drones in discourse

MADARIKAN, N. DRONES IN DISCOURSE FALL, 2015

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Drones in Discourse

Constructing a Consistent and Malleable Conceptualization of the Contemporary Drone

NIFEMI MADARIKAN


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INTRODUCTION: A Palpable Unease

“Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is

assassination.”

- Jeremy Scahill, ‘The Assassination Complex’

In popular imagination, the modern drone is depicted as an acephalous,

winged, killing-machine; it is an unnatural synthesis of man-machine

consciousness built to surveil and destroy. This representation is as

flawed as it is problematic; the drone cannot be conceptualized as such

a rigid, crudely one-dimensional object. In this paper, I will articulate the

drone in a manner that is conceptually consistent and contextually

malleable. I begin with an investigation of air strikes authorized within

the U.S. military-industrial complex in order to situate the reasons

behind public distrust and fear of the drone. Following this, I explore

some of the several other different spaces in which drones are operated,

spanning a palimpsest of civic, creative, and commercial contexts that

inform each other. Having identified contexts and spaces of relevance, I

then demystify the drone to ascertain its metaphysical underpinnings.

This leads me to my articulation of the drone as a mobile extension of the

operator’s self and experience of space. I further validate this concept

through an analysis of the Internet as a parallel technology that extends

the operator’s experience of space by mapping real-world space subjects

onto Internet space nodes which can be navigated by the operator. This

articulation is expanded to conceptualize the drone as an epistemic

object that operates within a human collectivity for the general good of

the State.

Popular public opinion positions the drone as a mindless tool of violence

and intrusion associated with government-authorized targeted killings,

especially as a means of extrajudicial execution. This representation of

the drone is not entirely without reason; Jack Serle and Abigail Field-

Smith of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism claim that the Obama

administration has authorized at least 491 drone strikes in Pakistan,

Somalia and Yemen to date. (Jack Serle, 2015). In addition to widespread

fear of military application unmanned aerial vehicles, U.S. public opinion


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reflects a palpable unease about drone application outside of the

military-industrial complex. While brutal hunting machines assassinate

targets outside the U.S., drones within the State raise fears of

“catastrophic aerial accidents and … optical surveillance and personal or

commercial privacy invasion” (McCosker, 2015). The drone has become

an instrument of fear and a subject of anti-military criticism.

As drones begin to appear outside the military-industrial complex,

several organizations, private interests, and authorities have begun the

design of protocols, regulations, and standardizations to ensure the

drone can operate within the State in ways congruent to existing

sociocultural norms, technologies, institutions, and arrangements of

power and space. For instance, US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has

stated interest in regulating Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to guard

against aircraft that are operated “in a manner that endangers the safety

of the national airspace system” (Erhardt Graeff, 2015). An Australian

federal inquiry conducted by the Commonwealth Parliamentary

Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs was published

called ‘Eyes in the Sky: Inquiry into Drones and the Regulation of Air Safety

and Privacy’. This inquiry included conjectures on new domains in which

drone technology could become relevant. What this reveals is a

burgeoning desire to integrate drones into the modern day state in a

deliberate, thoughtful manner. This will require a thorough

conceptualization that grapples with the nature of the drone’s

metaphysical existence and its continued relevance to the State.

Angel of Death

A synthesis of man-machine consciousness applied with lethal force, the

military drone has become a hallmark of U.S. modern warfare. Since the

first recorded drone strike outside of the U.S. 12 years ago, military use

of drones in targeted killings has received attention from a plethora of

citizen critics, metaphysical theorists, and sociologists alike. Georgetown

law professor Garry Solis defines targeted killing as “The intentional

killing of a specific civilian or unlawful combatant who cannot

reasonably be apprehended who is taking a direct part in hostilities … in

the contest of an international or non-international armed conflict.”

(Whetham, 2013) David Whetham asserts that this definition is “still


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commensurate with the core idea found in all codifications of basic

human rights” whereby “while there is an absolute right not to be

arbitrarily deprived of life, the use of lethal force against an individual

can still be justified if it is absolutely necessary for the defense of another

person from an act of unlawful violence by that individual” (Whetham,

2013) However, at the epicenter of recent criticism of targeted killing is

this ‘absolutely necessary’ criterion; public opinion reflects a concern

that targeted killing has become an excuse for extrajudicial execution.

