The title framing is weird when the report says maybe 5% of the 1250 were civilians, and the same rights group also reports more than 1500 civilians [0] killed over the same period in the horrific and rampant gang violence the government is using this technology to fight against.
People don't think anymore, they just react... Im pretty sure Im done engaging on this platform for that reason. Nearly every comment is met by some crass remark that clearly demonstrates the person didn't actually understand the comment, just reacted to the trigger words within it.
This is best exemplified by all the comments (on varying posts) saying: 'I misread the title, and interpreted as X, haha!'. HN has unfortunately slid in the direction of Reddit (despite the HN Guidelines' denial of this).
Dozens of innocents (5% of 1250 = 63) killed "extrajudicially" (i.e., illegally) by the drones that are the subject of the article, and those deaths were dismissed by the rationalization in the comment they replied to.
> Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday that drone strikes carried out in Haiti over the past year have killed at least 1,243 people, including 17 children, many of whom had no apparent links to the criminal groups the attacks seek to squash.
> Launched by Haitian law enforcement forces and private contractors working for Vectus Global between March 1, 2025, and Jan. 21, 2026, the strikes also injured at least 738 people, according to the organization’s report. At least 49 of the injured appeared to have no ties to gangs or other criminal groups.
The first paragraph made it sound like the majority were bystanders, while the second made it sound like it was 5%.
Maybe that is still unacceptable collateral damage, but it'd be nice if the article was more specific than "many" so we know what we are actually talking about here.
I have no idea how Haitian law looks at it, but the UN Security Council grants the Gang Suppression Force a pretty clear mandate. They specifically authorized to neutralize, isolate, and deter gangs, search for and siege weapon, and prevent the loss of life and within the limits of its capacities and areas of deployment, adopt urgent temporary measures on an exceptional basis.[0] While emphasizing the need to apply arrests and detain offenders, they are allowed to strike back. Drones are useful as indirect fire support so if proper rules of engagement are followed, maybe some of those killing are lawful.
"Haitian authorities must urgently take control of the security forces and the private companies working on their behalf before more children die,” said Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas Program at Human Rights Watch."
wow, such an insight, how didn't they think about that before?
yeah, complaining about 1200 killings, without considering the rape/killings/displacement that would happen in their absence by Viv Ansamn
to clarify: Erik Prince founded Blackwater, of the Nisour Square Massacre infamy in the GW Bush administration. He is deeply tied to Republican politics, mercenary work, and particularly the Trump administration. He is IPOing an autonomous lethal drone company, Swarmer, and his other company, Vectrus, is behind the events of this article.
Pretty much private mercenaries that work outside of the usual army structure as "private contractors". They're usually the ones the US contracts to do the worst atrocities, as that gives the government a thin veneer of plausible deniability because they were behaving "independently". The US also does its best to make sure they never face any legal consequences for their war crimes.
Also worth pointing out that, due to this "contractor" relationship, they never count towards official casualty figures. For example, if Iran were to kill 50k of them (I'm of course exaggerating to make a point), they wouldn't count towards US casualty figures, so it's also a way for the government to downplay the effects of foreign intervention to the general public.
Because you have motivated reasoning to dislike these companies, even though Blackrock and Blackstone are bog standard financial services companies and a random naming scheme is easy to grab onto.
All the worst companies seem to all be LOTR themed.
Technically the Palantiri were a force for good in the hands of Elves and Men, and could still be used for good, like Aragorn using it to challenge Sauron and forcing Sauron’s hand. So that’s a defense to the self-awareness argument. In fact that ambiguity is likely intentional.
Btw I always wondered why I was seeing droves of Palantir swag on Stanford campus back in early 2010s. I wouldn’t wear something that has a 50%+ chance of being interpreted as evil.
The Palantir themselves aren’t evil, they were made by the elves long before the events of LOTR. Essentially they are just a tool.
However I heard that Thiels favourite book is the rewrite of LOTR from the perspective of Sauron, where Gandalf and the elves seek to destroy humanity and technology (at least that’s how I understood the gist, haven’t read it)
I don't think that's how it works. An anti radiation missile from the 90s had a pretty high degree of autonomy. I know the British ones could deploy a parachute when the radar stopped emitting and reacquire the target when it reactivated. The missile quite literally made targeting and engagement decisions on its own.
