Predator Empire: The Geopolitics of US Drone Warfare

Shaw, Ian

doi:10.1080/14650045.2012.749241

Cited by 93 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This leads Chamayou (2015:32) to conclude that "A single decade has seen the establishment of an unconventional form of state violence that combines the disparate characteristics of warfare and policing without really corresponding to either, finding conceptual and practical utility in the notion of a militarized manhunt." This unconventional form of globalized state violence has pivoted around the military drone, forming what I have elsewhere called a Predator Empire (Shaw, 2013). However, while there has been important research on military drones in political geography and critical security studies (Gregory, 2011;Holmqvist, 2013;Walters, 2014), the spatialities and logics of the police drone are underresearched.…”

Section: Manhuntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My purpose is not to privilege these homeland geographies but to show how the dronification of policing will be inseparable from the growing numbers of surplus populations in Europe and North America. This paper thus advances established debates about the amorphous post-9/11 battlespace (Graham, 2010;Gregory, 2011;Shaw, 2013). But it does so from a perspective that understands the surplus population as both the outcome and target of contemporary capitalist technics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This includes the quadcopter Qube, developed by AeroVironment, as well as the US military's most widely used fixed-wing drone, the hand-launched Raven (Pilkington, 2014). Moreover, advances in artificial intelligence are enabling small-scale nano-drones to cooperate together in emergent, cooperating constellations called "swarms" (Shaw andAkhter, 2012:1500). It is here that the specifics of a dronified form of policing are glimpsed.…”

Section: The Rise Of the Dronopticon?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Urbanization of drone warfare: policing surplus populations in the dronepolis

Shaw

2016

Geogr. Helv.

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Abstract. This paper explores the urbanization of drone warfare and the securitization of the "surplus population". Defined as a bloc of humanity rendered as structurally unnecessary to a capital-intensive economy, the surplus population is an emerging target for the post-welfare security state. If we now live in an age of a permanent conflict with uncertain geographies, then it is at least partly fueled by this endemic crisis at the heart of the capitalist world system. Of key significance is the contradictory nature of the surplus population. The "security threat" generated by replacing masses of workers with nonhumans is increasingly managed by policing humans with robots, drones, and other apparatuses. In other words, the surplus population is both the outcome and target of contemporary capitalist technics. The emerging "dronification of state violence" across a post-9/11 battlespace has seen police drones deployed to the urban spaces of cities in Europe and North America. The drone, with its ability to swarm in the streets of densely packed urban environments, crystallizes a more intimate and invasive form of state power. The project of an atmospheric, dronified form of policing not only embodies the technologization of state security but also entrenches the logic of a permanent, urbanized manhunt. The paper concludes by discussing the rise of the dronepolis: the city of the drone.

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Section: Manhuntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Rise Of the Dronopticon?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Urbanization of drone warfare: policing surplus populations in the dronepolis

Shaw

2016

Geogr. Helv.

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“…As a number of authors have discussed, unmanned aircraft have been around in various guises for about a 100 years (Shaw, 2013). However, the market for drones beyond the military is a more recent innovation.…”

Section: Enclosure Of the Verticalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assemblage of the vertical: commercial drones and algorithmic life

Crampton

2016

Geogr. Helv.

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Abstract. This paper takes up the increasingly popular topic of drones -including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), and a vast panoply of commercial drones and copters -to argue that our analysis should lie not so much on drones as objects, but as assemblages of the vertical. Drones, I argue, constitute a socio-technical assemblage of the sky and vertical space, which means that our focus should be not (only) on their technological development and capacities but also on their effects and affects. The latter of these include increasing algorithmic data collection and circulation that follow anticipatory logics.

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“…Shaw and Akhter make the connection between Haraway's god-trick and the proliferation of drones, arguing that 'this disembodied visual logic is perfected in the doctrine of airpower' which operates with a colonial logic of 'us' in the sky, versus 'them' on the ground. The drone performs this logic through its 'digital worldview of targets that dismisses ambiguity' (Shaw andAkhter, 2012: 1496). …”

Section: The Rise Of the Dronesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From cyborg feminism to drone feminism: Remembering women’s anti-nuclear activisms

Feigenbaum

2015

Feminist Theory

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Abstract:In 2003, Iris Marion Young argued that by the early 1990s the creative civil disobedience of Greenham Common and the broader women's anti-nuclear movement had been 'all but forgotten ' (Young, 2003: 1). The dynamic array of symbols, myths, strategies and tactics for direct action against militarized technologies that emerged from women's anti-nuclear protest camps in the 1980s became largely eclipsed by cyber-feminisms focused on digital and online technologies. Yet recently, as robots and algorithms are put forward as the vanguards of new drone execution regimes, some are wondering if now is the time for another Greenham Common. In this paper I return to cyborg feminism and anti-nuclear activisms of the 1980s to explore what a drone feminism might look like today. I examine how anti-nuclear protesters infused affect and techné, creating innovative images of, and tactics for, material resistance. I argue that Greenham women's cyborg feminisms arose from their material entanglements with the technologies and environments of the military base. In their efforts to challenge, undermine and reveal the national and imperial myths upon which warfare is based, protesters re-imagined technological possibilities based upon a global accountability for 'earthly survival.'

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Predator Empire: The Geopolitics of US Drone Warfare

Cited by 93 publications

References 31 publications

The Urbanization of drone warfare: policing surplus populations in the dronepolis

The Urbanization of drone warfare: policing surplus populations in the dronepolis

Assemblage of the vertical: commercial drones and algorithmic life

From cyborg feminism to drone feminism: Remembering women’s anti-nuclear activisms

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