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How drones are waging a stealth war on the way we think about society

Must-read book The Drone Age by Michael J. Boyle reveals how drone technology is challenging everything we do – and how we think about war and peace

By Simon Ings

30 September 2020

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

The US Air Force operates military drones such as this MQ-1 Predator

agefotostock/Alamy

The Drone Age: How drone technology will change war and peace

Michael J. Boyle

Oxford University Press

MACHINES are only as good as the people who use them. They are neutral – just a faster, more efficient way of doing something that we always intended to do. That is the argument wielded by defenders of technology, anyway.

Michael Boyle, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, isn’t buying it. From commerce to warfare, spy craft to disaster relief, our menu of choices “has been altered or…

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