San Francisco Halts 'Killer Robots' Police Policy Following Backlash (sfchronicle.com) 106
San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco supervisors have walked back their approval of a controversial policy that would have allowed police to kill suspects with robots in extreme cases. Instead of granting final authorization to the policy Tuesday in its second of two required votes, the Board of Supervisors reversed course and voted 8-3 to explicitly prohibit police from using remote-controlled robots with lethal force. It was a rare step: The board's second votes on local laws are typically formalities that don't change anything. But the board's initial 8-3 approval of the deadly robot policy last week sparked a wave of public outcry from community members and progressive supervisors who threatened to go to the ballot if their colleagues did not change their minds on Tuesday. After approving a new version of the police policy that bans officers from using robots to kill dangerous suspects such as mass shooters and suicide bombers, supervisors separately sent the original deadly robot provision of the policy back for further review. The board's Rules Committee may now choose to refine that provision -- placing tighter limits on when police can use bomb-bearing robots with deadly force -- or abandon it entirely, leaving in place the prohibition passed Tuesday. Supervisors are expected to take a final vote on the new version of the policy that bans deadly robots -- for now, at least -- next week.
Robots have no military applications /s (Score:1)
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I think we want to draw the line at having the government kill its own people with robots. Killing people in other countries is still likely on the table.
Credit where credit due (Score:3)
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Most SF cops don't even live in SF. They'll have to be homeless in Stockton and Modesto. Again, great innovation by SF.
Can we find a good middle ground? (Score:2)
If it prevents a nasty shootout, it's obviously a good thing. Even ignoring the lives of cops, stray bullets bouncing around a city are still a problem.
We citizens just fear there won't be enough checks-and-balances. Cops can get complacent and abuse privileges and tools if left unchecked. That's human nature.
Re:Can we find a good middle ground? (Score:5, Informative)
If it prevents a nasty shootout, it's obviously a good thing.
Small problem with your theory there. They where not going to equip the robots with guns. They where going to use explosives.
Yeah. I had the same reaction.
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Re:Can we find a good middle ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the biggest cities in the US have tried making it harder and harder for people to own guns but the gun violence there just gets worse. Maybe disarming honest citizens isn't the answer.
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> The problem seems to be too many people with guns. [prior post]
Indeed, but nobody knows how to fix that other then civil war.
> Some of the biggest cities in the US have tried making it harder and harder for people to own guns but the gun violence there just gets worse
Guns gradually "leak" from sparser areas to cities. Trace studies show that. Plus, the GOP-filled SCOTUS keeps overriding city gun restriction laws.
> Maybe disarming honest citizens isn't the answer.
That isn't the fix either. "Hones
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If you sort by total, you get a ranked list of firearm-related death rate per 100,000 population per year. Notice the outlier?
I'll give you a clue. It's the country with 120.5 guns per 100 people.
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I wonder what the rest of the world is doing about it then? Here's Wikipedia's List of countries by firearm-related death rate. [wikipedia.org] If you sort by total, you get a ranked list of firearm-related death rate per 100,000 population per year. Notice the outlier? I'll give you a clue. It's the country with 120.5 guns per 100 people.
What makes up over 65% of ALL gun deaths in America?
I'll give you a fact that allowed me to not even bother looking at your bullshit statistics; most gun deaths in America are due to suicide.
We don't have a gun problem in America. We have a mental illness problem in America being perpetuated by legal pill pushers, which is also the reason it's being fucking ignored.
If you're going to bitch about this problem, be fucking accurate.
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What makes up over 65% of ALL gun deaths in America?
I'll give you a fact ... most gun deaths in America are due to suicide.
...
If you're going to bitch about this problem, be fucking accurate.
Speaking of being accurate.The numbers given on the wikipedia page for USA is Total 12.21 and Suicide 7.32. That gives a perctage of 59.9%...
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Also, did you spend any time analyzing the data? Looking at the countries with 30 guns per 100 inhabitants or more (ignoring Iceland since Total is greater than Suicide (different years)) you get
United States 59.95
Serbia 66.56
Cyprus 33.00
Canada 72.16
Finland 90.04
Germany 87.50
Uruguay 38.99
Norway 94.59
Austria 88.73
New Zealand 74.19
The outliers in this list are Cyprus and Uruguay, excluding those USA has a lower s
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The fact that you thought that "Hah, suicide is as high as 65% so no problem" proves that you have zero understanding of what a massively outlier USA is with regards to guns compared to any other country.
