Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated by a machine via the service Trint and therefore are (very) buggy. If you are capable, please help us to create good quality subtitles: https://c3subtitles.de/talk/625 Thanks!
So to start off with a compelling
talk, we got a hell of a speaker over
here, Sean
built a critical infrastructure in 2009
for the drone program in Afghanistan.
And in 2015, he began
speaking about his work.
And today he will tell us about
the moral challenges and the need of
accountability that we need in this
technology that basically
keeps apart the act of killing
from the person that does it and
possibly do not piss off all the agents
around here.
But good luck.
Well, everybody, it's
just an honor to be here.
I was only told recently
how big of a room this was going to be,
but I think I'll manage.
So my my talk is
called the global assassination grid.
And I'm sure all of you kind of get the
play on words there
with the global information grid
and the NSA program.
So I'm sure I'm going to have
a good show of hands.
But how many people here have heard of
Edward Snowden?
OK, much better than my other talks,
so what Edward
Snowden revealed was a
global surveillance system that
is pretty much spying
on everybody all the time
in terms of
at least metadata.
One of the things that catalyzed him
was, was the
drone program and actually being able to
watch drone strikes on the
on the computer from one of the
offices.
That's one of the things that catalyzed
me as well.
So what I'll be talking about today is
the the side of that
global surveillance system that is used
to assassinate people in countries
that we haven't formally declared war
on.
So
kind of to add to what he said, what I
what I did in the Air Force is I
built a
system along with 70
other people that
creates battlefield
command and control over
Afghanistan.
So two hundred and forty thousand
square miles of it.
And we're intercepting communications
from not just
drones, but also other fighter
aircraft attends transportation
aircraft.
And we're creating
a kind of
a universal signal
so that it can be
transmitted long haul and sent back to
places like Aidid and Ramstein.
So that's a little bit of what I'll be
talking about today and also
be talking about how warfare has
changed into
a distributed
system.
This is Germany, so
I will be speaking about
how our arrests and the Milgram
experiments.
I'm sure some of you are aware of those
Milgram experiments were
done to test
as a test and the trials of
Alfred Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal
who was
a bureaucrat. And it was to find
out if a bureaucrat could essentially
order the killing of all these people
without feeling the human connection.
The distribution
and the diffusion of responsibility is
something that's happened in the military
for a long time since
the trebuchet, it takes five people to
load up a trebuchet and
get it to fire on somebody.
So the question of who
is ultimately responsible for that and
like that kill decision is distributed
among those five people.
It's gotten a lot more technical and
there's a lot more, you
know, going on now.
But
one of the things that I wanted to do,
and I start off
a lot of my talks with a clip
from this documentary called National
Bird, and that's where
three other whistleblowers
besides myself have decided to speak
out. And
it's a pretty.
Good representation
of what people on the ground
are experiencing, as well as
whistleblowers within the system.
So it
kind of a bit of a treat.
The director is here.
I didn't know that she was going to be in
Hamburg. So I've kind
of like asked
her impromptu to come and speak here.
And I didn't tell her how big the
audience was either.
So I'm
I yeah.
So I apologize to her,
but.
I'll just play this literally just kind
of hover, and you
wait until he walks out to the field to
meet with some friends for something
like.
Drop a Hellfire missile on, maybe we
call our objective, maybe we told a guy
who we thought was our objective.
You don't know when
I first got into the military analyst
thinking it was a force for good in the
world, I thought I was going to be on the
right side of history.
And today I don't believe I was.
I still have a top secret clearance, so
I have to be extraordinarily cautious
about what I can and can't say on camera.
My job was to watch
what's happening in the video, the drones
and identify everything adolescent
near the rear of the SUV.
That's deceptive and get the opinion that
you're at ten thousand feet.
You see this photograph. You know what's
going on. You don't know what's going on.
You know what you see in two dimensions.
You see someone die?
Yes, you said it was OK to kill them.
It's too easy.
They just embolden commanders,
let the party begin because there is no
threat.
I mean, this could grow to get so
out of control.
Somebody downstairs was knocking
at the door and immediately both people
at the door shoved FBI badges in
my face.
The Espionage Act is one
of the most serious charges you can level
against an American that I'm probably
going to get indicted and I'm probably
going to get charged.
