Faceless blurry drone imagery reduces moral resistance to killing

Evidence

All that the operators can see are little figures blurred into facelessness. A former CIA officer declares, “You could see these little figures scurrying and the explosion going off and when the smoke cleared, there was just rubble and charred stuff.” This figurative reduction of human targets helps to make the homicide easier: “There’s no flesh on your monitor, just coordinates.” One is never spattered by the adversary’s blood. No doubt the absence of any physical soiling corresponds to less of a sense of moral soiling. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 404

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Drone warfare deactivates the democratic critique rooted in exposable lives; Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war; Drone psychopathology lies in produced compartmentalization, not operator trauma — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 427 (+16 more)

Related

• Drone technology produces a strong moral buffering effect that offsets visual proximity to victims. (similarity 0.93)
• Drone killing is reduced to clicking on tiny on-screen figures (similarity 0.91)
• Drone design produces a strong moral buffering effect on operators (similarity 0.89)
• Drone technology produces a combined morale-buffering effect on operators (similarity 0.88)
• Drone warfare deactivates the democratic critique rooted in exposable lives (similarity 0.88)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.87)
• Drone technology severs visual discrimination from physical proximity to targets. (similarity 0.87)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.86)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.85)
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. (similarity 0.85)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.85)
• Killing with a graphic view is reframed as an act of courage (similarity 0.84)
• Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. (similarity 0.83)
• Drone targeting hinged on remote visual guesses about sex and combatant status (similarity 0.83)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Drone killing is reduced to clicking on tiny on-screen figures #expands (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 396
• Drone technology severs visual discrimination from physical proximity to targets. #expands (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1016
• Drone imagery functions as targeting rather than representation #expands (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 395
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 575