EVENT DETAILS

"Death by PowerPoint"

VS-sponsored lecture that will be taking place next Monday February 6th at 1:30pm in HG 1010 by Katherine Chandler, who is Assistant Professor of Culture and Politics in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
ABSTRACT:
Recent studies of drone aircraft use the system as a figure for the Obama administration's continuation of the War on Terror, highlighting ethical, political and legal implications of the technology for 21st century war. Yet, the symbol of "the drone" may be misleading.  This analysis proposes drone warfare is as much a bureaucratic structure as it is a technical system. It studies "The Drone Papers," leaked in 2015, and closely reads three PowerPoint presentations that are among the source materials. The medium of PowerPoint, as suggested by media theories of documents, has a format open to contradiction, troubling attempts to use "The Drone Papers" as evidence of flaws in the drone program. Instead, this talk focuses on the structures implied by PowerPoint and the bureaucracy of killing they articulate.  The final section explores how the national security state uses secrecy as form of social organization, dividing those with accesses to government secrets and the public they claim protect, while distinguishing both from the outside, who are targets.  The ways these forms of organization have become tied to "the drone" are as much cause for concern as the technology itself.