The human that launched the missile is still responsible for it. Weapons that have autonomy are still given engagement parameters (e.g. limit target to certain geo bounds, engage between two certain timestamps). The humans that set those parameters and choose to deploy the weapon are responsible for what the autonomous weapon does.
Drones and atomic bombs have prevented more mass murder than they've been used for.
The people doing the most to actually improve material conditions in the third world are constantly poo-pooed by people who profit off these places remaining impoverished.
I think the NRxers are right here you need to go in there and crack skulls. Few will invest in long term skills if they aren't valuable. The simple fact: In these next 10 years Haiti will see more growth than the last 40 years, thanks in large part to this partnership.
Atomic bombs, probably. Drones? I’m not so sure I’ve heard that specific discussion point before. Why would drones be any different than machine guns or fighter jets?
Atomic bombs, maybe. Regular bombs, no. Drones, also no. If war meant thousands of American soldiers had to swordfight with thousands of Iranian soldiers and possibly get stabbed and die, instead of just flying planes overhead, we'd have a lot fewer wars. War is easy when you don't have to risk your life.
Much less total death and dying as well, though. Battles were short and small scale until the Civil War (maybe the Napoleonic Wars prior? Debatable). The largest battles of history prior to the industrial revolution were in the thousands, 10s of thousands of people. Forces were usually broken and defeated or fled after brief engagements. Brutal in experience, but smaller in scale.
It was that perception of war as personal, intimate, chivalric, by old men that let to the peak atrocity period (PAP? Did I coin a term?) of ~1850-1950. WWI was really the first modern reckoning of industrialized, globalized war, that led to the staggering scale of suffering. Incomprehensible to the men that commanded it, as they were born and acculturated in pre-modern war era culture.
But then the epoch-defining tool of the atom came along, and war has gone back to smaller scale, focused, targeted, "precision".
So here we sit, straddling two eras again. Pre-drone and post drone. We have not fully reckoned with what the new era means. But it will come quickly, like most modern tool-culture cycles.
Yes brutal, for the defenders of the castles and fortified cities they conquered.
But again, very targeted at key sites so as to assert an Imperial-vassal relationship. Not to really to metamorph the populace, and run the day to day, which was left to local leadership.
Their point was to demonstratively subjugate for the purposes of control and tribute, not to kill, replace, or even miscegenate. They were the mob-bosses of Eurasia, not the crusaders or jihadis.
Far fewer deaths. In those pitched battles it would mostly be about breaking the organization structure of the opposing line and having the soldiers disperse. Very few battles in history actually saw slaughter of tens of thousands and they remain notable as such.
Wars of the gunpowder age have been far more bloody. Far more destructive to civilian life. Far more lasting damage to the environment.
So I guess FARC didn't surrender? Where do you get this idea that American imperialism can't possibly work? And can I have some of what you're smoking?
If you work for an AI firm or drone outfit even loosely related to a security defense firm, here are your three options:
1 - Quit, salvage what remains of your dignity.
2 - Share all information you can as a whistleblower to media, the world, etc.
3 - Prepare to go to jail. This is profoundly evil.
If you are a tech guy and working with drones or any AI company that has even a bare relationship to some security firm, you have a few options:
1 - Immediately share all information and intel with the public so as to spare any judicial accountability.
2 - Quit.
3 - Prepare to go to jail for the rest of your life. This is profoundly evil.
That presumes that “killer AI drones” are a valid way to accomplish some valid goal.
For example, I do in fact want to live in a world where only the bad guys have child soldiers, use human shields, deliberately target civilians, and abuse prisoners of war.
Do not succumb to "we have to win the race" reasoning and escalation, when the race is leading off a cliff. It is, in fact, possible to stop things via international cooperation. Treat it the way we do nuclear proliferation. (Efforts to stop nuclear proliferation have not been perfect, but they've been incredibly effective and made it much more difficult to make the problem worse than it already is.)
I suppose in the context of the article you're commenting on you're saying the bad people are the ones defending the women and children from being raped?
[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/haiti
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