Not sure how in the hell you came to that conclusion, but you've highlighted the problem with the entire gun discussion in America. Here is why my point stands. Most everyone wants to compare total numbers of guns (a quite pointless statistic), or talk about the total number of gun deaths in America and call it ALL "violence", while no one says a fucking word about the majority of that death being caused by suicide. We're basically exacerbating a mental health crisis, enabling ignorance through gun "viol
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And where are all those good guys with guns to stop the bad guys with guns when you need them? Not even the police will go into active shooter scenes these days. It's just an endlessly depressing parade of atrocities, one day after another.
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There's a correlation between gun ownership rates and gun violence that's backed up by numerous studies.
One can argue the cause - do the prevalence of guns cause more gun violence, or does the prevalence of gun violence cause more people to buy guns? Or perhaps both are influenced by a third factor that causes more gun ownership and more gun violence.
As for stu
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There's a correlation between gun ownership rates and gun violence that's backed up by numerous studies.
Oh, there's a correlation alright, but it's not exactly the kind of "violence" most would assume is happening. There seems to be a crazy amount of harm caused by guns, but oddly enough most of the time that violence and harm happens only to the one holding the gun.
Over 65% of all gun deaths, are due to suicide. You find that fact in many studies, but it remains buried in the footnotes, kept far away from headline news. That means we have far more a mental health problem in America than a "gun problem".
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"Some of the biggest cities in the US have tried making it harder and harder for people to own guns but the gun violence there just gets worse"
The highest per capita gun violence is in rural Philips County in Arkansas, which has permitless concealed carry.
The highest per capita gun violence in a city is St. Louis, MO, which has permitless open carry.
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> Robots shooting at people means there are no stray bullets bouncing around?
They can take more hits and thus take better shots. Cops have to quickly shoot and hide. A well-armed bot doesn't have to hide and thus can get stable aim. Or roll up next to the baddie and explode.
And again bots should only be used where there's a clear advantage. If the weighting is nearly split down the middle, send in humans. Thus, the argument for bots doesn't have to be "bots are always better than humans". It's rather hav
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Or maybe the cops should just STOP FUCKING SHOOTING PEOPLE!!!
Does anyone even need to type up a list anymore? Tamir Rice... Breonna Taylor... Botham Jean... Oscar Grant... Ramon Mosqueda... Sean Monterrosa ... Erik Cantu... I could go on and on and on. EVERY... SINGLE... ONE... of them were unarmed when the cops decided they deserved to die and cheerfully gunned them down. Quite frankly, the police have demonstrated over and over that they don't deserve to be trusted with the tools they already have. So
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Many crooks will simply run off if there is no fear of being shot, increasing crime rates, which is a sure way to lose elections.
And larger cities do have special forces who are well-trained for standoffs, but often things happen too fast for specialists to get there.
> Quite frankly, the police have demonstrated over and over that they don't deserve to be trusted with the tools they already have.
For one, they are human, and two, they often have to make very quick decisions. There are a lot of success sto
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Or maybe the cops should just STOP FUCKING SHOOTING PEOPLE!!!
Does anyone even need to type up a list anymore? Tamir Rice... Breonna Taylor... Botham Jean... Oscar Grant... Ramon Mosqueda... Sean Monterrosa ... Erik Cantu... I could go on and on and on. EVERY... SINGLE... ONE... of them were unarmed when the cops decided they deserved to die and cheerfully gunned them down.
How many of the people on your list died because a police officer made a gut reaction in the heat of the moment that turned out to be wrong? It's easy to second-guess decisions after the fact. Hindsight is 20/20. But ultimately, most of those unnecessary deaths are caused by an officer either rightly or wrongly fearing for his or her life and reacting.
If, instead of a flesh-and-blood cop, they sent in a robot — if the officer controlling the robot had no reason to fear for his/her life, and thus wa
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They were looking for someone who wasn't her and didn't live at her apartment.
The fact that you're prepared to argue in their favour is very sad.
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Off the top of my head I can tell you that Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed when the police kicked her door in and murdered her.
Huh? That's not what Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]. The police raided her house because a drug dealer was using her home as a drop point for receiving mail. Her boyfriend didn't recognize that the police were police, and shot at them. The police fired back in response, and she died as a result of stray bullets. Was she killed with malice aforethought? No? Not murder.
