deserve her wrath. Likewise for the innocent civilians.

It could be argued that being a citizen comes with moral accountability such that each citizen is responsible for all that his/her nation does. So, the rocket attacks would be justified retaliation provided they killed only Israeli citizens (or other “guilty” people).

In reply, while citizens (at least in democracies) do bear some responsibility for the actions of their nation, such random attacks fail to take into account important distinctions. To be specific, surely not every citizen bears the guilt of every misdeed (or perceived misdeed) of a nation. For example, a random rocket attack could kill an Israeli who has worked for the good of the people of Gaza or it could kill a child. Surely such people do not deserve death.

Obviously, it could be argued that collective guilt somehow overrides all other normally relevant aspects (such as past actions).  However, the burden of proof seems to be on those who would make this claim. On the face of it, such distinctions seem very important everywhere else. Why should this situation be different?

In light of these arguments, such random rocket attacks (and similar acts of terror) can not be justified as legitimate retaliation or punishment.

Bio-Terrorism

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A recent report assembled at the behest of Congress concludes that a biological terror attack is quite likely by 2013. This conclusion seems quite reasonable.

Biological weapons have been used for centuries. Early forms were fairly crude: dumping dead animals in wells, flinging diseased corpses over city walls during sieges, and similar such activities. Later on, the art of biological warfare was refined a bit. One excellent example is the use of blankets infected with small pox as weapons against the indigenous people of America. During the World Wars and Cold War, biological warfare was further enhanced as natural diseases were intentionally enhanced and new strains were created. This research continues to this day; mostly under the guise of developing defenses against biological weapons.

It is easy enough to imagine how terrorists could gain access to biological weapons. Lax security, bribery, and so forth can allow them access to military grade weapons. Naturally, terrorist groups that are supported by states could simply be given such weapons.

Terrorists could also create their own. While they will typically lack the facilities of a nation, cultivating deadly disease agents is relatively easy to do. They are readily available (after all, people are naturally infected) and usually the challenge is to keep them from spreading rather than spreading them. While the terrorists will most likely lack the ability to create weapons on par with those made by nations, the naturally occurring diseases are often quite dangerous enough.

The main challenge that the terrorists face are infecting a population in an effective manner and getting the disease to spread enough to do serious damage. Of course, even if they were only able to affect a limited population, this would certainly help to create significant terror. After all, “conventional” terrorists attacks tend to kill relatively few people and create relatively little destruction compared with something like an actual battle. As such, the terrorists do not need to duplicate the military grade  biological weapons of mass destruction or even the battlefield versions. They just need a biological weapon that can infect a relatively small number of people. Of course, if they use a natural disease and only infect a small number of people, there will be doubts as to whether or not such an attack is really an attack or not. After all, if a terrorist group claimed credit for the winter flu season, then they would obviously not be taken seriously.

So far terrorist groups have not employed such weapons. One reason might be that they lack access to an effective biological weapon that would serve their purposes (that is, one that would be clearly recognized as a weapon and not a natural breakout). Another reason might be that the biological weapon threshold is one that even the terrorists are reluctant to cross. A third reason is that there are practical concerns about such weapons that are holding terrorists back. For example, there might be greater backlash against the deployment of such a weapon. After all, biological weapons tend to be regarded as being far worse than conventional weapons. As another example, such weapons tend to be too indiscriminate and could spread too far-even for the purposes of terrorism. There are probably other reasons as well.

If the terrorist are able to get past or around these obstacles, then biological weapons will probably be used.  For example, the history of terrorism is a history of crossing ever more evil thresholds. So, it is probably just a matter of time before terrorists cross the biological threshold in a large scale attack.

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