Without any actual imminent threat warranting self-defense, the U.S.

government’s use of military force to eliminate ‘security threats’ is

perceived as lethal punishment of opponents to the State. Furthermore,

concerns arise as to who the U.S. government classifies as its targets and

whether these include innocent civilians merely on the wrong side of the

fence. In a national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted May

12-18 2015, 80% of the 2,002 adults expressed at least some concern

regarding whether U.S. drone strikes endanger the lives of innocent

civilians – 48% said they were very concerned, with 32% only somewhat

concerned. (Poll on U.S. Opinions of Drones, 2015) The survey also

revealed a concomitant wariness of drone warfare – 31% said they were

very concerned U.S. drone strikes could lead to retaliation from

extremist groups, 24% believed negative criticism of U.S. drone warfare

tactics could damage America’s reputation around the world, and only

29% believed the drone strikes were being conducted legally.

Furthermore, 56% of the surveyed adults felt that the United States had

failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan, especially given the heavy use

of military drones in the region. However, the survey also reveals an

initially confounding oddity; despite palpable concerns about the moral

implications of executing innocent civilians, the efficacy of drone

warfare, and the corollary of a negative national image, 58% of the

surveyed adults still approve the U.S. conducting missile strikes from

drones to target extremist terrorist groups in countries such as Pakistan,

Yemen and Somalia. How could public opinion contradict itself so much?

I posit that this is more of revelation than a contradiction; under the

general assumption that the U.S. military operates in the interest of the

State by defending its citizenry, public opinion supports the concept of

proactive military campaigns against terrorism and extremist

insurgents that pose a significant threat to the State. However, public


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disapproval arises in the realization of this concept, in the physical

details and technical decisions involved in its implementation. Public

disapproval arises where drones are employed in warfare with

unforeseen, or less than perfect, outcomes. What remains is to ascertain

the sources of public unease about military drones with elucidating,

though disputable, evidence.

In early 2014, The Intercept published several articles in response to a

leaked cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S.

military’s targeted killing program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

The first article, The Assassination Complex, describes “parallel drone-

based assassination programs” (Scahill, 2015) operated by the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations

Command (JSOC). The documents cited by the article reveal intense

internal conflict between these two entities regarding arrangements of

power and ownership of operations. Also revealed is how the

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Task Force

“lamented the limitations of the drone program” and “recommended

capturing and interrogating more suspected terrorists rather than

killing them in drone strikes.” (Scahill, 2015) A note from the UN Special

Rapporteur in 2010 reads “No State has disclosed the full legal basis for

targeted killings … Nor has any State disclosed the procedural and other

safeguards in place to ensure that killings are lawful and justified, and

the accountability mechanisms that ensure wrongful killings are

investigated, prosecuted and punished.” (Whetham, 2013) With no

measure of international accountability for targeted killings, the U.S.

military allegedly authorized attacks on targets outside of its own official

standards on several occasions – two of which were leaked to The

Intercept: Operation Haymaker in Afghanistan, and Objective Peckham

between England and Somalia.

Once British-Lebanese citizen Bilal el-Berjawi was suspected of having

cultivated ties with senior al Qaeda militants in East Africa, his British

citizenship was immediately annulled and “he was placed on a U.S. kill

list.” (Gallagher, 2015) According to a Pentagon case study, Berjawi left

London in 2006 to attend ‘Bayt al-Jinn’ – a camp where he received

training on explosives. The case study further states that soon after, he

returned to the U.K. and provided financial support al Qaeda allied

operatives in East Africa. Although the Pentagon case study leaked to The


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Intercept did not specifiy the location of the Bayt al-Jinn camp, a secret

detainee report on a Kenyan terror suspect was published by WikiLeaks

in 2011 which mentions a ‘Bayt Jinn House’ in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Berjawi was placed under surveillance by both British and American

intelligence for at least 5 years as he travelled back and forth between

England and Somalia. In a case study included in a 2013 report by the

ISR, Berjawi is referred to as a target codenamed ‘Objective Peckham’.

On January 21, 2012, Berjawi was executed by a drone missile strike, 10

miles northwest of Mogadishu. According to the secret Pentagon

document ‘FFF Timeline: Objective Peckham Case Study’, Berjawi’s

white SUV was observed at 3:59 a.m. by constant drone surveillance over

several hours until 11:03 a.m. when Bilal el Berjawi was “eliminated via

kinetic strike”. News of this attack sparked outrage in U.K. and U.S.

citizens, and paranoia among al Qaeda elements in East Africa. Public

concern was fixated on the decision to execute Berjawi given that the U.S.

and U.K. intelligence forces had several opportunities to apprehend and

detain Berjawi over the 5 year period of his almost constant surveillance.

