Signal latency makes drone operators aim at obsolete images of an earlier moment

Evidence

There is a time lag between what happens on the ground and when the drone operators see the image of that on their screen. The problem lies with the signal’s latency. Space, which it was claimed could be suppressed by technical means, made a comeback in the form of an incomprehensible time lag. All that the operators have to aim at is the slightly obsolete image of an earlier situation. The New York Times reports that targets now make the most of this asynchrony: when individuals think that they are being hunted by a drone, they adopt zigzag movements. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 294 (#expands, via linked claim)

Harun Farocki tells us that the technology of military vision produces not so much representations as ” ‘operative images,’ images that do not represent an object, but instead are part of an operation.” Here, vision is a sighting: it serves not to represent objects but to act upon them, to target them. The function of the eye is that of a weapon. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 395 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Signal latency gives drone targets an exploitable weak point — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 294; Drone imagery functions as targeting rather than representation — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 395; Preemptive drone targeting rests on epistemologically fragile predictions

Related

• Signal latency gives drone targets an exploitable weak point (similarity 0.91)
• Drone imagery functions as targeting rather than representation (similarity 0.88)
• Drone surveillance transforms the panopticon from a punishing to an annihilating gaze. (similarity 0.86)
• Drone technology severs visual discrimination from physical proximity to targets. (similarity 0.83)
• Drone targeting hinged on remote visual guesses about sex and combatant status (similarity 0.83)
• Drones are less precise than rifles and grenades at discriminating targets. (similarity 0.82)
• Preemptive drone targeting rests on epistemologically fragile predictions (similarity 0.81)
• Drone targeting decisions rest on probabilistic inference from behavior rather than observed facts. (similarity 0.80)
• Drone killing is reduced to clicking on tiny on-screen figures (similarity 0.79)
• Drone surveillance cannot reliably distinguish combatants from civilians (similarity 0.79)
• Drone operators see strikes in vivid detail, overturning the distancing logic (similarity 0.79)
• Drone strikes depend on a network of remote invisible human observers (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Signal latency gives drone targets an exploitable weak point #expands (0.90) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 294
• Drone imagery functions as targeting rather than representation #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 395
• Preemptive drone targeting rests on epistemologically fragile predictions #corroborates (0.50)