Why remote war is bad war
Technology makes fighting war easier and more palatable—but it dangerously changes the nature of the fight, argues a US Marine veteran.
by Anthony Swofford
Oct 10, 2019
Shortly after I turned 18, the United States Marine Corps trained me to live, think, and operate as one of the most lethal humans walking the earth. They transformed me from a typical suburban American kid into their ideal fighting machine through a perfected, scientific regimen of psychological rewiring, physiological restructuring, and moral recoding. After 10 months in the grunt lab, I was assigned to an infantry battalion. I operated with a new kinesiology of the body and soul that had not only prepared me for war but created a thirst for any brand of conflict. I had an understanding of what perfection on the battlefield would look, sound, and taste like. I had become a Battle Bot.
My lethality increased with each personnel addition: from me, the rifleman, to the four-man fire team, the squad, the platoon, the company, the battalion. Each time, add new men, add new hunger, more firepower, more expertise, more technology with which to lay waste to the enemy. As the fighting organism grows in size, so does the inability to pause mission and consider whether the killing is just or moral: the killing just is.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614488/why-remote-war-is-bad-war/
