Angella Ferrufino Post #3

Timothy Burke's "The slow poison of the covert imagination" analyzes the facts known about covert operations and draws a firm conclusion about their role in the current world. Leaders have justified the use of covert operations by proclaiming their success and necessity to protect the better good of the people. Burke's distrust of the government's meddling with privacy is apparent from the very beginning.
He states "For one, no one should ever be assured when political parties assure you they're not doing something that they presently cannot actually do" While criticizing the government's invasion of privacy and utter disregard for the 4th amendment in regards to the NSA's phone tapping, he also criticizes the citizen's willingness to accept the justification and reassurance without a second thought.
               To Burke, surveillance culture is unnecessary but world leaders continue to use it for years with the excuse that that it is needed in order to make important wise decisions.  While the NSA's tapping into the privacy of millions of people was a clear violation of our 4th amendment rights, the government was very quick to clear it from people's memory by simply saying that only bad people we're being listened to and simply normal law abiding citizens had nothing to worry about.
        Here, Burke builds an interesting theory. He states the state powers are always attempting to be on a path to predicting what will happen next, how to respond to it and how to keep the world safe. He states that world leaders use AI and in order to make their decisions, instead of using morals and human beliefs in order to make decisions. This is an important theory as it draws the question of, where do we draw the line between when is the government's intervention necessary and when is it in all actuality a violation of our rights?
          This leads us into the use of artificial intelligence and its ambiguity in regards to the actual guidelines that it must stay within. While drones have been said to save american lives, and to provide us with necessary information to catch the bad guys, it's secrecy has made many people skeptical. Burke states that while the government promises that AI is responsible for great progress in security measures, they maintain that they cannot tell us the details of how AI helps us or why it helps us. Not to mention the consequences that would come to our soldiers from the use of AI, such as those who have developed PTSD.
           While Burke does point out many fallacies in the use of covert operations, dating back to the cold war and the CIA operations that put regimes into Cuba and Congo, he also creates a certain cynicism within his writing that causes him to lack credibility. He lacks any actual argument or facts to support his skepticism of covert operations. While, I do agree that there is much we do not know about covert operations and drones, I also believe that the use of AI has been responsible for changing warfare and preventing the death of more innocents.