I lost part of my humanity working
in the drone program.
How much worse? If you ask them how much
the.
It's a secret program.
I can't just go telling the public what
it is, what I can tell
you is that to me, it's frightening.
And I'd like to.
Now, I'd like to give the floor to Sonia
Kennebec. She's the director of National
Bird. Tell me what you see.
Is this better not intentional?
I don't use a MacBook often.
Thank you.
Wow, this is quite a
surprise, Sean, thank you very much
for inviting me to this
is really a surprise.
So the reason
Sean has asked me to
complement is talk a little bit, because
I have been working with
whistleblower and especially national
security whistleblowers
for quite a while.
And during the production
of the film National Bird,
you know, we talked a little bit and in
the trailer and talked about
it in the trailer.
The film started out my research
turned out to be research about the
drone program, but it
actually turned into a film about the
cost of whistleblowing as well,
because during the production of the
film, two
of the whistleblowers I had been working
with, all three of them had
top secret clearances and worked within
the drone program, just like Sean.
And so
the Office
of Special Investigations of the Air
Force came after
I tried to silence and intimidate one
of the whistleblowers in my film who had
been speaking out.
Her name is Heather.
They contacted her family during the
production. I had been filming with her
for over a year at that point.
But a few months prior to the visit
by the Air Force, she had published
an op ed and on Guardian
dot com and
and the Office of Special Investigations
of the Air Force came to her family and
said, you know, she is
on some terrorism.
Some known terrorist organization
is looking for her.
And and and she should
lower her social media profile and
not write op ed and, you know, just
really try to scare her, which
they did.
And fortunately, at that point,
she already had representation
by whistleblower attorney Jesselyn
Radack, who is also one of Edward
Snowden's main legal counsels.
And so Jesselyn Radack
contacted the Office for Special
Investigations of the Air Force, ask for
more information. It turned out
there wasn't an immediate threat, and
it was it seemed to be a ruse because
they said to her, you know, there's not a
problem, but they generally advise her
not to, you know, not
to be public, you know, not to really
write anything on Facebook.
And then a few weeks after
that, another of my protagonists,
Daniel, was raided
by 30 to 50 armed
FBI agents
and he was told it was an
investigation
for espionage.
So he is being investigated for espionage
and, you know.
He also is now being represented
by Jesselyn Radack, who represents all
three whistleblowers in my film,
but that is a very
serious threat.
And what's
the reason I'm telling these stories is
because I think, you know,
most of you here probably know because
you all are very informed.
But, you know, many people in the general
public are not aware of
how difficult it has become
to do national security reporting
and also, you know, to be a
whistleblower, how much courage it takes
and how much of a risk
you also are taking.
And, you know, under the
Obama administration, more whistleblowers
have been prosecuted under the Espionage
Act and all previous
Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers
under the Espionage Act than all previous
administrations combined since
the Espionage Act was put into power in
1917.
And, you know,
I became a journalist because I
wanted to keep, you know, politicians
accountable. I think, you know, that's
why it's it's so dangerous for our
society nowadays that,
you know, journalists are a threat
because journalists and filmmakers
keep our governments accountable.
And we rely on whistleblowers
to often rely on whistleblowers
to bring the information out.
So I think we have to work on both
whistleblower protection and
the protection of, you know, in the US
First Amendment, rights and freedom of
speech, freedom of the press.
So I hired a First Amendment lawyer
during the development of my film.
I worked with Jesselyn Radack, and
I rely on
people like all of you and
this technology community
to support us with
technology to protect ourselves.
You know, I'm very thankful for tools
like
Tales Signal.
I think you know your community and
I really hope that, you know, that's my
my ass to you as a journalist,
as a filmmaker.
Please go out and educate us,
educate us journalists, the general
public, on how to use encryption,
what the threats are.
You know, how we can protect ourselves
because it is really essential.
It's not going to go away
in the future. But we all probably
predict it's going to get a lot worse,
especially in the United States
with a Trump administration having all of
these tools, all of these, you know,
data collection, data storage at the
fingertips.
And and I
really want to ask
people to look at organizations
like the Courage Foundation in Berlin.