Much criticism of targeted killing is premised on the moral implications

of harming civilians in drone strikes. Between 2011 and 2013, the U.S.

military, CIA and other subsets of the U.S. intelligence contingency,

launched ‘Operation Haymaker’ – a campaign against Taliban and al

Qaeda forces in the Hindu Kush, along Afghanistan’s northeaster border

with Pakistan. The Intercept obtained secret documents, including

detailed slides pertaining to Operation Haymaker and other operations

in the border regions of Afghanistan which “show that during a five-

month stretch of the campaign, nearly nine out of 10 people who died in

airstrikes were not the Americans’ direct targets. By February 2013,

Haymaker airstrikes had resulted in no more than 35 “jackpots” … while

more than 200 people were declared EKIA.” (Devereaux, 2015) Jackpots

and EKIA belong to a glossary of codenames and inside terms within the

U.S. military – the former referring to successful assassinations, and the

latter as an acronym for “enemy killed in action”, when some individual

other than the target (possibly including civilians) is killed. This same

vernacular encodes drones as “birds” and specific targets as “objectives”.

(Begley, 2015)

Through a page-turning, case-by-case exposé of U.S. drone warfare, The

Intercept inserts itself into drone discourse as ammunition for public


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critics to vociferously attack military application of unmanned aerial

vehicles. But how trustworthy is this source relative to other works? In

‘Counting the Dead: The Proportionality of Predation in Pakistan’, Avery

Plaw provides a rigorous analysis of the collateral damage caused by

drone strikes. Following extensive research, Plaw claims that “the best

available evidence suggests that civilian casualties are moderate to low

in relation to suspected militant casualties.” (Plaw, 2013) This is in stark

contrast to the high civilian death toll described by The Intercept. Plaw

concludes his analyses with an appeal for drones to be “permitted more

time to achieve their objectives and to prove how precise and effective

they can become.” (Plaw, 2013) Perhaps the precision and effectiveness

that Plaw describes are most congruently aligned with the reflections of

Jeff McMahan – a philosopher who posits that drone technology enables

operators to more carefully discriminate the targets they destroy and

“monitor the target area for lengthy periods before deciding whether,

when, and where to strike.” (McMahan, 2013) This line of thought

suggests that drone surveillance technologies provide operators a way

to closely observe and thus correctly identify their targets, enabling

them to “make morally informed decisions about the use of their

weapons.” (McMahan, 2013) Worth noting is McMahan’s avoidance of

the technology determinist view of drones as dangerous machines

concomitant with inhumanity. Instead McMahan points out that “if the

operators of the remotely controlled weapons are citizens of a state that

is the victim of armed aggression, they are necessarily under some sort

of threat, so that if the threat they face as individuals is sufficiently

serious to make killing a proportionate response, they can be justified in

using their weapons against the aggressors.” (McMahan, 2013) This flip

of the coin clarifies a crucial property of the drone – its context. One can

argue in defense of drone warfare so long as such military action is in

self-defense. One would not be able to ignore the moral and ethical faults

of using drones in wars of collective defense or intervention where the

intervener is not facing any real imminent threat at all. For the use of

drones in targeted killings to be morally and ethically justifiable, it must

be “neither punishment for past actions nor reprisal but rather a

preventive act taken in self-defense.” (Whetham, 2013)


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Decentering the Drone

A thoroughly extensive conceptualization of the drone requires an

appreciation of the different physical contexts to which UAV technology

can be applied. Maximilian Jablonowski claims that “Within the last year

media coverage on actual and potential civil drone uses appears to have

increased” (Jablonowski, 2015). Civic technologies shift power away

from centralized government and into other constituents of the State,

typically redistributed among citizenry and their institutions. Through

this lens, drones can be analyzed as tools of participatory practice and

outside the context of military application. Articulating the drone as a

civic technology is necessary to “demilitarize and democratize [the

drones] so they can find their full potential” (Jablonowski, 2015).

In ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’ Langdon Winner wrestles with the agency

of artifacts – the disputable opinion that technology can “embody

specific forms of power and authority”. (Winner, 1980) Winner proposes

that technology can be evaluated not only in terms of its functions and

physical utility, but also within the parameters of reasonable social

contexts. An example of this is in Plato’s allegory of a sailing vessel and

the inherent power structure attributed to its operation; “no reasonable

person believes that ships can be run democratically” (Winner, 1980)

Winner itemizes two arguments for technology’s inherent political

property; one stating that the use of technology often requires a

particular set of social conditions and directives, the other that

technology can be compatible with particular social relationships. Given

this loose articulation of how technology can be applied within different

social contexts and arrangements of power, the viability of civic drones

becomes more plausible. In ‘Making Drones Civic: Values and Design

Principles for Civic Technology’ Erhardt Graeff and J. Nathan Matias

contest whether drones can be fully accepted as civic technologies which

shift power “away from corrupt actors and toward virtuous actors.”

