deep in the nevada desert for the past eighteen years the united states have been waging a secret war the war of the drones. our investigation begins at the focal point of this conflict creech air force base located close to las vegas. drones are these spooky looking unmanned flying objects. each of these robots are powerful spies able to observe but also to strike which is proved devastating for al qaeda operatives.

a predator type drone can shoot at any point around the globe. it's pilot remains concealed in a bunker deep beneath the nevada desert. he can shoot a target in afghanistan or pakistan. in the nearby secluded town of indian springs and habitants observe the waltzing drones with a neighbor's benevolent i. i'm sure that joe we are constantly checked out i would be surprised if the drones aren't keeping tabs on us here. you know richard it writes television for the doubted it. oh no i have never felt that there was any

danger from from anyone here. in pakistan half a hemisphere away from creech victims of strikes are piling up. discarded . year which has been drawn from the music new. the street is security to. be sneered about will for over a year but. who are these children these decimated families it's impossible to know precisely. dead wounded all because a pilot hidden in creech pressed a trigger for a missile strike look at the numbers more than thirty three hundred people have been killed in drone strikes and it hears from barks only forty one.

people killed in drone strikes only forty one the drone war is a silent war led by invisible soldiers killing nameless victims civilians in an isolated area or suspected terrorists with unpronounceable names at the entrance to the base to america's observe each other without exchanging words veterans left their mobile homes to spend the afternoon cheering for their troops. on the other side of the road a protester displays his solitary dissidents. so it's not that we're only standing out in the desert doing this but this gives the military people a chance to see you know to hear our side of the thing if anybody wants to talk they can come and talk to us you know and i don't think we're going to change the

world by tomorrow morning at breakfast but if we stick with it i think people's minds will change at least be open to a discussion you know. under its smooth body the predator foretells the dream of a clean war. we are about to discover how this dream is turning into a nightmare. this is it old style war. traps confusion lethal risks for the foot soldiers ascent to the front line.

set up on the mother of the scene was only you know me more i mean also saw me sawdust with his own. once a fatty i bought poor course of world vision yasir on the horrible truth and possible cause all dreams of all his army and their crippled soda could up if the down so i'm not sure i'll. keep you cool. look for under the illusion you deduction while acceptability look you want to there are the talk and they'd also quit they all tell you it most sure nail that up your sick. even for a compulsive. ill founded does humans' us from tacoma. there are no losses of drone pilots in nevada when they are done fighting creech

pilots drive back home to the air conditioned suburbs of las vegas. let's enter the world of robots in las vegas where we drink champagne any finger food toasting the new generation of weapons. the a you vs a convention which gathers two thousand companies that make up the industry of robotic systems takes place in the convention center of the mandalay bay casino. so let's say. yeah. in the aisles of this trade fair we cross the path of barely. jointed science prodigies. giants of the defense industry or superstars of the new order of warfare such as general atomics the manufacturer of predator.

these sometimes clumsy looking toys can cost ten to hundreds of thousands of dollars but to purchase the predator itself you will need to spend a bit more than four million dollars and for this superstar of the fair sales are going well one must admit this propeller powered glider with an icy outlook is quite a handy weapon when it comes to waging war without taking any risks. predators are remotely controlled from creech air force base through an elegant technical prowess from the cockpit and optic cable crosses the united states then runs under the atlantic and finally reaches germany. from germany a satellite signal is broadcast and relayed to afghanistan pakistan yemen or somalia. in

mandalay bay everyone demonstrates flying across the robots performing myriad tasks more or less successfully. you want it to. be sort of. doing things like areas were just sort of keep this up and. listen. but above all robots obstinately observe check compare data and calculate the best shot at. how entertaining this war seems played like a video game while you are comfortably installed in an armchair less than ten miles away from your home home sweet. enemies are turned into insects

a few pixels wide and their hapless efforts can be observed with the amused i am an entomologist. to one of the tricks. of the word quite. hard. to. believe.

you can even post images of a successful attack on youtube and brag about your drone achievements. as in civilian life the internet overhaul the organization of the military the battlefield has become a completely digitized space vehicle. each fighter each weapon carrying platform or sensor device is connected like parts of a big war producing factory. militaries dubbed this new operational

bubble the global information grid. often said this bus. will keep. the serial shit. from the home and so it's clear. the australian do it because the new. one reality blends with virtuality the chief the operation commander can simulate in real time the effect that each of his instructions could potentially have on the ground. the operations room becomes the center of the intervention. every resource made available for the officer is only a few clicks away. and each of the men present on the ground receive an optimal level of information to coordinate the attack.

