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Friday 6 November 2009

…it’s a good thing to have technological innovations. It can present tremendous military advantage. And the argument is being made that you’re not risking your soldiers when you use them and that, because the weapons systems are astonishingly precise and accurate, they allow you to hit a target from many miles away with pinpoint accuracy, minimizing civilian fatalities. But on the other hand, historical experience has shown that we over-value these toys. The fallacy that has to be factored in is that, yeah, drones can hit a far away target with pinpoint accuracy, but that’s only assuming that the intelligence you have on the target is good to begin with. Which it most likely isn’t. You may be thinking that you’re hitting Baitullah Mehsud, but maybe you’re actually hitting the local baker, who someone has told you incorrectly is Baitullah Mehsud. Technological breakthroughs don’t really amount to much of anything without good intelligence. The failure of investment has consistently been on the human side. Scott Horton

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