(Erhardt Graeff, 2015) This redistribution of power is a precursor to

broader participation by citizens in the development of their State; civic

technologies become tools for civic engagement.

The most recently successful application of drone technology to civic

engagement is in monitorial citizenship, whereby citizens reverse the

gaze of surveillance onto the State and its constituents. Civic drones have


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become powerful information delivery systems that enable citizenry to

better monitor governments and private interest entities and thus hold

them more accountable for their observable actions. For instance, the

Grassroots Mapping efforts to monitor the scope of BP Deepwater

Horizon oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico “offer a practical case of

participatory aerial photography used to contest the narratives of

private interests in spatially disparate situations.” (Erhardt Graeff, 2015)

This ‘sousveillance’ distinguishes itself from traditional surveillance in

that the power to surveil is redistributed among all citizens as opposed

to any single central authority.

When drones appear to hone civic intent into participatory engagement,

it becomes easy to slip into quixotic articulations of technology as the

ultimate transformative proponent of development. Kentaro Toyoma, on

the other hand, “denies technology’s ability to substitute for deficient

intent and capability on the part of project stakeholders.” (Toyoma,

2011) Technology alone cannot solve the myriad problems of the world,

instead it “can appear to have both positive and negative impacts,

because technology is merely a magnifier of underlying human and

institutional intent and capacity, which can themselves be positive or

negative.” (Toyoma, 2011) Again rises the menacing portrayal of drones

as angels of death held accountable to military constituents of the State.

However, Toyoma’s theory of technology as an amplifier of human forces

is neither intended to bedevil technology nor dismiss its relevance in

driving development, but rather to refocus on “building human capacity”

and seeking to “amplify the impact of existing institutions that are

already contributing successfully to development goals.” (Toyoma,

2011) The observation that “progress had been closely bound up, from

its inception, with the accelerating rate of scientific and mechanical

innovation” (Marx, 2010) is one criticized by Leo Marx for its implicit

disregard for human agency, and unabashed adherence to technology

determinist ideals. Marx goes further to critique current articulations of

technology by describing the modern reification of technology as a

hazardous concept that “seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as

to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between

people.” (Marx, 2010) Following this caveat, the civic drone cannot be

treated as a causal agent or else attention may be diverted from the


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human relations and infrastructure necessary to enact the change and

ignite the upheaval that precede development.

If the civic drone is the first attempt to decenter the drone, the

commercial drone is sure to follow under the purview of ‘purposive-

rational action’, and the creative drone surfaces as another

conceptualization of UAVs outside of the military-industrial complex.

Amazon Prime Air is a future delivery system from Amazon designed to

safely deliver packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using UAVs.

Flying under 400 feet and weighing less than 55 pounds, Amazon Prime

Air drones will deliver packages of up to five pounds within the

parameters of safe operation beyond the line of sight. Few hurdles, such

as need for “regulatory support” (Amazon, 2015) remain before this

rapid parcel delivery system transitions from science fiction to

commonplace reality. On the other hand, a burgeoning amateur drone

community has ascribed creative purposes to the drone through

activities that are unrestrained by specific rational objectives – unlike

civic, commercial, or military drones. Independent hobbyists develop

amateur UAVs purely for the sake of exploring technical problems within

a creative and cooperative space as an end in itself. This informal

creative process allows such hobbyists to “gather momentum and realize

themselves rather independently.” (Jablonowski, 2015) These drones all

form a landscape of differing visions of technological innovations such

that “the drone is constituted by different realities … a ‘real social and

cultural phenomenon’ even though it is not physically present in most

lifeworlds.” (Jablonowski, 2015) Thus the drone is no longer a singular

concept but a technological plurality whose constitutive parts span

military, commercial, creative, and civic contexts. Such plurality in

contextualization is the crucial step towards decentering the drone in a

way that contributes to understanding, contesting, and creating the

“apparent future trajectory of drones.” (Jablonowski, 2015)

Demystifying the Drone

Having situated the source of public unease in its apocryphal military

representations and identified the broadening landscape of its

applications, the task remains to articulate the drone in a manner that is

both conceptually consistent and contextually malleable. The lack of


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standard terminology and classification of drones across relevant spaces

of regulation, production, and use “flags the competing conceptual

terrain in which drones operate.” (McCosker, 2015). The palimpsest of

contexts and criticisms of UAVs I have presented thus far will not suffice

to clear this clouded conceptual terrain; metaphysical scrutiny is

essential to demystifying the drone. In Drone Metaphysics, Benjamin

Noys open his examination of the drone with a metaphor of “the

‘travelling eye of God’ … as the operator of violence.” (Noys, 2015)

