The Darkside of Our Drone Future: Lessons from History

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

Much like in war, drones can take the place of a human on dangerous frontlines. During the COVID-19 crisis, drones have been used to resupply the vulnerable populations, help enforce lockdowns, screen people’s temperature, and deep clean a nation’s streets.  Predictably, policymakers and manufactures have pushed to relax restrictions to allow the rapid rollout of robotic technologies. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of drone ‘misuse’, this talk explores the kinetic, biological, chemical and information security threats posed by drone technologies. Despite the newfound utility of the drone, there are real dangers to rapid relaxation and mass roll-out of drone technology at this time.

James Rogers is DIAS Assistant Professor in War Studies, within the Centre for War Studies, at SDU, and Associate Fellow within LSE IDEAS, at the London School of Economics. He is currently Special Advisor to the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, Special Advisor to the United Nations on state and non-state weapons development, and a UK MoD Defence Opinion Leader. He has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford, Yale, and Oxford.