Pilotless Drones: All of the Killing With None of the Accountability

Holding US drone pilots accountable for the many, many civilians they kill has already been a lesson in futility, but it appears this will be doubly so with the advent of the X-47B, the first pilotless variant.

Officials are quick to assure that the computer in the X-47B which decides who lives and who dies could potentially be overriden by humans. Though this is preferable to the killbots of the Terminator franchise, it doesn’t answer the question of who, if anybody, will be theoretically accountable when the drone decides to kill innocent civilians.

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Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.