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Can a President Use Drones Against Journalists?→
Amy Davidson chatted about the ethics of drone warfare recently with Michael Walzer, the author of “Just and Unjust Wars”; Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers, who has also written about just-war theory; and The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who is a master on the subject. After Walzer and McMahan suggested some criteria for strikes—criminality, risk of American lives—Davidson asked:
Doesn’t a journalist working abroad who is about to release classified information about a war crime—thus committing a crime—that will provoke retribution or a break with allies—endangering Americans—fit this definition of a target?
A look at their differing views: http://nyr.kr/13hK2Qt
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Live Chat: The Ethics of Drone Warfare
Years of secrecy surrounding the United States’ drone program have left many questions—about targeted killings, transparency and due process; the power of President; and where battlefields begin and end.
Today at 3 P.M. E.T., Michael Walzer, the author of “Just and Unjust Wars” and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers and the author of “The Ethics of Killing”; and New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer will discuss the ethics of drone warfare in a live chat with readers.
Follow the link to help get the exchange started by leaving questions in the comments section, and be sure to return at 3:00 for the discussion: http://nyr.kr/WJNjcj(Source: newyorker.com)
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"What we really want are machines that can go a step further, endowed not only with the soundest codes of ethics that our best contemporary philosophers can devise, but also with the possibility of machines making their own moral progress, bringing them past our own limited early-twenty-first century idea of morality."
— Gary Marcus on Google’s driver-less car, and building machines with the ability to make ethical decisions: http://nyr.kr/R8J1ua
