Moralities of Drone Violence

An ethical assessment of violent drone use considering military ethics, law enforcement ethics, moral injury and ethical human-machine interaction

• Assesses the potential for just and unjust uses of armed drones, drawing upon multiple conceptual bases for making moral judgments about violence
• Uses a broad framework to ethically assess drone violence, drawing upon and reaching beyond traditional Just War thinking
• Offers a newly integrated survey of drone violence conceptualised as warfare, violent law enforcement, tele-intimate violence, or violence devolved to AI
• Provides a detailed exploration of the relationships between weaponised drone technology, international politics, criminal justice, and ethical theory

Moral uncertainty surrounding the use of armed drones has been a persistent problem for more than two decades. In response, Moralities of Drone Violence aims to provide greater clarity by exploring and ordering a variety of ways in which violent drone use can be judged as just or unjust in various circumstances. The book organises moral ideas around a series of concepts of ‘drone violence’: warfare, violent law enforcement, tele-intimate violence, and violence devolved from humans to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In contrast to the way armed drones tend to be debated narrowly in terms of war and law, this broad-based approach to normative inquiry affords more scope to discern and address the potential for these weapon systems to support moral progress or to generate injustice.