One day, not too far away, these drones will be turned against us (American citizens)--if they haven't already.

Will maps of the future have actual borders or just marked areas of control fading into areas where control is absent or uncertain?

I don’t think Nader goes far enough. We’ve already put ‘lethal autonomy’ out there, available to anyone with the cash to pay for it. Once something becomes doable, someone will do it.

What controls have we? What if Israel starts using drones against Palestinians? or vice versa? What if a political party invests in autonomous lethal technologies to eliminate an opposing candidate? What if Texas decides to take out illegal immigrants? What if Boeing wants to eliminate Lockheed Martin? or Haliburton goes after BP?

And WikiLeaks has shown us that secrecy and control of technology is impossible.

Nader (in case you read the comments),

Do you think that the so-called Democratic Primary challenge you are working to set up against Obama is even going to address or seriously address issues such as the drones, endless war, civil liberties, Israel's ethic cleansing of Palestinians, global warming, money's influence on politics...? Nichols, from The Nation, blatantly came out and said in his article that the purpose isn't to threaten Obama's presidency; but just to nudge him to the left, which is impossible if from the start Obama knows the threat is not real. By moving into the Democratic Party camp, you are losing it Nader.

How would these autonomous UAVs identify Democrats or Republicans - depending on which corporate party is in power? Maybe it does not matter since George W. Bush gave the U.S.Presidency power to to murder anyone, anywhere, anytime. I understand that the U.S. Courts have approved of this uncontrolled homocide.

i wish ralph nadar was our president

Silly Ralph, they hate us for our "freedoms". Not because we bring terror. Don't you listen to what we're told?

Seriously, if one act of terrorism can so scar the psyche of this county, then imagine what it does to those around the globe as we rain shock-n-awe and drones upon our "enemies". Just wait until these things, like most electronic toys, get to the price point of a motor scooter. Talk about blow-back.

(PS. I voted for Ralph twice, once as a write-in and may do the same this year.)

The article makes an important point in noting that "... the United States, unlike over one hundred signatory nations, does not belong to either the land mines treaty or the more recent anti-cluster bomb treaty." Nick Turse wrote an excellent article in The Nation a few years where he detailed how cluster bombs are still being picked up by children in Vietnam and when that happens those lethal droplets which are contained in those bombs explode and inflict horrific damage upon those children. And as Nader incisively points out, the United States has very conveniently chosen not to sign the anti-cluster bomb treaty thus ensuring that no American official will ever be held responsible for what those cluster bombs have done to those children.

This then raises the question of when any American official has ever been held accountable for his or her actions. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated in the documentary The Fog of War that 3.4 million Vietnamese were killed during the Vietnam conflict. Despite that admission neither he nor any other American political leader has ever been charged with war crimes against the Vietnamese people. American Exceptionalism at its finest [or worst].

It is very important that there not be any pictures.

Let's go kill some brown people!

I have found, generally, that all the soldiers I know are honorable guys, and this is what gives them their constitution, courage, and is probably the last thing they would give up if they had to choose. The various weapons, equipment, etc. that have been thrust upon them to date have made it nearly impossible to display their honorability, and I believe this is the source of the modern soldiers dysfunction...

I believe that weapons technology, including guns, btw, badly stifle our soldiers, and force them to suppress the spirit that compelled them to become a soldier in the first place. Imagine how shitty it is to be mowing down guys on horseback from a gunship, how damaging it is a soldier to be forced to kill from a remote location, on a video screen. I believe our fighting men may well be our last hope to take this fighting spirit back from the machinists of war who would see them so badly dishonor themselves.

And any man, for that matter, who uses technology to exploit and dominate another man and still feel honor within himself is delusional.

I've seen honorable battles, campaigns, actions, movements (Egypt, for example, was comprised largely of men fighting men with fists, or perhaps stones, and the only guns fired were by government forces). Even government forces, to their credit, carried themselves proudly and acted honorably with horses or camels instead of tanks and artillery...And at the end of the day, it was clear who won, who lost, and I suspect that the losers, while dissappointed and bitter, can rest with their honor intact (and probably restored) as a result.

Nothing wrong with that. Why do we in the west let creeps, chickenhawks, and engineers so badly disgrace us with their clever machines? Commanders and Generals know this better than me...so what is the major malfunction, fellas? Sooner or later the mettle and valor of our military men has got to put the keibosh down on this junk...After all, when the shit really hits the fan, what else is going to hold this world together if not honor among men, regardless of where they live, or what side they are on...or what country they claim.

Think about that, and think about what other ways we are humiliated, demoralized, and controlled by others, often hiding behind corporate boards, or governmental bureaucracy, equations, and other calculations far removed from the human experience.

Ralph Nader was pretty much right all down the line, now we have to walk his talk, and be serious about it, double time.