You know, Jesselyn Radack
organization Whisper in the US
that gives legal support
and and help to to whistleblowers
because, you know, whistleblower
protection is is very important.
But still, you know, there is a risk
and and it takes a lot of courage.
So, you know, I I think,
you know, we should all really
give a hand to Sean
Westmorland to have the courage
to speak out to you today and,
you know, raise awareness for all these
issues and speak truth to power.
So thank you.
So I'm going to be,
I guess, pretty real with you
in the beginning of this talk.
I mean,
what really catalyzed me the moment
that I realized that.
What we were doing was wrong and that I
needed to
at least change the trajectory of
my life was when I was in Afghanistan
and my
NCOIC,
which is the NCO in charge, he
we had built out this entire system.
We had done this many times before and
training and whatnot.
And during the training,
it was always emphasized
that we're going to be saving lives,
we're going to be saving US troops,
coalition troops, and
that we aren't
you know, the other side wasn't really
paid much attention to.
And, of
course, going to Afghanistan, all
of that training becomes real.
And something
like a technical job
that you're you're
doing to support
combat troops.
It's as viewed as support,
but when you when you really think about
it, these three support
roles are often critical
for the
combat personnel to
do their job.
There's no other way around it,
particularly with drones.
The the difference between
drones and conventional aircraft is that
with a A10,
it's ultimately the pilots
who is sitting in the cockpit, who is
making the final kill decision.
He's the one on the scene.
And, you know, he's looking
at the ground. He's there
with a drone.
You have dozens of
personnel, dozens of analysts, all
making decisions, all looking at
reality through sort of straws,
so to speak.
Each.
Each compartmentalization,
each career fields,
an imagery analyst, is
looking at the ground and picking targets
based off of things that they see from
the air, a signals analyst
is looking at the metadata,
looking at keywords that have been used
in conversations with cell phones.
You have translators who are
looking or who are listening in on
phone calls. You have geospatial analysts
that are telling you which buildings are
which.
You have the
mission intelligence coordinator that's
aggregating all the information together
to present a report to
the commanders in
Creech and the
pilots.
You have the pilot that makes the final
kill decision with the trigger.
And the the signals
are they are sorry that
the sensor operator who is guiding
and the missile,
many of you in Germany probably know who
Brandon Bryant is.
He has been speaking out for
probably about three years.
He's gone quiet relatively recently
due to personal issues.
And
what he did was he he guided
the missile into the target,
which is
takes about 12 to
15 seconds, depending on what the
altitude is.
And the pilot
is the one that
pulls the trigger.
So.
Within this entire system, the
responsibility for the ultimate kill
decision is dispersed among
different individuals.
So this creates like
several barriers that
I'll be talking about, the cognitive
barriers, of course, the structural
barriers, the equipment itself
and the
the.
Yeah, so
I'll just I'll just get started on that.
First off, and I know you guys are going
to hate the slide, but it's
I pulled it off of Wikipedia just
for to save my own ass.
The Twenty Fourth Intelligence Squadron
is the culprit here that
everybody in Germany is
concerned about. That's the DGSE.
Those are the people making the
analysis of the information.
So they provide the
direct and conduct multi source Istar
tasking, processing,
exploitation and dissemination of
operations in support of
you safety, Tulkarm, AFRICOM, US,
CENTCOM and NATO.
The one of interest here is
US CENTCOM and that's in charge
of Afghanistan
and the Middle Eastern region.
And that includes
a distributed ground system and also
a this this thing called Eagle Vision
one, which is the civilian
satellite counterpart.
So one thing
to understand is the drone itself
is not the weapon system, it's just the
platform.
And it's a platform to deliver a payload,
the Hellfire missile.
And if you really
want to understand drone warfare, you
have to understand all of the
infrastructure that's behind it and
allows it to
work.
The DGSE is pretty
much like the brain of the
of the drone. That's where all the
analysts are.
And they're looking at all of this
information and determining whether or
not that, you
know, that target is
a target.
There's also the nerve network, which
is the
it's the communications
infrastructure, the relay's the the
infrastructure that I worked on in
Afghanistan.
And Signorelli
in Italy is another one.
And you have various places
around the US.
And.
