THIS ISRAELI PRESENTATION ON HOW TO MAKE DRONE STRIKES MORE “EFFICIENT” DISTURBED ITS AUDIENCE
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/12/05/drone-strikes-israel-us-military-isvis
RESEARCH BACKED BY the U.S. and Israeli military scandalized a conference near Tel Aviv earlier this year after a presentation showed how the findings would help drone operators more easily locate people — including targets — fleeing their strikes and better navigate areas rendered unrecognizable by prior destruction.
The doctoral student who presented the research demonstrated how pioneering data visualization techniques could show a drone operator, using lines and arrows of varying thickness, which direction fast-moving people and vehicles were most likely to travel, for example, at an intersection or while fleeing a building. The presentation clearly angered at least some of the crowd, including the moderator, prompting hostile questions.
“The guy’s talk (and its video documentation) revealed much of what’s very wrong about UAV warfare,” said Mushon Zer-Aviv, a web designer and activist and an organizer of the conference, the data visualization confab known as ISVIS.
The incident at ISVIS underscores the extent to which drone warfare’s deeply technological basis and inhumanity has become a major part of global public debate around its use. Once viewed (and still promoted) as an efficient, safer way to target terrorists, the growing ubiquity of lethal drone strikes in global hotspots is increasingly seen as helping to create wastelands and fomenting the sort of terroristic support it’s designed to eradicate.