Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

An interesting contribution to the discussion around the Third Offset and the question of how (not if) humans will partner with machines on the battlefield. Drones are not a new concept, despite what some publications will lead you to believe, but a long-term issue that the military and the defense industry have been working on. As we rely more and more on machines, it's critical that we understand when they are a good resource and when they are not, and just how reliable they really are. Short of that, we're building a partnership in the dark, which will end just as poorly for us as it will for our enemies.

From WWII to Afghanistan, Cockburn documents the desire for and attempted implementation of a system that can remotely conduct surveillance and remove targets with "pinpoint accuracy". Also discusses the shift in accepted warfare tactics that is driving drone technology. Insanely interesting and nauseating read on the failure of "targeted killing" (government sponsored assassination) and the machinery that, in practice, is prohibitively inferior to soldiers on the ground/in the air. Cannot handle the ludicrous amount of inefficiency the military-industrial complex propagates. "The goal may have been impossible, but the attempts were very profitable." ( )

I was a little disappointed in Andrew Cockburn's book, Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins. I thought I was in for a discussion of drones. Period. I was wrong. It doesn't take long to figure out his point of view: America is pretty terrible at fighting wars, and inflicts terrible collateral damage on non-combatants. He does make a convincing case, though, that the military-industrial complex of Eisenhower's era, has definitely not gone away - if anything it has become more ingrained, and more corrupt.

Cockburn does a good job of outlining how we've come from fielding a massive army, and wave after wave of high-altitude bombers to trying to fight on a shoestring, while wasting massive amounts of money.

All in all, I liked it. ( )

Andrew Cockburn's forthcoming book, Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins (Henry Holt and Company) challenges every American to rethink the structure of our defense establishment and the way we allocate public funds. In fact, Cockburn addresses far more than the evolution of drones into the controversial “targeted killing” programs.

What makes Cockburn's book so compelling is his dispassionate laying out of facts and figures beside the inflated claims made by the defense industry and the carefully crafted statements and reports from uniformed and civilian security officials. Although his title and subtitle imply he will tell the story of military drones, Cockburn investigates and exposes broader issues, chiefly our military's reliance on expensive, complex technologies not capable or robust enough to play a consistently useful role in warfare; the connections between high ranking military and civilian officials and the defense contractors; and the efficacy, or more accurately the lack of efficacy, of contemporary U.S. command and control regimes.

This book would be a must read on these grounds alone, but there is more. Ever since William Greider published Fortress America in 1998, the extent of what President Eisenhower famously described as the military-industrial complex has been public knowledge; moreover, Greider and Cockburn after him have made it abundantly clear that Eisenhower should have left the draft phrasing, “military-congressional-industrial complex”, stand in his delivered speech. Defense contractors carefully site bits and pieces of each project across a wide range of Congressional districts to insure that a large number of Senators and Representatives will support funding for weapons and command and control systems that bring jobs to their constituents. If that were not enough, Cockburn describes the now sordidly familiar spectacle of defense contractors hiring family members of elected officials as consultants and advisers; this on top of the revolving door for senior military personnel who can retire on Friday and turn up in civilian clothes the following Monday to lobby Congress and the Defense Department for funding for their new employers, defense industry firms whose products they know because, as military officers, they worked on specifications, development, testing and deployment of those products. This is corruption by any standard.

As the ad pitchmen say, “and there's more!” Cockburn details the way overpriced and expensive weapons, surveillance and communication systems have displaced cheaper, more effective alternatives. Technologies supposed to give field commanders comprehensive real time information about conflicts actually increase the fog of war and remove control from commanders on the spot. Our government is spending a lot of our money for defense technologies that do not work very well. In fact, the use of drones for surveillance and targeting, given the limited capabilities these machines actually possess (as opposed to the claims made by their manufacturers and their purchasers in the military and the Central Intelligence Agency), is immoral. Drone strikes have repeatedly been ordered on human beings without any clear evidence that the “targets” are in fact terrorists or any threat at all to the United States and its interests.

In short, Kill Chain documents the failures of our military and surveillance to achieve the goals set ffor them, and the consequences: taxpayer money wasted on Pentagon programs that cost lives instead of on domestic programs that help people live dignified lives; corruption in our military and political establishments; and arrogant, senseless assassinations around the world. This is something we should all read, and then hold our civilian and military leaders and ourselves accountable. ( )

In Kill Chain, Andrew Cockburn presents a tour de force of investigative journalism into the technological development of drones and the military theories that have funded its dramatic rise, all while shattering widely held beliefs in their efficacy and performance.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in military policy, technological innovation, or interested in contemporary history of America's "War on Terror". ( )