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Unmanned: Autonomous Drones As a Problem of Theological Anthropology

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Unmanned: Autonomous Drones As a Problem of Theological Anthropology Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2015): 111-130 Unmanned: Autonomous Drones as a Problem of Theological Anthropology Kara N. Slade As for the rest of this life’s experiences, the more tears are shed over them the less are they worth weeping over, and the more truly worth lamenting the less do we bewail them while mired in them. You love the truth because anyone who does truth comes to the light. Truth it is that I want to do, in my heart by confession in your presence, and with my pen before many witnesses. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions1 I think it’s certainly a problem when our government cannot assess whether or not technology is decent. Mary Cummings, former fighter pilot and current Duke University engineering professor2 N 2001, I WAS A NEWLY-MINTED PH.D. GRADUATE in mechanical engineering interviewing for a tenure-track position at a large public research university. During my tour of the department and its facilities, I was shown a Department of Defense funded re- searchI project involving what can best be described as robotic hum- mingbirds or bees, each slightly larger than a human hand. I remember thinking at the time that this was a technically interesting, if ultimately impractical effort, although I made suitably polite noises about how my own work might be of use. I wasn’t hired for that position, but a year later I landed in a federal laboratory whose research portfolio also included unmanned vehicles (UxV) of another sort. Throughout my career as an engineer, the figure of the drone—whether autonomous or not—was a constant presence in the background, if not the fore- ground of those corners of the aerospace world where I traveled. Now, as a doctoral student in theology and ethics, I have been invited by the editors of this journal to revisit the topic from the perspective of moral theology. I do so knowing that I cannot approach it de novo, as an abstract problem in either the ethics of warfare or of technology. The 1 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding, OSB (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 197. 2 Megan Garber, “Brain Drain Is Threatening the Future of U.S. Robotics,” Defense One, June 30, 2014, www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/06/brain-drain-threaten- ing-future-robotics/87562/. 112 Kara N. Slade reader who hopes to find in these pages a casuistic analysis of whether or not the use of autonomous drones is permissible under just war the- ory, or of what legal structures might helpfully govern their responsi- ble use, will likely be disappointed. This paper does not answer the question, “What are we to do about autonomous drones?” Instead, it attempts to excavate the multiple lev- els of “we” at work within that question, “What are we to do?,” as well as the forms of doing it seems to presuppose. In so doing, I hope to bring to light the underlying problem of anthropology shared by both the construction of autonomous UxV’s and their discussion as an eth- ical issue. Using the work of two theologians, Karl Barth and Søren Kierkegaard, I hope to trouble the understanding of the human being that shapes our conversations about the development and use of au- tonomous unmanned vehicles. THE WORLD TARGET IN THE AGE OF AUSTERITY The first “we” at issue is the American we, and the first approach to the question of autonomous UxV’s begins with their role in the dis- courses of the American military-industrial bureaucracy. How do those in decision-making positions talk about this technology when they talk amongst themselves? More specifically, how does it function as a means of what the Department of Defense and related agencies refer to as “global power projection”?3 The drive to develop more, more effective, and more autonomous unmanned weapons systems arises out of a very particular context of national anxiety. One very typical analysis of the future of U.S. defense technology states the problem in near-catastrophic terms: The military foundations of the United States’ global dominance are eroding. For the past several decades, an overwhelming advantage in technology and resources has given the U.S. military an unmatched ability to project power worldwide. This has allowed it to guarantee U.S. access to the global commons, assure the safety of the homeland, and underwrite security commitments around the globe. U.S. grand strategy assumes that such advantages will continue indefinitely. In fact, they are already starting to disappear. Several events in recent years have demonstrated that traditional means and methods of projecting power and accessing the global com- mons are growing increasingly obsolete becoming “wasting assets,” in the language of defense strategists. The diffusion of advanced mil- itary technologies, combined with the continued rise of new powers, 3 Cortney Konner and Ronald Pope, “Integration of Space-Based Combat Systems,” Air and Space Power Journal (Fall 2006), www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/airchronicles/- apj/apj06/fal06/konner.html. Drones