Immediately, the reader is launched into a narrative of apathy and

emotional disconnection common to all aerial warfare, a “concomitant

inhumanity”. Noys depicts the drone as the signature device of

“transcendence and destruction” in contemporary arrangements of

power – a violent, mobile panopticon that allows everything to be seen

and known, at every moment and in every place. Also crucial to

understand is the drone’s surrounding metaphysical ‘supplement’ – a

“both unnecessary extra addition and necessary element of completion”.

This supplement is a theological resonance that materializes itself as the

various subjects that are pertinent to the drone as an object.

The first subject of the drone’s metaphysical supplement is what Noys

calls ‘World Spirit’; whereby the drone’s physically obvious acephaly

coupled with its lack of sentience makes the drone difficult to identify.

This difficulty leads to an anxiety of faceless weapons that can neither be

judged nor critiqued in a conventional manner. Regarding military

application, this becomes problematic as drones minimize the role and

direct accountability of humans in Derek Gregory’s ‘kill-chain’ – “a

dispersed and distributed apparatus, a congeries of actors, objects,

practices, discourses and affects, that entertains the people who are

made part of it and constitutes them as particular kinds of subjects.”

(Gregory, 2011) True to its panopticon nature, the drone occludes its

operator from the view of its victims and those who are surveilled. From

the victim’s perspective, the invisible pilot cannot be identified and thus

cannot be held accountable for the drone’s actions. To compose the

drone as a metaphysical object, Noys asserts that ascribing a ‘face’ to the

drone is “a necessary critical gesture.” (Noys, 2015)

Another subject of drone metaphysics is that which is premised in

Projectile Philosophy; the ‘projectile’ state involves the pursuit of ideal

weightlessness, a replacement of vital or physical means of existence


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with the ‘void’ of “pure intelligence in transit” and “speed” (Noys, 2015).

This ‘void’ is present in the absence of the human object. No longer

subject to physical constraints of standard motion, the pilot instead

vicariously interacts through the drone via remote control and visual

and/or audio interfaces. Here the drone becomes “an experience of

weightless dominance in its displacement and augmentation of … the

‘void’, not so much of speed, but of invulnerability”. (Noys, 2015) This

ability of drones to lift their human pilot above and beyond material

constraints, thus augmenting their ability to interact speedily with the

world in a non-corporeal manner, portrays the drone as a device of

transcendence.

Before finalizing the drone as a transcendent object, it is worth

considering the metaphysical subject of Banality – the candid

acknowledgement of the technical limitations of range, speed,

vulnerability, and autonomous operation that tether the drone to

materiality. Noys highlights the drone’s “conjunction of banal labour and

deadly violence” (Noys, 2015), drawing attention to the homonym

metaphor of a drone as a mindless laborer of monotonous work. This

banality integrates human agency into the conceptualization of the

drone in what Noys describes as “the fusion of flesh with steel.” (Noys,

2015) The drone’s return to materiality is consistent with Leo Marx’s

model of interpreting technology in tandem with human structures and

intents; a drone can neither design, program, nor fly itself. Its operation

and existence are contingent on the continued labor of human agents.

Although Noys provides an elucidating insight into varied metaphysical

spaces occupied by the drone, he also limits the drone to an existence of

“brutal surveillance and killing”. Noys warns of “engaging with this [the

drone’s] theological or metaphysical resonance seriously” so as not to

“feed the technological fetishism that can impinge on the thinking of

drones.” (Noys, 2015) Noys’ complete dismissal of technology

determinist analyses is an unfortunate oversight worsened by the small

scope of his own conceptualization of the drone. In order to critique

technologies in an intelligent and conscious manner, it is crucial to

properly understand not only how they act for us, but how they act on

us. Not all drones kill human victims; this violent depiction of the drone

as a murderous machine is what I hope to steer away from in this paper.

In ‘Drone Media: Unruly Systems, Radical Empiricism and Camera


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Consciousness’ Anthony McCosker describes the “distributed ecology”

(McCosker, 2015) in which drones operate. McCosker begins by drawing

attention to dronies - the use of drones in social media practices of self-

imaging. In this case, the drone remains a device of surveillance yet is no

longer a traditional panopticon; its distributed transmission of

‘surveillance footage’ across social media platforms such as Facebook

and Instagram “creates a heterogeneous assemblage that places

perception outside of a singular, fixed perceiving subject.” (McCosker,

2015) As opposed to being forcefully surveilled by a faceless entity, the

subject deliberately renders himself onto the screen of social media for

a multitude of faces to see.