So I went to so I went
to the er
the the German parliament, the Bundestag,
a couple of months ago and
I presented a petition
to stop
the the
transmissions of
communications through Ramstein.
And I presented it as a violation
of international law because we're
in countries that nobody's
formally declared war on.
It hasn't been, you know,
hasn't gone through the process of the
United Nations.
And I
really I was trying to reach out to the
German population because it
seems to be something that's a bit more
important to them than it is to the
United States. So there's more of a
chance that there might be some kind of
resistance. And when you have a critical
piece of the puzzle like Ramstein,
you know, it's a lot easier to put
pressure on that than it is to
put pressure on hundreds of bases
all over the United States.
So.
That was more of a.
It was it was a political gesture,
but it was meant
to say, OK, we
need to have some kind of accountability.
If this stuff is running through the
German, through German soil,
then the German
population.
Well, the German government is
essentially complicit in whatever we're
doing.
So
I thought it would be.
A good idea for the German population
to basically
try to challenge their try to challenge
the the usage
of the
stuff.
My biggest fear has come true.
We've gone from a,
you know, a liberal
democracy to something else
that we're not really sure what that is
in the United States.
So Donald Trump becomes president
and he acts like all
of these, you know,
generals and puts them in his cabinet
and it really looks like
whatever foreign policy is going to be,
it's going to be heavily militarized.
And, you know, drones
are a very easy weapon to
use. There's
very low political threshold
to to.
To use them, because there's no
there's no people on the ground who could
potentially die, and
it's very easy to hide
information from populations.
So
another piece of the what I what
I worked on was I created this
connection between the battlefield
airborne communications node, which is
now on a Global Hawk.
And it's it's
a bridging node. It's
your and it's a universal
translator of sorts,
a relay.
It wasn't a bombardier express, an
unmarked private jet.
And what it allowed for was
for basically a
special forces operative on a cell phone
to talk to somebody in the pilot of an
A10, or it allows
drones and
conventional aircrafts to share data
and to
send information
back to us where we were transported
long haul through,
you know, ground based stationary
satellites with higher bandwidth
capacity.
And
the common misconception is
that, you know, the drone
links to the satellite and then it goes
straight down to Ramstein.
But there's a lot of redundant
infrastructure involved.
So the like say if there's a signal loss
or if you needed to transfer
like higher bandwidth
images, you
would use
RF. So we called
the beacon system the wi fi
in the sky.
And this is a precursor
to network centric warfare
like this is this is the beginning where
you have high altitude relays
flying over why you have,
you know, hunter killer drones
flying and ESR
information surveillance reconnaissance
working in tandem to pick targets
and eliminate them.
We're not the only country that's doing
this.
They're they're working
on drones.
And China and India,
the British have them.
The Israelis are really spearheading
it.
And even the Germans
are starting to have them.
And it's kind of
unleashing a
a Pandora's box of potential
for future warfare.
The there's
a subway systems,
and
in England, they've
developed a drone called The Tyrannis,
and they claim that it is
able to
pick a target
pick and identify a target
correctly and essentially take it
all the way to the point where
it can make the kill decision.
And then they have a human operator come
in and just to prove it.
So it's doing this
and it's putting it into a stealth
aircraft.
The only reason you would need a stealth
aircraft with semi-autonomous
capabilities is for inter-state warfare.
You wouldn't need that in a place like
Afghanistan.
So all of this development
and stealth autonomous aircraft
is intended for
developed nations
like Russia or
China or, you know,
you name it.
Those are things to be concerned about.
So they are
developing a
higher bandwidth satellite infrastructure
up there that can
basically supply about 10 times more
capacity than the existing
infrastructure right now.
And that means more drones,
more and
more imagery and
yeah,
a more pervasive
war.
So.
I've identified
several different issues with the
with the infrastructure where
we're using it to kill people, and
so the compartmentalization of
analysis and decision making I talk
to you about before where
you have all of these different roles
that you're using and
they they come
together at the end to
create a final report.
Now, if you were to take 10 people in
here and you were to give them
different information and
you're to tell them it's all
information pertaining to one specific
event, you
were to tell them to create a picture of
it and use
that in determining whether or not
a person lives or dies.