here an observation drone the global hawk performs a first reconnaissance followed by the passage of a satellite. each piece of the opposing force is identified and an angle of attack is calculated for maximum efficiency. predators then enter the game and clean the ground before man jets finish the job by destroying the anti-aircraft battery. men and robots see eye to eye humans and machines share a common view of the battle on the global grid. road . inserted harmoniously into this new digital space.

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let's take this setting a. place cases mostly templates. sometimes for nothing and just leave it. up to look just keep up the story can still be just if you see a stage eight look to be. but speech was still. playing and. when the unit paying union promised to met you prayed become part of it it clearly contributed to the bathtub ration of tensions within ukraine ukraine will not become part of the europe. union won't tell tales ukraine absolutely doesn't have the economic level to become part of the e.u. .

clean war zero casualties war this is the great fantasy of warmongering politicians . let's try to understand what happens when this clean war becomes real thanks to technological prowess. peter singer analyzes the way the drones are changing the perception of war and the relationship between the military and politicians for a washington based research center the brookings institution. which is a fundamentally different experience in going to war for someone who physically

goes into a place of danger. versus someone who each morning wakes up and as the commander of the first predator squadron put it to me you drive into work for twelve hours you're putting missiles and maybe targets you're killing enemy combatants and then you get back in the car and you drive and twenty minutes later you're talking to your kids about their homework at the dinner table. again in a new kind of power via this technology that is very tempting and it's tempting. ways that they've not faced before. i want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties that for the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against al qaeda and their affiliates and we are

very careful in terms of how it's been applied so i think that there is this perception somehow that we're just setting up a whole bunch of sprites willy nilly this is a targeted focused effort at people who are on a list barack obama made an extensive use of drone strikes during his first presidency. according to the new american foundation the number of predator strikes on the pakistani territory rose significantly with the arrival of barack obama in the white house the number of victims is estimated to range between two and three thousand the number of strikes went down in two thousand and twelve a presidential election year in the united states. was a pretty suspect it was she beaty. that's what they think

one person me to. show big. livius. movies for more. than the. next door neighbor if nato participates in operations in afghanistan with a united nations mandate the atlantic alliance organization keeps its hands off what americans dubbed the war on terror in effect the executive power in america doesn't need militaries to wage war anymore it is the terrible benefit of clean war in pakistan the bombing campaign is performed by a civilian chain of command. to understand the importance of these disturbing shifts let's get into the details of the procedure that leads to the killing of a terrorist.

the kill chain is the process by which decisions are made to execute a target. two institutions are entitled to prepare their own kill list on the one hand the jaison from the defense department is a joint command of all the special operations forces these are militaries. on the other hand the cia in charge of counter spying is a civilian institution your inscription on the kill list makes you a legitimate target. the cia and j. soc don't always agree on the names written on either of the two lists but above all cia targets are located in pakistan yemen and somalia countries with whom the american military is not at war. who are the operators in charge of pulling the trigger. for the j.c. kill list they will be military for the cia kill list it's

a mystery but it is highly probable that these are private sub contracted employees . you know bottled water right now we've carried out more than three hundred air strikes and a place like park a star. that is a what we would call an air war campaign doesn't involve troops on the ground literally hundreds of bombing runs it's not led by the us air force started u.s. air force general in charge of it instead it's being handled by a civilian intelligence agency doesn't mean i'm not disagreeing with their operation i'm not saying these are bad people involved in the operation just saying something that a couple of years ago we would have treated in the domain of war we're not treating it as in the domain of war.