Beyond the physical spaces within which drones are operated and

regulated, (such as legislation, commercial application and military

deployment) are mental processes and connections also worth

investigating. McCosker analyzes the “modes of imaging and visuality”

(McCosker, 2015) within which drones operate during experiences of

‘wirelessness’. This wirelessness blurs the edges between objective and

subjective experiences of sight. When flying drones, the human operator

displaces their consciousness into the drone in an “indirect visuality”

that supports motion - the operator goes where the drone goes and sees

what the drone sees in a vicarious experience of perception and

interaction. Mentally, the drones becomes an extension of the operator, a

surplus set of eyes with wings. Now consider the social implications of

this ‘extension of self’ when the drone, following its operator-provided

directives, broadcasts this visual experience across social media for

other objects to also see. Together, these conditions “create a volatile

techno-social … environment of object and signaletic relations, image

relay and distribution.” (McCosker, 2015) Furthermore, the drone

implicates the operator in a “dual sense of visual augmentation and

anxiety” (McCosker, 2015) The source of this anxiety is in the disruption

of the scene the drone enters. This disruption follows the individual

awareness of being observed through mediated perception and, in turn,

precedes a social wariness of the proliferation of mutual surveillance.

Reiterating poll data, as much as 42% of adults in a recent Reuters poll

opposed private ownership of drones until regulation was in place to

curb potential invasions of privacy by drones carrying cameras (Scott,

2015). The fear of the drone as a ‘mechanized vision machine’ is a


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palpable one stemming from an aversion to drones interfering with

publically visible relations and experiences previously had in private

seclusion.

In a space of technological surveillance shared with orbital satellites and

static cameras, drones emerge as devices of “unruly trajectories.”

(McCosker, 2015) Whereas traditional surveillance cameras monitor

from a fixed location and satellites operate in directions dictated by fixed

vectors along particular axes, the drone operates with complete freedom

of multidirectional motion; its only constraint being the bounds of the

wireless space it travels within. Despite these differences, preexisting

technologies of surveillance (satellites in particular) provide a useful

history in their use by states and the military-industrial complex to sever

the material relationship between an object and its visual experience

then supplant it with a system of visual observation embodied in remote

“omniscient and objective structures of seeing and knowing the world.”

(McCosker, 2015) In its ability to deliver information through the

footage it records, the drone imbues its operator with knowledge and

becomes an epistemic object.

In ‘Promising Information: Democracy, Development, and the Remapping

of Latin America’ Kregg Hetherington describes three properties of

information: representation as the relationship between independent

things that information refers to, clarity as the recoverability and

comprehensibility of information, and quantification as the extent to

which information can be measured and understood as a ratio between

what has and has not yet been uncovered (Hetherington, 2012).

Excitingly enough, the conceptualization of the drone constructed so far

operates in processes consistent with these properties of information. I

have established that the surveillance drone is operated in a vicarious

visual system that maps the observations of the drone’s own physical

space onto a remote ‘operator space’ via wireless communication. In a

bidirectional relationship, the drone streams real-time, first-person-

view visual data to the operator who then cognitively processes this data

into information used in navigating the drone through the physical

world. This relationship between the drone, the operator, and their

respective physical spaces illustrates representation. That the streaming

of visual data is comprehensible enough for the operator to process it in

real-time and navigate the drone’s flight attests to this information’s


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clarity. Since the drone merely extends the operator’s human vision, the

same limitations on direct experiences of sight apply; the operator

cannot see what is not within the current field of view. With this, a clear

distinction is made between that which has and has not yet been visually

uncovered. This distinction and the cognition that follows it relate to the

quantification of information. Clearly, the drone is more than just a

prosaic recording machine; it is a responsive information-delivery

system, an agent of knowledge, and thus an epistemic object.

Criticisms abound of the drone and its problematic “God trick”

(Haraway, 1988) of a surveilling gaze always beyond view which

nonetheless disrupts social and individual spaces of expression and

visibility. John Johnston on the other hand acknowledges the value of the

drone as an epistemic object, and argues that the new contemporary

visual experience it provides can only be critically engaged with “a new

consciousness of the sense of technical objects” (Johnston, 1999). This

consciousness requires that the drone be depicted as more than just a

machine, but a mobile agent of knowledge that “presents its semi-

subjectivity through its motile, transmissible and sharable image.”

