The Promise and Perils of Drone Proliferation
The advent and proliferation of unmanned technologies, often referred to as drones, has offered both new opportunities but also new risks. On the one hand, supporters of the technology point to the ways that drones have helped the United States prosecute its counterterrorism mission, killing many suspected terrorists while not risking its own soldiers’ lives. In terms of civilian uses, those benefits come from an array of applications, whether for monitoring crops, aiding in disaster relief, or filming Hollywood movies. On the other hand, detractors question whether armed drones are consistent with international law or have lowered the threshold for conflict, critiques that have ominous implications for a world where the technology has proliferated to other states. In terms of civilian uses, concerns about privacy and safety abound, with still-unanswered questions about the constitutionality of drones equipped with cameras, the increasing numbers of cases of near-misses between drones and commercial aircraft, and the security risks highlighted by the recent case of a civilian drone landing on the White House lawn.
In this talk, Dr. Kreps will present her research related to these issues. As part of the discussion, she will also do a demonstration of the technology by way of illustrating the promise and perils of drones.
Bio: Sarah Kreps is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government, the co-director of the Cornell Law School International Law-International Relations Colloquium, and an affiliate of the Einaudi Center for International Studies’ Foreign Policy Initiative. She is the author of a number of articles on international security, emerging defense technologies, and nuclear proliferation, as well as two books, the first called Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2011) and more recently Drone Warfare (co-authored with John Kaag, published with Polity Press, 2014). She has a B.A. from Harvard, M.Sc. from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown University. Before going to graduate school, she served as an acquisitions and foreign area officer in the United States Air Force. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.