And that's at least one case where the accidental shooting victim almost certainly would not have died if the raid had been done by robots. If the boy
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You read that Wikipedia article and you still think the cops didn't murder an innocent woman? No wonder America has the problems it does.
No, I don't, because I know the actual legal definition of "murder". In general, a murder conviction requires three things:
1. They must have killed the person. Check.
2. Malice aforethought. That means they had to have planned in advance to kill her, then gone in and acted on that planning. Clearly, this did not occur.
3. The person also must have acted without lawful excuse or justification. Being shot at is per se lawful excuse or justification except in special situations carved out by specific l
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Oh right. You're just a bootlicker.
Ad hominem attacks: the last refuge of the losing side of a debate.
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Just like a bootlicker.
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You're seem to be operating on the fallacious notion that police work is particularly dangerous and that the "fear" they've made up, and the accompanying overreactions on their part, is somehow justified. It's not and not. The people who pick up my garbage and drop off my Amazon packages have more dangerous jobs than the cops do, for fuck's sake. And the people who keep the seafood stocked in the grocery store have a job that is literally an entire order of magnitude more dangerous than the cops do:
https [businessinsider.com]
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There will still be a human who "pushes the button" remotely - usually while viewing the live video feed from the robot (I suppose there may be some bizarre corner case where the terrorist has gotten into a position which is effectively a Faraday cage and where a hardwired cable feed to the robot would be impractical so some level of absolute position sensing w/o benefit of live video feed might be necessary).
The person who pushes the button, as well as those who provided the necessary approvals (that the c
What effect do murderbots CURRENTLY have? (Score:2)
>If it prevents a nasty shootout, it's obviously a good thing. Even ignoring the lives of cops, stray bullets bouncing around a city are still a problem.
If you want a sanity check, I think the first question to ask is what effect do the murderbots (drones) CURRENTLY used by the military have?
It seems that the trend is very much that the much lower risk to life and assets means they get used in a whole lot of situations where sending in troops would demand further intelligence gathering first - with the f
It's good robots made excessive force legal!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this was a huge nothingburger issue. I know San Francisco can get nuts at time, but there was so much national outrage over purely hypothetical issues. If an officer murders a suspect, he's still still going to the same trial whether or not a robot was in the middle. This seems like a weird and irrational panic. Oooh....robots!!!...scary!!!!
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Right...but the next thing you know, they're going to say that robots are "officers" (like with police dogs)...and any action taken against that piece of hardware is "assaulting an officer", along with all the escalation that brings. And you know people aren't going to be terribly hesitant about kicking a robot...
Do they do that with cars? (Score:2)
Right...but the next thing you know, they're going to say that robots are "officers" (like with police dogs)...and any action taken against that piece of hardware is "assaulting an officer", along with all the escalation that brings. And you know people aren't going to be terribly hesitant about kicking a robot...
We have police hardware out there already. Do you get charged with "assaulting an officer" when you kick a car? A dog is a living entity. If you purposely kill a police dog, you deserve serious charges. Someone who does this saw a living being and made a conscious choice to end it's life. If you can do that to a dog, you're a fucked up person and I have no problems with you getting punished appropriately by the law.
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A dog is a living entity.
And pigs have no problem murdering them either.
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My opposition to this is primarily due to the slippery slope it creates where NOW there is still a cop pulling the robot's trigger, however the next evolution might start incorporating AI into the trigger pull.
Re:It's good robots made excessive force legal!! (Score:4, Insightful)
All evidence points to you being full of shit. Drone operators, for example, still suffer when they kill and murder people, bit far less than soldiers having done it in person.
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All evidence points to you being full of shit. Drone operators, for example, still suffer when they kill and murder people, bit far less than soldiers having done it in person.
The police aren't and should not be the military. Giving the police armed drones or robots is just another step along the militarization of the local law enforcement. Just a wild idea but maybe the police should be structured to support the communities and populates they were hired to serve and not be trained to assume they're walking in to a war zone. Instead of killer robots maybe better deescalation training more resource for identifying and handling metal health issues or improving community trust in
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Exactly. Arm them like military and they will develop a mind-set like the military. I.e. everybody not wearing your uniform is at least a potential enemy.
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They have always had that, though. Thin blue line and all that crapola. There is absolutely an us and them mentality.