(McCosker, 2015) Furthermore, we must acknowledge that the

surveillance drone possesses a quasi-consciousness of its own in that,

from inception, it is imbued with both technological and social

properties that not only represent but relationally act on the drone’s

operator, its surroundings, and the public it surveils. This is conceptually

consistent across considerations of drone agency and acknowledgement

of the human labors and associated metaphysical subjects that support

the viability of the drone.

Uncovering Parallels

Few systems embody modern arrangements of authority and

information within a space of wirelessness like the Internet. A global

system of interconnected computer networks, the Internet is a grand

epistemic structure. Human operators interface with this vehicle of

knowledge through the World Wide Web (WWW) – a distributed system

that “runs on top of the Internet and presents a model in which

everything looks like a document” (Andrew S. Tenenbaum, 2011). In

using the WWW, operators are able to query content stored anywhere


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across the Internet and then, where applicable, interact with this

content. Like the drone, this interface into the Internet provides the

operator a mobile and disembodied extension of self; the operator

determines how to maneuver within a remote space upon receiving real-

time, relational feedback from the technological object. Unlike the drone,

mobility in this case is not in the traversing of a physical environment

but in the purposeful navigation of networks of information nodes. Just

as the experience of indirect visuality through the drone’s user interface

enables an operator to surveil remote physical spaces, indirect visuality

through the WWW provides an operator the image produced by

mapping a subject from the world space onto relevant nodes in the

Internet space. How are we certain that this mapping conveys

information that meets Hetherington’s criteria of three properties? The

information communicated through the mapped image is representative

of relationships between independent world space subjects. For

instance, a WWW query on ‘Nigeria’ will likely return a set of nodes in

Internet space that communicate some of Nigeria’s world space subjects,

such as geographical location, cultural demographics, colonial history,

natural resources etc. The mapping communicates results of particular

operator queries or commands and thus usually communicates

comprehensible information to the operator – it possesses some clarity.

Lastly, this resultant image is quantifiable since the mapping from world

space to Internet space yields different results for different subjects.

Certain world space subjects correspond to more voluminous body of

nodes in Internet space than others, while some may have no valid

mappings onto Internet space at all. The operator is able to infer some

ratio of that which is discovered and that which is still yet to be known.

The Internet parallels the drone not only in conceptualization but also in

trends observed along its development. Like the surveillance drone, the

origins of the Internet are somewhat tied to the U.S. military-industrial

complex. The Internet was predated by ARPANET (Advanced Research

Projects Agency Network), a “research network sponsored by the DoD

(U.S. Department of Defense)” that “eventually connected hundreds of

universities and government installations” (Andrew S. Tenenbaum,

2011). Just as initial research into the drone’s remote surveillance

capabilities was endorsed by the U.S. military to further its own interests

in advanced reconnaissance and persistent surveillance, ARPANET’s


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structure was designed to be secure and resilient in order to protect the

DoD’s hosts, routers, and internetwork gateways from attack by the

Soviet Union. These pressures and concerns gave rise to the TCP/IP

Reference Model architecture that enabled the ARPANET to support

seamless connection between multiple networks and thus become the

first network of networks. It was the interconnection of regional

academic networks in the 1980s that marked the beginning of the

transition from ARPANET to the modern Internet. The 1990s saw the

inclusion of institutional, personal, and mobile computers and networks

in the Internet – a phenomenon that most resembles aforementioned

contemporary attempts to decenter and demilitarize the drone. Like

drone technology, the Internet currently has neither a centralized form

of governance, nor a set of standard technological implementations and

policies. However, the Internet Engineering Task Force, a non-profit

organization of loosely affiliated international participants has begun to

formulate a standardization of core protocols for the Internet.

The sociology of the internet is a burgeoning discipline that “involves the

application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source

of information and communication” (Wikipedia, 2015) to analyze online

communities, virtual communities and virtual worlds, catalysis of

change through new media, and the transformation from industrial to

informational societies. The discipline was born out of concerns for how

this technology may yield certain social implications, such as the

development of new forms social networks through social media

platforms, the arrangements of power within virtual communities, and

the proliferation of cyber-crime. In Social Implications of the Internet,

Paul DiMaggio et al posit that research tends to focus on the application

of the Internet in five principal domains: inequality stemming from a

digital divide, community and social capital, political participation

within deliberative democratic models of the State, organizations and

institutions, and cultural landscapes of participation and diversity (Paul

DiMaggio, 2001). DiMaggio’s investigation of ways in which the Internet

actually interacts with the physical world culminates in an appreciation

of how Internet use “adapts to existing patterns, permits certain

innovations, and reinforces particular kinds of change” since “the

Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and

patterns of behavior” (Paul DiMaggio, 2001). Findings like this help


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dispel “utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations

from technical possibilities” (Paul DiMaggio, 2001) and instead

contribute to a nuanced, reality-based understanding of the Internet.

