Weapons’ means, not ends, determine the form of violent action.

Evidence

A guiding thread is a thought expressed by the philosopher Simone Weil in the 1930s: “the most defective method possible,” she warned, would be to approach warfare and the phenomena of armed violence “in terms of the ends pursued and not by the nature of the means employed.” On the other hand, “the very essence of the materialist method is that, in its examination of any human event whatever, it attaches much less importance to the ends pursued than to the consequences necessarily implied by the working out of the means employed.” Rather than hastening to seek possible justifications—in other words, rather than moralizing—she advised doing something quite different: Begin by taking apart the mechanism of violence. Go and look at the weapons, study their specific characteristics. Become a technician, in a way. But only in a way, for the aim here is an understanding that is not so much technical as political. What is important is not so much to grasp how the actual device works but rather to discover the implications of how it works for the action that it implements. The point is that the means adopted are binding, and a combination of specific constraints is associated with each type of means adopted. Those means not only make it possible to take action but also determine the form of that action, and one must find out how they do so. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 119

Categorization

• XREF: Weil’s materialist method is the analytical spine of the whole book and directly serves the reader’s purpose of understanding drones as transforming war’s norms — the means bind the action. — connects to: Guerrilla power derives from the whole population, not weaponry; Hunting, unlike combat, defines violence by the prey’s location; A combatant’s weapon defines the moral essence of who they become (+7 more)

Related

• Analyzing weapons’ mechanics reveals the political form they impose on action (similarity 0.93)
• A combatant’s weapon defines the moral essence of who they become (similarity 0.89)
• Weapons constitute the essence of combatants, not mere instruments (similarity 0.88)
• Technical means and strategic ends interact, not oppose, in warfare. (similarity 0.83)
• Guerrilla power derives from the whole population, not weaponry (similarity 0.81)
• Choosing a weapon can alter or forfeit the user’s moral essence (similarity 0.81)
• Combatants grasp their own essence only by being the object of an opponent’s weapon (similarity 0.79)
• Drones transformed from surveillance eyes into weapons almost by chance. (similarity 0.79)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.79)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Weapons work primarily as deterrents that prevent fights rather than win them #qualifies (0.60) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 966