You might find some
holes in that
one problem. And places like Afghanistan,
Yemen and Somalia, as they're all pretty
aware of the fact that we're listening on
their cell phones and whatnot.
So they're not using electronic means to
to communicate.
They're using people like couriers
and stuff like that.
And there's a man
named Malik Jalal that I met with in
the British parliament,
and he was speaking to several
parliamentarians and asking them
that they could
remove him from the
the kill list, that they can
ask the United States to
remove them from him from the killers.
I
kind of added to that and said that he's
not really on the kill list.
He's been identified as a courier and
they're using him because
he is part of an organization
called the Northern Waziristan Peace
Coalition and is going around trying
to radicalize
young Taliban
fighters, Pakistani Taliban fighters.
You know, in most movements, I
just came from Standing Rock.
You have people who are grounded and
then you have people who feel like
they need to defend themselves or they
need to avenge their families and
whatnot. And that happens any time you
make a mistake.
Now, mistakes happen
a lot more often than the Obama
administration is admitting.
They said that there was one hundred and
sixty one civilians killed outside
of declared war zones.
NGOs are reporting thousands.
It's probably somewhere in between,
but.
There isn't that external
oversight of.
What's happening in the drone program,
there's
structural issues with that
to include the fact that you
have some missions that are being
orchestrated by the CIA.
Some of them are orchestrated by the
Joint Special Operations Command.
One is military.
One is intelligence.
One is a civilian organization that's not
technically supposed to kill anybody.
So they are
farmed out to the
Air Force.
That's the like
the the secret, I guess
the the open secret.
Then you have contracting agencies
that are helping and making targeting
decisions. So at any given mission,
you could have three
organizational overlaps
within that kill decision.
So if you are
to trace it back
and figure out where the problems lie,
you have to deal with three different
structures, three different organizations
to parse out
what actually happened.
And some of those organizations, well,
they all have different security
clearances. They all have different,
you know, protections for
whistleblowers and whatnot.
So
the other thing that comes into play
is you have the developers who create
algorithms in order to
do narrow tasks.
I think in 2004
there was about three hundred thousand
hours of footage
like drone footage that was being
produced.
Now there's.
Probably upwards
of two million,
there's not enough people, not enough
operators to sift through all that.
So you need algorithms to help you
determine, you know,
like if there is suspicious
patterns of activity
or if there are,
you know.
Yeah.
So
the question always lies is when you're
using all of these different algorithms
in tandem with people that may or
may not understand what the algorithm
itself actually does.
Is it possible that say,
you know, that the limitations
of the algorithm
aren't congruent with
the reality you might be presented?
Like let's say you want to
target anybody who is wearing a purple
hat and like that has a
tendency to pace back
and forth
on a street,
you know, in a regular situation.
You might that that might
be pretty limiting.
There's not many people who do that.
But like, let's say Mardi Gras happens.
And, you know, you have
this situation where you have a bunch
of people wearing purple hats.
That creates some confusion
in that.
So when you have all this technology
working for you and this is a big problem
with with what I find with with
commanders, is they get all these fancy
toys. They're not necessarily
up to par on,
you know, like technology
themselves.
A lot of them
may need help with using their emails.
And they're sitting here
looking at all this technology and it
creates this false sense of confidence
like that you have
like this this overarching understanding
of everything that's going on, but
in fact, you don't.
And most people in this crowd probably
understand that.
So the other
issue is military training.
You know, you have these
operators and pilots and everybody,
they're going through military training.
They're being broken down.
They are sleep
deprived, deprived of food.
You get about five minutes to eat.
You're constantly being indoctrinated
with, you know,
accepting the act of killing.
And you're taught to fear
your commanders more than you are the
enemy.
And those
those people are being put in positions
where they're not going to combat.
They're getting put in a
box somewhere in
the middle of the Midwest
and they're picking out targets
and they're doing that with the same,
like, zeal of a
Marine or whatever that is,
you know, going off into
Afghanistan.
There's there's a big problem with that,
too, you know.
And, you know, there's
there's an issue with this kind of
call it confirmation bias.
But, you know,
if you have an analyst and all he's doing
is watching Fox News and his image of,
you know, all, you know, Arab
people are that, you know, they
belong to this religion that is
intrinsically violent.
