Within hours after Donald Trump took the oath of office as President of the United States, American drone operators attacked multiple sites in Yemen in the hopes of killing Al Qaeda affiliate members. These actions were undoubtedly a blow to Hugh Gusterson’s hopes for a nuanced reconsideration of the remotely-piloted targeted-killing campaigns that became a hallmark of the Obama administration. His anthropologist’s analysis of drone warfare in Drone: Remote Control Warfare provides a narrow, but concise and well-reasoned frame in which to evaluate America’s relationship with drone warfare. Gusterson finds that if drone warfare does indeed have battlefield utility, the price paid by its human targets, innocent bystanders, and the operators themselves in “pure drone warfare” (15) – i.e. drone strikes outside of combat theaters – are not worth the “balancing strategic gain” (160). He argues for returning the armed drone to prior international norms of what he calls “mixed drone warfare” (14), where they are part of the conventional battlefield (if such a term is relevant in the 21st century). Unfortunately, Gusterson’s window for effecting nuanced analysis may have passed, given that the early days of the Trump administration suggest that hopes for a moral reassessment are more distant than ever. Nonetheless, he provides a useful and much-needed examination of the problematic negotiations inherent in America’s exercise of hegemonic power via remote control. Gusterson defines the “remote intimacy” (47) of operators stationed 8000 miles away from their targets/victims as one the drone’s most problematic aspects because it has “disarticulated the spatial relationship between warrior and weapon” (45). As Hollywood has ably depicted, the experience of operators who watch endless hours of video from the far side of the planet can shift instantly from tedium to macabre horror. This new form of suburban combatant can unwittingly wipe out a wedding party at noon and take her husband to a Valentine’s dinner that same evening. The operators’ dissociation of extreme violence from the conventional personal risks of soldiers in combat redefines the experience of war, making it “remote killing in every sense of the term: it is done by remote control, and it is spatially remote, culturally remote, and emotionally remote” (44). Gusterson further problematizes this dissonance as “slippage”—a departure in “technical, organizational, and ethical” norms (91). This term is most relevant to “signature strikes” (93) that are targets of opportunity based on profiling (i.e. terroristic signatures) in which the merest suggestion of insurgent behavior (including how one relieves oneself) can result in death. Operators evaluate what they see in the drone’s fish-eye or

中文翻译：

---

重新考虑无人机战争

在唐纳德特朗普宣誓就任美国总统后的几个小时内，美国无人机操作员袭击了也门的多个地点，希望杀死基地组织的附属成员。这些行动无疑打击了休·古斯特森 (Hugh Gusterson) 对远程驾驶定点杀伤活动进行细致入微的重新考虑的希望，而后者已成为奥巴马政府的标志。他的人类学家在《无人机：遥控战》中对无人机战争的分析提供了一个狭隘但简洁且合理的框架，用于评估美国与无人机战争的关系。古斯特森发现，如果无人机战争确实具有战场效用，那么其人类目标、无辜的旁观者和操作员自己在“纯粹的无人机战争”中所付出的代价（15）——即 战区外的无人机袭击——不值得“平衡战略收益”（160）。他主张将武装无人机恢复到他所谓的“混合无人机战争”（14）的先前国际规范，在那里它们是常规战场的一部分（如果这样的术语与 21 世纪相关的话）。不幸的是，鉴于特朗普政府的早期阶段表明，对道德重新评估的希望比以往任何时候都更加遥远，因此古斯特森进行细致分析的窗口可能已经过去。尽管如此，他还是对美国通过远程控制行使霸权所固有的有问题的谈判进行了有用且急需的审查。古斯特森将距离目标/受害者 8000 英里的操作员的“远程亲密关系”(47) 定义为无人机最有问题的方面之一，因为它“阐明了战士和武器之间的空间关系”(45)。正如好莱坞所描绘的那样，从地球的另一端观看无数小时视频的操作员的体验可以立即从单调乏味转变为令人毛骨悚然的恐怖。这种新形式的郊区战斗人员可以在不知不觉中取消中午的婚礼，并在当天晚上带她的丈夫参加情人节晚宴。操作员将极端暴力与士兵在战斗中的常规个人风险区分开来，重新定义了战争体验，使其成为“任何意义上的远程杀戮：它是通过远程控制完成的，它在空间上是遥远的，在文化上是遥远的，和情感上的疏远”（44）。古斯特森进一步将这种不和谐问题化为“滑点”——偏离“技术、组织和道德”规范 (91)。该术语与“签名打击”(93) 最为相关，后者是基于剖析（即恐怖主义签名）的机会目标，其中最简单的叛乱行为暗示（包括如何自我缓解）可能导致死亡。操作员评估他们在无人机的鱼眼或