2023/31/08 Publication: Neocolonial Visions: Algorithmic Violence and Unmanned Aerial Systems

In the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the threat of improvisedexplosive devices (IEDs) threatened to inflict significant casualties on theground troops of the United States and Allied Forces. This led to unprecedentedlevels of investment in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and the ensuingascendancy of wide-area persistent surveillance systems (WAPSS) across theregion. These prototypes of hyper-surveillance and targeting were inevitablysupported and powered by developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI).Combining the predictive logic of AI and the martial rationalisation of thepre-emptive strike, these technological and logistic alliances sought to notonly calculate risk and threat but to  eliminate it before itmaterialises. They seek, in short, to occupy the future in the name ofterrestrial and extra-terrestrial dominance. Throughout the followingessay, Anthony Downey (Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East andNorth Africa at Birmingham City University) examines the historical contextsand current deployments of such systems, enquiring into how neocolonialprojections of power are implicated in the martial and political will to occupythe future. What happens, he asks, when we defer life-and-death decisions to amechanical calculus of probability that is beholden to martial devices ofpre-emption, political expediencies and the neocolonial logic of expendability.

To read the full essay and download the book, see here.