And, you
know, it only takes a matter of time
to radicalize them.
You know, they're not going to really
view the population on the ground with
much humanity, which is something I
believe is is pretty necessary
when you have somebody
that far away, blocked
by, you know,
not only dissidents, but also a screen
that's pixels and
an image that it may or may not
be fuzzy.
And a lot of cultural
ignorance comes into that.
You know, one instance that I talk
about is the KURK ninety seven papers
that were released by the
L.A. Times.
So General Stanley McChrystal
decided to release these
in part because it was
very controversial and
he was also involved in the operation
where it was happening.
They created a kill box because
there was a operation
that went down earlier that day
and that.
Particular operation ended in a
strike that killed twenty three
civilians and four children.
So there are 30 people in the convoy and
because of the way it looked
and because of the
lack of training that the
analysts got and also
the fact that it was a kill box,
which doesn't
require commander
approval, you
can administer the strike at a lower
level.
You had a bunch of inexperienced people
administering this, the strike
that killed all of these
innocent people.
And again, that may
or may not be happening at a much larger
level. It hasn't been reported
to the public.
But in this particular incident,
I like to mention
the Milgram experiments.
And if you if you don't
know, it was a there's a researcher.
So so the experiment goes.
There was a there was a researcher and
his job was act as a position
of authority while he's telling this
volunteer to increase
the intensity of
an electrical shock.
And he found that 60 percent of
the time a person was likely
to obey authority and actually administer
that shock.
They did the
well, the person
who is in the chair who was being shot
was a was an actor.
So that.
That experiment was done in front of
a window and behind a window.
And what they found was that
while it was in front of the window, when
they were sitting face to face, the
person was much less likely to actually
administer the lethal shot.
So even a barrier of a window
creates a barrier to a person's
ability to feel empathy.
And
there is another experiment that was done
where they were testing a person's
visual acuity, a pilot's visual acuity
while he was in a pilot in a cockpit
versus a
looking at a screen and identifying
targets. They found that when they were
looking at a screen, there
was much more false positives that
were identified
with those targets.
So,
you know, a person's visual acuity is
much better than a pixilated screen.
And that extra
barrier, uh, kind of,
yeah.
It prevents the person from feeling
the the the
the reality of the fact that they're
killing somebody.
So another element
of all of this is the acronyms
that we use, military
age male as somebody who is
16 or above and they're male
and it has gone down to
about the age of 12.
This is no longer a social,
you know, indicator of a person
having, you know, like
militant tendencies.
That was changed,
but it's still
one of them.
And what we've done
with drones,
you know, there's there's multiple
ways to mitigate civilian casualties.
You can do it in actuality
or you could do it
on paper
through obfuscating the
the language and say
calling somebody an associated threat
in the military. We've we've associated
proximity with guilt.
And, you know, that's
that's a huge problem when you're using
weapons payloads that
could have a
30 meter kill
radius or
a 500 foot kill radius.
You know, it's these bombs
are indiscriminate. So the narrative
saying that these things are very precise
is
pretty easily identified as false because
bombs are not discriminate.
And if you're using it to assassinate
people, it's much less discriminant
than, say, using a sniper rifle
in the US.
We've had a,
you know, an opposition
to
assassination.
But what we're doing with drones is
we're we're technically assassinating
people.
That creates
a international norm.
And essentially any country
that would want to do the same thing
would be able to.
So if, say, Pakistan wanted
to use the same argument to attack us,
they would be in their right
to do that.
That's something else to think about.
We also have words that
make light of the act of killing, like
when somebody has been struck
and they're trying to flee the scene
and they're injured.
We call them squirters.
When there's,
you know, when there's
an impact and
it hits the cell phone that we're
targeting,
we would call it a.
Yeah, so
there's a few things going on,
but.
Yeah, you know what I mean, it's
it's it's a little heavy,
so as far as the
the political side of it, of course,
you know, having
no soldiers dying
allows countries
to create narratives that
this is a ethical weapon.
We're saving lives of our troops,
but also saving the lives of people on
the ground.
You know, the fact that there are
civilian kills and the fact that
maybe we are hitting our
targets,
you know, the people
in those neighborhoods
may or may not know that the person we
were striking is an insurgent.