Deescalation is preferable, but both can be true (Score:2)
Just a wild idea but maybe the police should be structured to support the communities and populates they were hired to serve and not be trained to assume they're walking in to a war zone. Instead of killer robots maybe better deescalation training more resource for identifying and handling metal health issues or improving community trust in law enforcement.
I agree completely. I don't think robots will improve policing enough to justify the cost. Deescalation and smarter policing is far preferable to more surgical shootouts. However, my point is there is a weird panic from people and wild disingenuous arguments about the police becoming efficient killing machines and this being a warlike technology. I don't think we need to ban lethal robots because of improbable hypotheticals....however, I also don't personally think they're a great use of funds and there
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However, my point is there is a weird panic from people and wild disingenuous arguments about the police becoming efficient killing machines and this being a warlike technology.
Your point is deeply flawed. There is nothing "disingenuous" about the argument. It clearly is a war-like technology. It is also clearly documented and has been observed time and again that more distance makes "lawful" killing and straight up murder a lot easier. Watching remotely via a camera makes for a lot of distance.
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However, my point is there is a weird panic from people and wild disingenuous arguments about the police becoming efficient killing machines and this being a warlike technology.
Your point is deeply flawed. There is nothing "disingenuous" about the argument. It clearly is a war-like technology. It is also clearly documented and has been observed time and again that more distance makes "lawful" killing and straight up murder a lot easier. Watching remotely via a camera makes for a lot of distance.
Oh look, a disingenuous argument. You have read too many bad sci-fi novels. This is a bomb disposal drone with a human in control, not some autonomous robot. If you actually cared about those you pretend to care about (and you don't), then you would want these things. If its a machine instead of a human, being in fear of your life is not a valid defense. They remove the ability of the police to make a bad snap decision in fear of their life. If you actually cared about reducing police shootings, this
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Seriously, get your head out of your behind and look at some actual facts. They are out there. That you are deep in denial and live in a fantasy does not make them go away.
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Yeah, we (society) talked about doing that, then some a-hole named it "defund the police" and the idea died...
THE MILITARY IS SUPPOSED TO KILL PEOPLE!!! (Score:2)
All evidence points to you being full of shit. Drone operators, for example, still suffer when they kill and murder people, bit far less than soldiers having done it in person.
The military IS SUPPOSED TO KILL PEOPLE. Their mission is to kill. The police aren't. Their job is not to kill bad guys, but to enforce the law and I do personally believe most cops want to do their job correctly. Some are total pieces of shit, but Michael Che said it best
A cop is just a (person) with a job...some are good at it, some aren't
However, I do believe that the SFPD would rather reduce lethal force instances than increase them. Wrongful death lawsuits are quite expensive and far from fun.
Also, full of shit? That implies I can forsee the future and am lyi
Re:It's good robots made excessive force legal!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know San Francisco can get nuts at time, but there was so much national outrage over purely hypothetical issues. This seems like a weird and irrational panic. Oooh....robots!!!...scary!!!!
Somehow it's the general public's fault that law enforcement in the United States has a bad reputation for killing people.
But in a democracy it IS the public's fault! (Score:2)
Police and their use of force policies formal and customary don't spontaneously spring from the earth!
Inaction like action is a choice and the public buy-in to tough on crime policies is motivated by desire to be defended from criminals violent or otherwise.
The public are free to disband bad departments and vote to outlaw lethal force if they like. Police departments reacted to crime waves in ways THEIR public approved at the time. Just as there are many bad cops there are many bad non-uniformed citizens th
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I have not had an opportunity to vote for police to stop murdering citizens.
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Officers would be distances from the danger in the moment yes... but they would also be distanced from the murders they would be committing.
Per point above...now murder is legal?? (Score:2)
You totally backwards rationalized this... Officers would be distances from the danger in the moment yes... but they would also be distanced from the murders they would be committing.
So you're saying they WANT to use excessive force? That's a huge leap and contrary to what ANY cop will tell you. Have you ever tried talking to your local police? I talk to my neighborhood cops regularly.
Which do you think is more plausible? The cops involved in lethal force incidents feared for their lives or the lives of someone else....or they were just itching to kill? They're all mini-Dexter Morgan's and longing for that orgasmic feeling of killing another human being? I'll go by what they s
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Absolutely true. Once cops demonstrate that they can act responsibly with the tools that they have at the moment, we could consider giving them more dangerous ones. But given that I don't trust police with the blunt end of a pointy stick at the moment, let's hold off for now.