I am disappointed to hear that Ralph plays the market. I think he leads a very austere lifestyle, claiming about $25 k in annual earnings, and foregoing driving a car. He is one of only two people in all of Washington D.C. that I could find who understood the student loan scam quickly, and discussed it honestly...and I looked very hard...

Another great one, Ralph. Where is the scientific outcry when technology is used to harm, not heal? However, I'm not so sure that "blowback" from "terrorists" is what we should really be afraid of.

Siouxrose: Once again, you tell nothing but the truth.

The demonization of Ralph Nader by the wealthy investor class and by financially comfortable Democrats resulted in Nader's demotion from being one of the most admired public figures in America to something that clawed its way out of Satan's rectum. This perfectly illustrates the absolute immorality of the mainstream Democrats and the triumph of pro-business cruise-missile liberal sellouts and their brothers-in-arms, the right-wing Republican cabal of corporate predators. The privileged pwogwessives joined with neo-con private power elites to isolate and marginalize one of the few voices that actually still stands for everything liberals once claimed to believe in.
Nader called it as he saw it. He never said there were no differences between Reps and Dems-- he said there were few differences. And lo and behold, he was proven right during the Bush/Cheney years: Dems rubber-stamped the invasion of Iraq; they stood mute as Bush appointed Christo-fascist ideologues to the judiciary; they pretended not to notice as "faith-based" institutions staffed by bigots were given millions of public tax dollars; they allowed the imposition of "No Child Left Behind" and signed on to the destruction of public education; they either said nothing or actually supported the neutering of consumer protections and regulatory agencies, and they helped to do away with the very concept of Constitutional rights by imposing the Patriot Act on the American populace. To cap it off, the corporate Dems then became complicit in delivering hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars to Wall St...and that was before the Obama administration picked right up where Bush left off and killed more Muslim farmers and malnourished children with more drone rockets in two years than Bush/Cheney did in eight.

Thanks to the cruise-missile liberals, Nader is a pariah. And as Big Oil, the nuclear industry, and death-trap coal mine companies laugh their asses off at Barack Obama's promises to promote green jobs and renewable energy, and as the Pentagon and dozens of military contractor corporations rake in billions while greenlighted to engage in perpetual war, the corporate Democrats will make sure that their DNC donations are mailed out on time.
Nader an "egomaniac"? The man doesn't give a damn about his "reputation" or his "legacy", especially when winning the approval of loyal Democrats means assuming the role of corporate stooge.

It's a good commentary by Mr. Nader, but his singling out of "physicists" as responsible for drones is a bit strange. I expect many people working on drones have physics degrees but most would be trained in various engineering disciplines, and plenty of people with liberal arts degrees, as well as non-college graduates, are working for the companies that make them and for the political and military-industrial complex which support these policies. All Americans are responsible for the policies of the U.S. Government, and to those Americans who are working as effectively as they can to oppose or change them: good, because it is your responsibility to do so.

Very wise. if we use weapons to kill terrorists who engage in blowing up bunches of innocent people, the (surviving) people who are terrorists or likely to become terrorists...will not like it!!!

It may cause terrorists to become resentful and to engage in acts of terrorism using weapons that they've long been trying to acquire. instead of just be the usual gang of happy-go-lucky murderers and blowing up buildings, airplanes, subways, busses or the usual bunch of unlucky innocents, they are going to get really angry.

let's just let them do their usual work and not act like it's a big deal. live and let terrorize is the best policy.

thank you, Ralphy Boy.

I think I see now how this all works out. This sentence: "Forty countries are reported to be working on drone technology or acquiring it." says it all. Eventually drones will simply fight drones. In our skies, in their skies, in the seas, in our backyards. They won't have time for killing people. The one with the last drone flying wins. Should be entertaining...

Mr Nader is rightfully worried about Blowback, murdering people by cowardly remote control can produce nothing less.

"Some experts at the founding conference of ICRAC forshadowed hostile states or terrorist organizations hacking into robotic systems to redirect them."

...and the worms ate into his brain.

Maybe this seemingly inexhaustible drive to annihilate a lot of our own species springs from some subconcious knowledge that there are way too many of us and we are too busy destroying our own habitat. Kind of a survival mechanism. Just saying.

Has the U.S. Congress authorized this horrific drone warfare, or is the Pentagon conducting this warfare through the Senate Budget Committee (Sens. McCain and Kyl) Chairs of the pentagon/military spending? Whatever happened to utilizing U.S. Diplomacy/Negotiations as a preventative to warfare and the killing of innocent civilians, including children? When these drones are redirected at us, and the lethal indefensible chemical and biological attacks consume us, we can rightly declare: "We have met the enemy and it is us" - USA Drones!