It's not something that you would
typically advertise
if you're part of an al Qaeda network.
So if it were to kill him
and his family and
the children, that's all
those people would see.
They're not getting the Western narrative
of what you
know, who those people were, what they
did.
Most of that isn't explained,
although over there they're much
more aware of the
the fact that we're killing people on a
consistent basis with drones than
than we are here.
And it kind of presents
another issue.
The, uh, the question
of
are these ethical tools or are they
perceived as cowardice tools?
You know, it's.
I think it's a pretty human feeling that,
you know, if somebody has a problem with
you, you want them to face you like,
you know, say to your face to to come
up to you and, like, at least have
the ability to talk.
And, you know,
you could potentially even
decollete the situation if
you had somebody on the ground.
The drone is the ultimate
sign of, you know.
Fuck you, you deserve to die like
there's no ands upset about
it, you know about it.
So my
concerns for the future,
so
I don't know how many people here are
aware of the hacking incident
with the Archey 170
Sentinel drone over
Iran where they brought
down, you know, this
this
highly sophisticated drone,
and they did it
by overpowering
the signal.
So the signal itself is a vulnerability
and having signals
going back and forth are always going to
be a vulnerability. So there is
a incentive to make these autonomous
and to have them,
you know, make decisions
either within
the the structure itself
or through a mesh network.
Swarming is
it appears like that's going to be the
next step, particularly
of countries like China.
You know, they're they're pretty advanced
with that right now.
They've just developed
a sort of rubberband launcher.
They can launch a hundred
of these swarming drones that
are programed to behave like swallows
to surveil an
area. And if it had found a target
to to basically
run into it. So they're
launching cruise missiles,
so to speak, and.
That's that's going to be
another big thing, and
I don't know how many of you are aware of
the STEM nodes and the neural
networks that they're trying to develop
for prosthesis.
A lot of this technology that's coming
out has a dual purpose, like the military
side of it.
I mean, you can use
it to move a hand or you can use
the the imagery
of the brain activity
to figure out how
to allow pilots
to make decisions without
using, you know, any of
their appendages.
That's the next step we need to be
looking out for
me blackout's that goes without saying.
And then miniaturization is another
thing, particularly with surveillance
robots.
I know Blackmer just
talked about the
possibility of having a little bees that
will go around.
I mean, that's it's
still science fiction, but
it's not.
Science fiction, in the next
twenty five years or
less,
we will have autonomous
killer robots
within the next five years.
So I.
Just hope that you're all
on that and
that, you know,
whistleblowers and
hackers and, you
know, human rights people can all work
together on issues like this
and we can sort of go
and take it from a multi-dimensional
like.
Approach
as far as solutions.
Of course, I met somebody
in Berlin, I believe his name is Adam,
and he built a
very he created a clothing
that is
reflective of infrared.
So things like that or
these these microwave
guns that are coming out that can take
down drones, these
nets that can go
up and capture drones,
you know, that's those are all
iterations of, you
know, civilian based
approaches to possibly
taking down drones with malicious intent.
Like I said, I just came back from
standing right there.
North Dakota is the first state in
the United States to legalize weaponized
drones.
They did that in 2015.
And and
you know that that might be something
that's up and coming.
They're already like
using excessive force against us.
I have had pepper spray,
six gas, rubber bullets shot
at me.
And they're doing this in subzero
weather along with water cannons
and stuff. They just blew a girl's arm
off.
This happening in the United States.
And it's happening where, you
know, these these groups aren't just
indigenous people.
It's it's also, uh,
you know, activists of different
indigenous batar, different ethnic
backgrounds.
So they really they really
don't care.
And you
know what I what I really.
What really catalyzed.
And me, while I was there, is the
realization that there are certain
resources that are
essential for life that we need
to protect
and we need to.
Be willing to put
ourselves on the line and,
you know, put our minds to work
at how to effectively
protect these things, except
besides just presenting a
a barrier
to them.
And
something else I would be very interested
in speaking to some of us is like how
how we can help some of the
indigenous communities lead this effort
in the US right
now.
Transcendental solutions.
