When the U.S. gave missiles to the Afghan Mujahidins during the Soviet war in Afghanistan it arguably came back to haunt the United States.
In relation to the current drone strikes it seems to me that on the technological side there are now all kinds of (innocent) related gizmos available even as consumer devices; it must be much harder to control the proliferation of drones than of nuclear weapons, say. The stakes have increased (again), and all kinds of "surgical" side effects from "anticipatory" self defense must linger. Consider e.g. this:
It doesn’t take as much talent or experience or training to pilot a drone as it does to pilot a real plane. The skills are much like what you need to do well in a video game. And the C.I.A. has outsourced a lot of the drone piloting, which also raises interesting legal questions, because you not have only civilians running this program, but you may have people who are not even in the U.S. government piloting the drones.
Are there anticipatory public analyses as to what (future) risks may be entailed in the currently accelerating drone program? Who writes them and what do they say? What books (other than those mentioned in Jane Mayer's article) have been written on the topic?
Basically, has there been analysis on this, and if so what does it say?
(courtesy XKCD and Terminator)