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Those boots taste good?
It'll make it way way worse (Score:4, Interesting)
Also if you realize what police are actually there for it's not to protect you it's to protect property. Again this isn't me being a liberal Lefty left left this was ruled on by the Supreme court. The purpose of the police is to keep commerce flowing. If you are very, very rich they will protect you because when you're so rich you affect the flow of commerce as an individual you'll get protection. For everyone else it only happens if it's convenient.
That means once we start replacing police with killer robots wealthy elites no longer need to placate even the goon squad they used to keep us in line. And anytime you get out of line they just send in a robot and if you're lucky you get to do what it says before it shoots you. If you're very lucky.
A solider's job is to kill (Score:2)
That's not me being a liberal Lefty that's just fact. How do we know? Because we've been using killer robots outside of our borders for decades. When there's no American soldier lives on the line it becomes extremely tempting to use lethal Force. The exact same thing will happen with our police force. Instead of carefully assessing a situation and proceeding with caution they'll send in the killer robot and start shooting. Also if you realize what police are actually there for it's not to protect you it's to protect property. Again this isn't me being a liberal Lefty left left this was ruled on by the Supreme court. The purpose of the police is to keep commerce flowing. If you are very, very rich they will protect you because when you're so rich you affect the flow of commerce as an individual you'll get protection. For everyone else it only happens if it's convenient. That means once we start replacing police with killer robots wealthy elites no longer need to placate even the goon squad they used to keep us in line. And anytime you get out of line they just send in a robot and if you're lucky you get to do what it says before it shoots you. If you're very lucky.
I'm as liberal as you, dude. However, a soldier's job is to kill. A cop's job is to protect and serve and I do believe most cops want to do their jobs correctly. I know many cops in my community and surrounding ones. I don't believe they're killers. I take the time to talk to cops every place I've lived...really I do the same for anyone I encounter who starts a conversation with me. I knew a lot of inner-city Chicago cops from when I lived in a crime-infested area. While I am liberal, I don't believe
Not legally (Score:2)
Telerobots [Re:It's good robots made excess...] (Score:2)
WTF? A robot is just at tool. It's not autonomous.
In this case: correct.
These are not robots. They are telerobots.
There's still a human operating it and, if it's using deadly force, pulling the trigger (or pushing the button.)
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It removes all risk of the cop pulling their gun out and shooting at someone. Accountability for cops is already low enough, but taking out the risk that someone might shoot back is a huge step back. Also, it's a well know psychological phenomenon that the further removed you are from the subject, the lower the bar is to commit violence against them. Putting the cop at a removed distance and asking them to push a button rather than physically pulling the trigger will make it less traumatizing for them to
I think killer robots are a great idea (Score:2)
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Not a robot, Asimov’s laws (Score:2, Insightful)
A robot cannot hurt a person or enable a person to harm via inactivity.
A robot must obey human beings’ guidance unless such commands contradict the first law.
Since this security does not contradict the First and Second Laws, a robot should safeguard its existence.
Those laws apply to robots with some degree of autonomy. SF's "Robot" is nothing more than an RC Tank with an RC bomb strapped to it. I really hate it when folks stretch tech terms for stupid reasons, like LYF HAX. Filthy Frank's satire no
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Calling SF's RC tank and remotely detonated bombs a "Robot" is fiction. There is no programming involved. Shit if that's how low you want the bar set, let's call my car a Gundam.
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That's in perfect, ideal conditions.
All of these autopilot car companies aren't in the business of figuring out how to build an autopilot to get from point A to point B. That problem has already been solved. The problem they're trying to solve is, "What do you do when there's a pothole" or "What do you do when the car in front sl
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Look up "robot-assisted surgery", which is not just a term media outlets have made up.
Less robot; more Dirty Harry (Score:1)
SF just needs this guy back in uniform... http://vignette2.wikia.nocooki... [nocookie.net]
Just replace the killer robots (Score:2)
With killer clowns from outer space. Problem solved.
re:Send killer space clowns instead (Score:1)
One became President, didn't go well.
They'll try again (Score:2)
Military attack drones should never be used against US citizens. Aside from the inevitable casualties it'll be used by wealthy elites to control us.
