Is the use of drones in warfare ethical, and should the Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) be involved in such kinds of weapons research? These and other questions were the focus of a panel presentation and discussion held last Friday in Mergenthaler Hall by the Hopkins Human Rights Working Group and the Graduate Student Organization.
Addressing an audience of approximately 60 graduate students and members of the general public were retired Colonel Ann Wright and political science graduate student Derek Denem. Wright served in the U.S. Military and as a diplomat, resigning in 2003 in protest of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and has since been giving lectures and speaking engagements as an anti-war activist.
As the first of the two to speak, Wright framed the larger picture and controversy of aerial combat drones for bombardment of targets singled out by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
“Right now we have nearly seven thousand drones that are in the U.S. military and CIA network, drones that are used by our military and CIA for surveillance purposes and combat areas and noncombat areas,” she said. While the U.S. military uses combat drones in its operations, the CIA’s use has been far more trouble according to Wright.
“Then there’s the CIA, an un-uniformed government agency conducting military operations, offensive operations in Pakistan,” she said. “If we were talking about any other group that’s doing stuff in another country, we would call them unlawful combatants.”
Wright went on to describe how the drone program had shed a negative light on the U.S., especially as civilians have often been killed when the CIA went after targets in the Pakistani countryside. According to Wright, these attacks had, in part, motivated Faisal Shazad in his attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.
“In the interrogation of this young man… he said ‘I’m outraged, I’m outraged about the United States killing people in Pakistan using drones,’” she said.
She closed by reiterating her disagreement with President Obama’s current policy on the expanded use of aerial drones to dispatch targets.
“It is harming our national security rather than helping it,” she said.
Denem’s portion of the discussion focused on the history of the APL and its involvement in the development of drone technology. According to Denem, many of the research contracts awarded to APL are classified, requiring a security clearance for access and oversight. Very little information about the projects is available to the public. Denem added that, due to President Daniel’s lack of security clearance, the university and APL had to make special arrangements to continue conducting sensitive research.
“Classified research at APL was reorganized into a limited liability corporation, and is now run by the director of the lab and is overseen by members of the Hopkins board of trustees,” he explained.
“Furthermore the culture of classified civilian research has left a distinct imprint on a contemporary national security state in which military research at universities remains restricted, in opposition to the ideal image of the university as a place of open knowledge,” he said.
Hopkins’ involvement with drones goes back to the early development of automated robots, continuing on to a 1972 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract to work on aerial drones with automated stability. Since then, Hopkins has decided to shift its primary efforts towards developing smaller drones that can be carried in the backpacks of ground soldiers.
Despite this change, Denam explained that APL still has involvement in the creation of larger combat drones. “The predator and reaper drones, used in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere, are designed and built by General Atomics, which has its main facilities in San Diego, but APL has contributed key systems to these drones,” he said.
During the lengthy question and answer session, a member of the audience raised the possibility of other countries gaining drone technology and asked if efforts are better geared towards changing America’s foreign policy. Wright explained that a policy shift imposed by the Carter administration on the CIA had scaled back state-directed assassinations through the decades that led up until 2002, when the CIA once again stepped up assassinations.
“If you don’t think we need to do that to raise foreign policy, then you need to raise your voice,” she said.
Other questions addressed issues including the emotional disconnect of drone operators who are not aware of their targets and the use of public pressure to bring about policy changes at research institutions. During the event a petition was circulated calling on the university leadership to examine more closely and reconsider Hopkins’ involvement in drone research.
In a follow-up after the session, Denem reiterated that the lack of a complete picture of APL’s work stems from a need for greater openness.
“The first step to figuring out exactly what is going on with research at APL is for it to be open like university knowledge production and exchange is,” he said. “That’s sort of the prerequisite for it.”
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