rosa brooks is a law professor at georgetown university. she worked for three years as a legal advisor for the department of defense. a staunch democrat and a significant figure in the human rights movement she finds it hard to support the strike campaign waged by the white house thanks to drones i think that the increasing involvement of cia officials and civilian contractors in the use of drones is something that has given cause some real anxiety for for the professional military but if you want to know how the air force approves drone strikes in afghanistan they were they will be happy to tell you if you want to know how the cia approves drone strikes in yemen good luck they're not going to tell you anything so i think i think that members of the military are are in many cases somewhat uneasy at seeing the the military with its various checks and

balances bypassed in favor of a far less accountable chain of command. war creates a legitimate right for soldiers to kill. this right was reinforced by democracies around the world through cautious rules set after world war two. self defense in front of imminent danger proportionality of your retaliation clear discrimination between fighters or civilians when weapons are you. with drone strikes and acted by the cia these rules are put down. because the use of force is now put it to the hands of private companies acting secretly and escaping any meaningful legal control. in two thousand and ten major general timothy mchale was asked to investigate

a strike that caused the death of fifteen afghan civilians. he was shaken to discover that the decision to shoot was made under the recommendation of an employee from s.a.i.c. a private defense subcontractor. s.a.i.c. has a fifty million dollar contract to provide the services of operators interpret ng images filmed by predators. twenty thousand employees from the private sector have been integrated into the kill chain working with predators on their secret operations. maintenance agents visual analysts but also pilots and executioners. carrying on our investigation in las vegas we even learned how much a private pilot is paid to pull the trigger. two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year for up for someone that goes to the war and lives in that environment that's what you make for sellers i do think that the people involved in the so-called kill

chain bear some legal risk if i were one of them i would not be too keen to travel in most of europe for instance i think that there is a legal exposure. privatized. or makes a lot of money but escaping the hierarchy of the military these new mercenaries could very well find themselves on the wrong side of the law because the missions ordered by the executive branch are becoming more and more controversial. this morning. a lot. leader of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was killed in yemen. the day. does a head of state have the right to prosecute judge and execute a death sentence over a citizen of his own country. and where al walky is not your every day

terrorist he is one of al qaeda leaders he admitted his support of operations that killed dozens. and while a walky is also a u.s. citizen. billionaire i. feel. that. from this i will fall. for howard. and. not to come out to the audience. his passionate speech is broadcast online and on television let americans to write down al or walking on the kill list.

when his family learns about it through leaks in the press they prosecute the president of the united states. for. the supporters can you introduce yourself by marty's cabaret and attorney for the center of constitutional rights new york city based ngo has been mandated to represent the interests of the our walkie family in court this program is an executive killing policy it is nothing that has been reviewed by a court it's nothing that's been approved by the congress the authority the legal authority that the united states the president and the defense department in the cia rely on to say what we're doing is legal is an authorization that was passed after september eleventh of two thousand and one. that was ten over ten years

ago what the united states is doing now with this policy is saying that authorization that was passed in response to nine eleven authorizes the use of lethal force now against anyone not just members of al qaeda but against al-qaeda the taliban and undefined associated forces anywhere they may be found. on december fifth two thousand and ten judge john d. bates rejects the demands of the walky family with an eighty three page long decision still the court recognizes that it is troubling to execute an american citizen without due process and a fair trial will not allow was cool. but today i let. you have the. following nine eleven one year later and what is tracked down and a series of predator strikes puts an end to the manhunt. was in september thirtieth

of two thousand and eleven the united states carried out the strike killed and while lucky killed another u.s. citizen samir khan killed two other people at least in that strike two weeks later they carried out another strike in yemen killing the son of and while lucky a sixteen year old u.s. citizen abdel rahman i walk eat his seventeen year old yemeni cousin and at least five other people who were sitting outside having dinner and there has been absolutely no accountability so far for either of those killings of anyone who was killed but particularly of the u.s. citizens who were killed by their own government it's a very very frightening world when we have heads of state saying we we were deserve the right to kill any person anywhere any time for reasons that we will keep secret and you can't examine it beforehand you can examine it after

that's a pretty scary world to live in and you can bet that it will not be long before other other governments follow suit and it seems to me that that's a slippery slope that we're already we're already speeding down. the stories we cover here you're not going to hear any right back story. there's a reason they don't want you do not. want to raise it. now let's break the set.

well it. was. pleasure to have you with us here today.

technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia. the future covered. the ukrainian army involves to take the rest of a regional capitals. in the east block by block as residents of free in the tens of thousands are g is on the russian ukrainian border to meet those braving the crossing to try and help bring. the russian navy says it's chased away an american attack submarine in need russia's close in the altercation and knowledgeable the first time in recent years. for the chereau w strange strange is playing out a lot closer to israel renewed its bombardment of gaza that has triggered a massive rally.