Justin Stuart Blog #4

       In “The Slow Poison of the Covert Imagination,” Professor Timothy Burke goes into the apparatus that is covert operations. More importantly he talks about the lack thereof in the operations themselves and the belief of the systems. The only thing that is covert in such actions is the success proclaimed day in and day out by leaders and advisors who see it necessary. To say that Burke is a libertarian is an understatement. He is a soldier on the field of trying to figure out if advanced covert operations like those in the past cause the problems themselves.

Near the beginning of his report, Burke draws critical parallels to domestic issues that are front in center. But he is not trying to start a conversation with them but more showing how easily issues can be spun by pundits and how naive we as a people can be in accepting them. His view of gun and rape culture is that is can become more of a tool than issues that can promote progress. This same train of thought is used to explain his belief on surveillance culture, a covert method designed of taking in as much content as possible and deciphering so that events can be determined.

One big issue he has with this is the overreach of such actions. Burke talks about the incident involving the NSA in which it was caught spying on domestic soil. Immediately groups were enraged with such findings but were quickly quieted by those in government. The President and other elected officials reassured the mass that the NSA was not spying and was only looking for content of interest. Now what defined content of interest is interesting as it seems very flexible.

This type of generality pronounced by government is what covert operations have always been about. Burke makes a strong point that generality if covert and covert in general. There is no specific case or guidelines that it follows. Most important Burke is trying to make a point that this has been going on since the Cold War. No leader wants to believe that a super governmental organization is failing, so to hide that, they just widen its scope. This avoids the organization from really having to produce any real outcomes.

I think that this case study as some may saw draws on a lot of issues that have been discussed regarding drones, data and artificial intelligence. Using this article and the specific points will help explain what these thing really are on the battlefield and how they interact with civilian operators and populations. 

For one, drones and the efficiency in which they operate in can be very broad. There is a perception pushed on the public that drones allow for less causalities, at least in the short-term. This allows for leaders to be in strong favor of drone use as the public is not directly feeling any pain. But in actuality there is a lot of issue in which drones are similar to conventional warfare. Typical symptoms of PTSD to stress to depression can be felt when operating drones.

Because of this there is a much larger issues to step up and solve the problem. But as leaders won’t accept it, problems will just continue on. They don’t want to believe that a weapon unlike any other, with the ability to attack targets from around the world have the same flaws. These technologies were suppose to solve the problem not make it worse. Unfortunately, as Burke preaches in regards to surveillance culture, drones are in the same camp. 

I would say that drones, like humans are inherently flawed in some way. Just like spy agencies or fast computer content aggregators, there is no real precedent to go on. This is mostly so because of the lack of responsibility and the confession of failure on all levels at the highest leadership positions. No one wants to be the person who tells the public that in actuality we would be better off without them then with them. The same goes with drones as the may seem like the end of civilian deaths but the striking and displacement capability can further accelerate what are small issues into much larger ones.