as a Problem of Theological Anthropology 113 such as China, and hostile states, such as Iran, will make it progres- sively more expensive in blood and treasure—perhaps prohibitively expensive—for U.S. forces to carry out their missions in areas of vital interest, including East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Military forces that do deploy successfully will find it increasingly difficult to defend what they have been sent to protect. Meanwhile, the U.S. military’s long-unfettered access to the global commons—including space and cyberspace—is being increasingly challenged.4 The default response to this perceived need to do more with less is not to question the need itself or, indeed, the accuracy of the perception. Instead, the sheer inertia of organizational logic demands a technolog- ical solution that leaves its grounding assumptions and latent ideolo- gies unexamined. Given this framework of anxiety, the primary Department of De- fense planning document for unmanned systems reads in a very real sense as the invocation of a deus ex machina. The opening pages of the 2011 Unmanned Systems Roadmap present unmanned systems as the inevitable, ideal solution to the problem of global power in an age of fiscal austerity: The DoD, along with industry, understands the effect that innovation and technology in unmanned systems can have on the future of war- fare and the ability of the United States to adapt to an ever-changing global environment. DoD and industry are working to advance oper- ational concepts with unmanned systems to achieve the capabilities and desired effects on missions and operations worldwide. In building a common vision, DoD’s goals for unmanned systems are to enhance mission effectiveness, improve operational speed and efficiency, and affordably close warfighting gaps…. By prudently developing, pro- curing, integrating, and fielding unmanned systems, DoD and industry will ensure skillful use of limited resources and access to emerging warfighting capabilities. Pursuing this approach with unmanned sys- tems will help DoD sustain its dominant global military power and provide the tools required by national decision-makers to influence foreign and domestic activities while adapting to an ever-changing global environment.5 The extensive discussion of autonomous UxV’s that follows in both the 2011 and 2013 versions is thus framed by an expansive vision of the scope of American military power. Nations such as China or Iran 4 Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., “The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets,” Foreign Affairs (July 1, 2009), www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65150/andrew-f-krepinevich-jr/the-penta- gons-wasting-assets. 5 Department of Defense, Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY 2011-2036, www.acq.osd.mil/sts/docs/Unmanned%20Systems%20Inte- grated%20Roadmap%20FY2011-2036.pdf, 5. 114 Kara N. Slade may be mentioned in passing, but only insofar as they function as sig- nifiers of the category of the global, not as particular threats to national security. Before turning in earnest to this notion of the global, however, a word of clarification is in order. The category of autonomous un- manned systems encompasses vehicles intended to operate on land, sea, and air, only some of which may have lethal capabilities. Further- more, autonomous robotic systems function along a continuum of in- dependence from human control. Skynet (in the Terminator series) is an autonomous system but, strictly speaking, so is a Roomba. An aer- ial vehicle with autonomous control over firing a weapon is a limit case, but even so it deserves sustained attention. First, as the second section will examine in greater detail, enough research in this direction has been funded that it represents at least a desired outcome if not a realistic technological possibility. Second, it occupies a pre-eminent place in the cultural imagination, at least partially due to the current use of remotely-piloted UAV’s in active conflicts. More broadly, the autonomous lethal unmanned aerial vehicle rep- resents the most obvious instantiation of a particular logic that ties vi- sion to destruction on a global scale. In her essay “The Age of the World Target,” literary theorist Rey Chow argues that the develop- ment and subsequent use of the atomic bomb by the United States oc- casioned a shift in the perception of the world—the global—from the American perspective: [W]e may say that in the age of bombing, the world has also been transformed into—is essentially conceived and grasped as—a target. To conceive of the world as a target is to conceive of it as an object to be destroyed. As W. J. Perry, a former United States Under Secretary of State for Defense, said: “If I had to sum up current thinking on precision missiles and saturation weaponry in a single sentence, I’d put it like this: once you can see the target, you can expect to destroy it.” Increasingly, war would mean the production of maximal visibil- ity and illumination for the purpose of maximal destruction.6 In light of this notion of the world as target, the ubiquity of the auton- omous unmanned aerial vehicle in the cultural imaginary becomes in- telligible.
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