That's that's a term that I
like, you have negotiated
solutions that
are predicated on one person getting
the benefit over the other, where you
have solutions that are mediated
and can
lead to a new reality
where everybody is
best served.
And I'd
like everybody to try and focus on those
as well and.
Yeah, so if you have any questions,
be very happy to hear them.
Yeah, so I grab a microphone.
What I hope one
thing I don't get from the talk is
when will all these people be able to
download your documentary?
Oh, it's actually opening in theaters
in Germany, all over Germany
in May.
So it will be available
in the regular theater and
at some point also via download
and so on.
But it would be great if you come out
because, you know, we will have
discussions and, you know, we
will have the possibility to to answer
to questions at the theaters and can
interact. So thank you.
Oh,
first perspective on it all and for your,
um, I think you forgot one
point, um, capitalism,
um, all of these
designs and so on have to
target a mind to kill
somebody.
And so,
um, fine.
And, uh, Mitzel is basically
the success state of
the goit, so it's a lot
easier to do it.
It's a basic design business here for
good.
And also, um, as a
weapon also, you want
the people using your
platform to fire you, Mrs.
Customizes, putting your money.
I think this point is also,
um, to to
think about in the future
are very
good question.
But next question number four.
OK, OK, OK, I
also want to thank you.
I have no idea how it must be like to
actually sit and then think about it.
So thank you very much for coming
forward and talking about it.
I think it's very important.
But I also have a question about the
future because, well,
the drone killings are happening right
now. And I believe the people that
are not too happy about it and I wonder
how can you actually mediate that?
How can you say I killed your family?
But, well, we can have a future where we
live together. How how how would that
even work in the future?
Uh, well,
right now, I
I'm I'm trying to involve
myself in in a first approach.
I'm working with an organization called
Repreve and
we're trying to.
I guess create platforms where
we can have reconciliation
with the victims as
individuals, not as state
representatives. So
I myself, I was somebody who was involved
in that program.
There's other whistleblowers who are
working with me, Lisa
and Brandon Bryant.
We we've all,
you know, sat down with drone victims
and we've tried to
have a conversation with them.
Of course, that's not enough.
The the next stages
are it's
going to be
a time consuming process.
It's not something that can happen
overnight.
But there are people that are
working on it. And this organization,
Veterans for Peace, they
they had organized reconciliation
in Vietnam.
And they're
going to help us with
organizing reconciliation
with Afghanistan, Yemen and all
of these countries as well.
So thank you.
Would be good one.
Cut it short, please.
First of all, thank you very much for
your talk.
And I have a specific question.
I want to say my my position
on a matter that was not really addressed
and I want to hear your opinion on that.
There is a situation that is
escalating right now with
the drone killings on the one side and
that there is terrorist attacks on the
other side of the world.
There is there's a very strong word and
it is a very easy way for countries to
legitimize using drones
and the fact that
people right now are thinking that it's
okay to kill civilians, but it's
not okay to kill soldiers from their
country stems from the fact that they
think that the civilians are terrorists.
And there's all this propaganda
about terrorism that goes on.
And this this is
the most important thing for me, that it
legitimizes killing more and more.
And on the other side, the
existence of drones and attacks so
stronger, so much stronger than the
attacks that Afghanistan are countries
like that could ever possibly make
and radicalize them.
And the terrorists,
as they are called,
employ means like the attack on in
Berlin. And it means that they're really,
really radical because it's the
only way they can respond to threats like
drones.
And so
my point is that I would like
you to tell me your opinion
on how to
change the views
on terrorism and how
to to
stop maybe this propaganda that was
used repeatedly throughout the history
to legitimize
states and governments
that have no other legitimization.
Yeah, but
we need to create counter
narratives, we need to
create more comprehensive narratives,
ones that explain
how people become radicalized in the
first place and what
the country has done, our our
countries have done historically, because
you're not only dealing with religious
issues, you're dealing with post-colonial
issues.
You know, the structures of colonialism
never really went away.
They're still there. I mean, the borders
that are drawn all over the Middle East
are borders that the British
and the French established.
So
we need to we need to create a
civilizational narrative,
one that is more encompassing
just of terrorism or, you
know, the war
in the Middle East, let's say.
I'm sorry, I have to cut it off,
didn't have to.
So thanks.
All right.