Right now the elite have to maintain a large military and police force to maintain and control the populace. In turn they have to maintain an economy for those military and police to retire into. We have a very tenuous balance with what are basically
Drones democratize power, Ukraine is an example. (Score:2)
Empowering the public to overthrow their masters what the Second Amendment is for but modern "progressives" are terrified of taking personal responsibility for their own defense so they desperately want to delegate violence.
There is nothing truly preventing Americans from arming themselves and training to a useful proficiency. The weak who make harmlessness their fetish because they imagine that defends them de-facto defer to the strong. Harmlessness is different from selective renunciation of violence. Har
unforeseen situations (Score:2)
It's funny until you have a situation like Uvalde where the cops were too chicken shit to go inside or for example 20 years ago in Russia when some terrorists held an entire school hostage and hundreds of students were murdered (as can be expected given Putin's negotiation skill). A similar thing happened in a movie theater in Russia as well. A robot could have snuck in there and resolved the situation. Lethal RC robots is not an advanced tech, eventually a lot of people will have it and the good guys will
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So your solution is to institutionalize the behaviour of gutless, cowardly police officers by giving them an alternative that will inevitably lead to abuse?
Well done!
Better idea: stick every one of those chickenshit cops in prison for a couple of years, and ban them nationwide, for the rest of their lives, from holding any police or security industry job higher than mall cop on the food chain. Teach cops that responsibilities come along with the badge and gun, along with a license to kill.
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Why can't we do the jail time thing for people who misuse police robots? If you can't trust a human to operate a robot, then how can you trust them to act correct when there is no robot? They will error on the side of keeping themselves safe, and there won't always be enough evidence to prove otherwise.
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The police have *already* proven that they can't be trusted without killbots. Until they clean up their act and demonstrate that they can be trusted with the weapons they already have and maintain that trust for a goddamned long while; they absolutely don't deserve to be trusted with anything that makes it any easier to kill. I'd even argue that they've demonstrated very well that they don't deserve to be trusted with lethal force of any kind and that it should be removed from their options entirely, a la
Seems to me... (Score:2)
...when you first give killer robots to an enforcement agency, you should pick one that has shown themselves capable of restraint without them. If the agency is already problematic, it's not going to get any better when abusing the privilege gets easier.
battle-bots? (Score:1)
What about sending in a couple of well-armored battle-bots? [fandom.com]
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So it'll be less of "a machine murdering someone" and more of "two machines that for some reason were there and trying to murder each other, with the person that was killed being 'unintentional collateral damage'"?
Sounds par for the (obstacle) course...
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What about sending in a couple of well-armored battle-bots? [fandom.com]
If you think a shotgun makes a mess, wait till a 100lb bar of steel spinning 17 times a second really leans into meat. You will be cleaning chunks of bone stuck 43’ up on the side of the building across the street and it’s doubtful you’ll find enough of the chunks for the smell to ever go away.
Let's make it straight forward (Score:1)
Everyone who is against the police using a method that protects them from harm to stop a criminal in extreme situations, are going to have to be the ones to put their lives at risk and try to stop the mass shooter or whatever.
Problem solved. Either adjust your perspective or you can be the one standing in the line of fire. Bet that vote changes back again real fast.
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As an organizer against this policy, I know there's a lot of FUD on both sides. The main issue here is that the policy as it was written would have allowed "police to use robotic deadly force without first attempting alternatives."
So develop a robot that does psychology and another that does sociology.
Send in either one first. That satisfies the alternative solution question. Or send in both, 1 at a time, to thoroughly satify that question.
If the first robots fail to respond, are blown up or whatever, then send in the killer robot on the basis on "justified use of force against a dangerous person".
SFO can't build toilets properly. (Score:2)
Meanwhile, SFO wants robots that can be equipped w/explosives yet they can't even build public toilets? [nbcbayarea.com]
I guess cops are the same everywhere. (Score:2)
Outsource robocop to india or arabia (Score:2)
They'd have no problem pulling the trigger on a bunch of Americans
The idea of lethal drones being operated by foreign mercenaries to suppress a revolution is not new.
In a general uprising the enlisted members of the US military would only follow illegal orders against civilians an estimated 30-50% of the time. This suggests the true loyalty of the military is to the people, as it should be.
Lethal drones can be tele-operated, and let's face it, drone pilots are (already) basically video game players who abs