11 - The CIA’s Drone War and the Civilianization of Warfare

Summary

While it is common to discuss the evolution of armed drones as having transformed the way the United States fights wars, this chapter argues that the technology has triggered a more significant paradigm shift with regard to who actually does the fighting. For the first time in history, those involved in pursuing America’s enemies and directly responsible for taking the lethal action to eliminate them commute to their workplace, fight in the U.S.’s wars, and return home to their families at the end of each shift. This campaign is directly overseen by the civilian agents of the CIA, pursued against terrorists who were until recently classed as criminals not combatants, and waged from the skies over the civilian compounds of the tribal areas of America’s ally, Pakistan. It is this change, initially overlooked in the wake of the technological novelty of the drones themselves, that truly marks how armed drones transformed warfare.