IAN G.R. SHAW PREDATOR EMPIRE DRONE WARFARE AND FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE Predator Empire This page deliberately left blank Predator Empire Drone Warfare and Full Spectrum Dominance Ian G. R. Shaw University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shaw, Ian G. R. Predator empire : drone warfare and full spectrum dominance / Ian G. R. Shaw. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015036890| ISBN 978-0-8166-9473-0 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-8166-9474-7 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Military policy. | Military art and science— Technological innovations—Social aspects. | Drone aircraft—United States— Social aspects. | Targeted killing—United States—Social aspects. | National security—United States. | Terrorism—Government policy—United States. | Hegemony—United States. | Social control. | Police—United States. | Technology and civilization. Classification: LCC UA23 .S464 2016 | DDC 355/.033573—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036890 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Understanding Empire 1 1 The Long March to Human Enclosure 29 2 The Rise of the Predator Empire in the Vietnam War 71 3 Full Spectrum Global Dominance 111 4 The Rule by Nobody 155 5 Policing Everything 199 Conclusion: The War of All against All 241 Notes 265 Index 307 This page deliberately left blank Acknowledgments Many people have both directly and indirectly helped with this book. First, I am indebted to the University of Arizona, where I received my master’s and PhD between 2006 and 2011. Under the beating Tucson sun and in the geography department of a strange build- ing called Harvill, I was lucky to learn from John Paul Jones III (my adviser), Sallie Marston, Paul Robbins, and Marv Waterstone. They opened my eyes and provided me with the kind of education and friendship that is rare. To friends and fellow graduate students there— Jessie Clark, Jeff Garmany, Lawrence Hoffman, Jason Jurje­­vich, Tom Keasling, Vanessa Massaro, Jen McCormack, Jamie McEvoy, Jacob Miller, Jared Powell, Anne Ranek, Audra White, and Scott Whitlock—I give a hearty thanks for making my journey so en- joyable, memorable, and all too fleeting. Special thanks go to Majed Akhter and Katie Meehan for inspiring me to write this book as well as being amazing collaborators. Thanks go to the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom, the University of Glasgow, and the Urban Stud- ies Foundation for partially funding the research for this book. I am fortunate to have made wonderful friends at Glasgow’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences where I presently work, espe- cially, Cheryl McGeachan, Caleb Johnston, Hester Parr, Jo Sharp, and Olivia Stevenson. They made writing in an office for fifteen months during 2014 and 2015 somewhat bearable. Thanks go to Jason Weidemann at the University of Minnesota Press for guiding me through the publishing process and to Mike Hanson, the copy editor of this book. Paul Dickson kindly donated his archive on the Vietnam War from the late 1960s and early 1970s, which proved invaluable for writing chapter 2. I am grateful for a loving family, especially my mum and dad and my sister Zara, who sparked my interest in philosophy at a crucial mo- ment. My biggest thanks go to my best friend, Lauren Fulton, whose sacrifices and support made this book possible in so many ways. vii This page deliberately left blank Introduction Understanding Empire The Dome In 1979 the United States was rocked by soaring oil prices. The coun- try faced one of the worst energy crises in memory. Nowhere was this felt more than the small Vermont town of Winooski, where another ice- cold winter threatened to chill its 7,500 residents to the bone. With temperatures under twenty below zero and snow- fall over seventy- five inches, the cost of heating homes was proving worrisome. But a cunning plan was hatched. A group of city planners approached Mark Tigan, the city’s director of community develop- ment. These entrepreneurs had an idea that could shelter towns- people from the blizzards and slash heating bills. “I didn’t hear one organized voice against it,” said Tigan, “since it meant that they’d never have to shovel snow again. They thought of it as their little piece of Tampa Bay.”1 The idea would be lauded and mocked in equal measure. Why not build a gigantic dome over the town? A bubbled utopia sealed from the frosty outside. The Winooski dome would measure 1.3 square miles, stand at 250 meters high, and be constructed from crystal- clear plastic. Fresh air could be circulated by large intake fans, and the