This understanding is crucial in ascertaining realistic contextual subjects

and metaphysical bounds of the Internet’s conceptualization as a mobile

epistemic technology. A parallel technology to the Internet, drones in the

material world must also be carefully understood in terms consistent

with conceptual and observable underpinnings.

CONCLUSION: A Malleable Assemblage

Thus far, the drone has been demystified as a mobile epistemic

technology that extends the operator’s ability to relate to space. The

drone is an object found in wirelessness imbued with particular

sociocultural and technological properties; it possesses agency to act on

its environment within human-made contexts and systems. The domain

of its applications extend beyond the military-industrial complex,

spanning civic, commercial, and creative spaces in a palimpsest of

contexts that inform each other. Though elucidating, this

conceptualization is not yet complete as it still lacks a crucial property to

ensure consistency across the fluid integration of its past, present, and

future iterations into a single existence: malleability.

In order to construct a malleable conceptualization of the drone, we

must first explore possible origin stories of how the word ‘drone’ was

injected into modern day colloquialism as a UAV. In ‘Dancing to a Tune:

The Drone as Political and Historical Assemblage’, Ramon Bloomberg

points out that the term ‘drone’ “injects ambivalence into the qualities of

remotely controlled objects that otherwise might be passed off as …

prosthetics of a hidden hand” (Bloomberg, 2015). Bloomberg pinpoints

the source of this ambivalence to “the ways in which the drone is

productive of knowledge and reason” (Bloomberg, 2015), a quandary

best tackled by recognizing the drone not as a discrete device, but as a

political and historical assemblage.

The term ‘drone’ was once colloquially applied to the male bee in an

apiary who “performs no utility other than his continuous attempts to

procreate with a queen” (Bloomberg, 2015), a complacent “sex-machine”

who is content with the banality of his existence. The drone-bee is lazy


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and unproductive; unlike industrious worker bees that labor tirelessly

for the betterment of the colony, the drone-bee lives a dull life that

revolves around procreation with the queen only when needed.

Furthermore, the drone-bee is expendable; he is produced and

maintained only when the queen is able to mate then “ruthlessly hunted

down and killed” when the colony “no longer wishes to support drones”

(Bloomberg, 2015). In this origin story, the drone is best understood

within the context of the entire bee colony which has long served as a

metaphor for human societies. The drone lives a banal existence of

complacency and possesses neither private interests nor passions; these

are all repressed in the interest of “the common good, or public benefit”

(Bloomberg, 2015). The hive represents a “human collectivity of

centralized incentives which mobilize enterprise” (Bloomberg, 2015)

where industrious workers display initiative and creativity in their

labors, while the drone merely accepts that which is given to him. As a

(sex) machine possessing no personal passions and only acting in the

interest of the hive when instructed to do so, the drone as a bee begins

to resemble the popular modern reference of the drone as a UAV – a

remote-controlled, acephalous, flying machine.

Another origin is in the drone as a sonority, a continuous tone or chord

understood less as a sound on its own, and more as a technique. This

drone technique is used by liturgical voices of Gregorian Chant, Indian

ragas, early blues music, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and in Inuit throat

singing. Here, the drone is not so much considered as a single element,

but a spatial-temporal locus which other notes “move around, and in

opposition to it, departing from, and returning to its centrality.”

(Bloomberg, 2015). This way, it becomes clear that the drone as a

sonority is concerned with the establishment of territory, influencing

pace, rhythm and musical movement. This territorializing occurs

through the contemporary drone as well; the operator of a UAV departs

from their static location and explores remote space through an

experience of vicarious consciousness. This exploration extends the

operator’s visuality and expands the territory of that which they know.

In this case the drone becomes expeditionary; its flight is “undertaken as

part of a greater project, to seek knowledge of, or claim to an outside”

(Bloomberg, 2015).


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Incorporating Bloomberg’s origin story analyses, I propose that the

drone be constructed in terms of a human collectivity where expansion

of territory corresponds to an extension of power that furthers

individual interests. Applying the hive model of human collectivity to the

State, small-group and individual interests are coalesced by institutions

and government to contribute to the well-being of the State as a whole.

The drone becomes a mobile epistemic object that expands the owned

territory and furthers the interests of its operator, while wrapped within

a hive-like articulation of the State that focuses disparate, individual

enterprise into a combined endeavor.

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drones in discourse

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