By Dr. Stephen Soldz
Recently I participated in American Psychological Association (APA) annual conference and in associated meetings of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) and the APA’s Peace Psychology Division. The latter two organizations jointly conducted a miniconvention on the psychology and ethics of the US government’s program of targeted killing using unmanned drones.
The miniconvention began with my chairing a prerelease screening of a new documentary entitled Drone, accompanied by commentary by counterintelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Pryer, author of a widely cited article critical of the US drone program: “The Rise Of The Machines: Why Increasingly ‘Perfect’ Machines Help Perpetuate Our Wars And Endanger Our Nations,” in the journal Military Review. LTC Pryer expressed concerns about the directions the military was being led through its endorsement of the use of drones as a major aspect of contemporary warfare. In his writing Pryer has called for the US military to take the lead for declaring drones to be malum in se weapons – evil in themselves – and thus banned by international law.
The rest of the miniconvention included two Presidential Discussion panels of the Peace Psychology division at APA and a discussion session sponsored by PsySR. Panelists focused on a number of aspects of the drone phenomena.
A major issue of concern to mental health professionals was the psychological and social harm to populations subject to drone strikes. For example, in the Pakistani tribal areas, where the CIA has used drones against suspected “terrorists” for years, people, including young children, describe experiencing a pervasive sense of anxiety. The alleged US habit of “double tapping” – of attacking with a second drone minutes or hours after the first strike, endangering first responders – has led to mangled bodies, both dead and alive, remaining in the streets for hours as no one dares tend to them.
Further, the tendency to identify large gatherings as potential terrorist trainings subject to attack has led to the undermining of society as weddings and funerals are often not conducted according to traditional rituals. This social breakdown exacerbates the profound psychological effects on populations subject to drone surveillance and attack. A major researcher on the effects of torture has argued that drone use is akin in its effects to subjecting an entire population to torture.
Another psychological aspect of drone use discussed was the effect on drone operators. While the small amount of extant data is inconclusive regarding the prevalence of negative effects, there is evidence that at least some drone operators suffer “moral injury,” suffering caused, not by what happens to them, as in PTSD, but suffering caused by the individual doing things that are not morally justifiable to themselves. In the Drone film, former operator Brandon Bryant talks of the difficulties operators face, seeing death and destruction up close. Moral injury is known to be among the causes of suicide in the military. In recent writing [see Moral Injury and the American Soldier and Moral Injury and Military Suicide] LTC Pryer has castigated the military for ignoring moral injury and failing to collect data on its prevalence. [Those interested in these ideas can come hear LTC Pryer speak on moral injury at a BGSP Continuing Education event April 4, 2015.]
Among the other issues discussed during the miniconvention were the legal status of drones in international law and the ethical responsibilities of psychologists – these were psychology conventions – who aid the construction and operation of drones. Unsuccessful efforts to get the APA Ethics Director to clarify whether it is ethical for psychologists to participate in the drone program were described.
In my presentation I focused upon three aspects of the growth of drones. One focus was that drones pose a threat to traditional military concepts of military honor and soldiers’ identity. Drone use involves an operator, a soldier, attacking and killing individuals thousands of miles away, while being at no risk of physical harm other than developing a sore thumb. Warfare thus becomes hard to distinguish from assassination. The honor that society accords soldiers for sacrificing their safety by placing themselves “in harms’ way” ceases to be meaningful when there is no harms’ way. How then will these soldiers justify their actions to themselves? Will these justifications hold up over the long haul? And what will it do to society to have increasing numbers of our young adults spend years conducting socially-sanctioned assassination?
A second focus of my talk was on drone use as the harbinger of the arrival of fully automated weapons systems that will make the decisions to attack without any human intervention. A number of authors consider this development as potentially unavoidable. As weapons systems are able to act at a great distance from human operators, the connection with the operator constitutes a weak link. Counter weapons that are themselves automated will be faster at decision-making, leaving the human-operated remote weapons at a major disadvantage. Further, opponents seeking to counter remote weapons will target the link between the weapon and human operator as point of vulnerability. The solution to both vulnerabilities is to remove the human link, making the weapons fully autonomous. But what will warfare, and society itself, be like when we are all potential targets of autonomous weapons, of machines deciding who lives and who dies? These used to be the question raised only in science fiction, but they are now vital questions that may determine what type of society we leave our children.
The final point I raised in my talk was that drone surveillance was another step toward a total surveillance society where our every action is subject to monitoring by the powerful. For years our public activities have increasingly been subject to observation by video cameras on street corners, in stores and public buildings, and by any individual with a cell phone. Britain is using license plate identification technology to create a database of all car trips. We have learned from New York Times journalist James Risen and National Security Agency [NSA] whistleblower Edward Snowden that our emails and phone call and even actions on our personal computers are increasingly monitored by the NSA and British and presumably other intelligence services. Drones add to this surveillance the ability to closely follow any individual, including who they talk to or what they hold in their hand. Small drones are even capable of entering buildings, meaning walls are no longer a guarantee of privacy.
These developments in the machinery of surveillance may soon render the very concept of privacy quaint. This development should be of especial concern to psychoanalysts and other psychotherapists as therapy and analysis depend upon the existence of a private space. Can we really expect that our patients will continue to “say everything” when they are unsure who other than their analyst is listening?
If we as a profession and as a society do not grapple with these issues soon, it may become too late. The machinery of total surveillance will be far harder to dismantle than to prevent.
Stephen Soldz, Ph.D., Cert. Psya., is a Professor at BGSP and the Director of BGSP’s Center for Research, Evaluation and Program Development. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and a cofounder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Dr. Soldz has written dozens of articles on the intersection of psychoanalysis and social issues and has been interviewed by media from around the world.