dome would be held aloft by air pressure slightly higher than outdoors. “I like to think of Winooski as a place where new ideas are thought up all the time,” said Ken Meyers, president of the town’s “Dome Club.”2 The town applied for $55,000 of federal money from the Department of Hous- ing and Urban Development (HUD). The sphere attracted consider- able national media attention. One Kentucky paper wrote, “Science fiction writers have predicted a future where people are forced to live underground like moles. Most people think that is pretty depress- ing. But living under a plastic parasol that can shut out bad weather, fallout and other unpleasantness doesn’t sound all that bad, espe- cially in New England.”3 A local teacher even penned an ode to the 1 2 INTRODUCTION artificial bubble: “Dome over Winooski, / Not far from the lake; / Transparent and plastic, / Still real and not fake.”4 In May 1980, after considerable excitement, HUD rejected the re- quest. Despite widespread curiosity, many residents were fearful of the project. Who would clean it? Would life inside feel claustropho- bic? Enthusiasm for the bubble didn’t die immediately, however. The town hosted a dome symposium that attracted one thousand par- ticipants, including renowned inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, who had designed geodesic domes around the world. The next decade, another type of dome stirred the human imagination, only this time it was built for science. In September 1991 a crew of eight men and women stepped into Biosphere 2, a 3.15- acre research facility in Arizona. This enormous greenhouse, resembling a prototype for a space station on another planet, was engineered to create a series of self- sustaining ecosystems. These included rainforest, savannah, and even ocean biomes. The team of biospherians managed to sur- vive in the dome for two years, despite fluctuations in oxygen levels, endemic hunger, social conflict (the group split into two factions), and an explosion in the ant and cockroach population. The enthusiasm, fear, and curiosity for life inside these giant ter- rariums exemplifies a more basic architectural truth about human- ity: we are builders of worlds. Our anthropology, our very human existence, is shaped by the artificial environments, big and small, we carve out from the planet. Hannah Arendt wrote, “Whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human exis- tence.”5 Her point is as simple as it is radical: the human is consti- tuted by the nonhuman. Whether we build gigantic domes or robotic drones, artificial fab- rications condition the spaces of human coexistence. Peter Sloterdijk defines these spaces of shared dwelling as “spheres.” These spheres can be thought of as the biological, cultural, and technological enclo- sures that surround human beings. As he defines them, “The sphere is the interior, disclosed, shared realm inhabited by humans.”6 From the very first biological sphere, the mother’s womb, to the artificial spheres of a mechanized civilization, we never stop passing through spaces that contain us, shape us, and transform who we are. Spheres, in short, enclose human beings inside unique existential shells, constituting the rich kaleidoscope of our being. We are always “with” someone or something, and in this sense we always exist INTRODUCTION 3 “outside” ourselves. As Judith Butler writes, “We are, as it were, so- cial beings from the start, dependent on what is outside ourselves, on others, on institutions, and on sustained and sustainable envi- ronments, and so are, in this sense, precarious.”7 In the modern age human coexistence has been subjected to in- creasingly technical forms of control. Modern living has provided both the conditions and the pathologies for the mass enclosure of life. From maximum- security prisons to CCTV on the streets to drones in the sky, we are constantly watched and surveilled, regardless of guilt or innocence. Millions of us have been herded into the great civiliza- tory inside. Life on planet earth is now time spent passing through en- closures of different sophistication and density. This is our dome- estic life. In 1981 the mayor of Winooski remarked, “I’m not a sociologist. But the idea of people living together in a controlled environment is a much more complex question than any of the technical concerns.”8 This complex question remains key to understanding this book: what does it mean to live on a planet that is enclosing its populations in- side controlled, artificial, and dronified environments? Beyond the Winooski dome, popular culture is full of domes: ar- tificial skins grafted over human populations to form carceral shells.