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adamiscool8 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Since when are drone strikes the legal way to handle criminals. I remember something with trials before you can kill people.
01100011 1 hours ago [-]
That's a luxury you get when your society has reached a certain level of stability.
gjsman-1000 59 minutes ago [-]
Everything is that way.
Another example: Feminism? Only happened with women in the workforce. Women in the workforce? Only when the Industrial Revolution happened and the economy could support the roles. Industrial Revolution? Only happened when farming and trading got good enough that 90% of the population didn’t need to be farmers first. Very few moral enlightenments have ever actually happened absent economic preconditions, or would not be reversed if the conditions degraded.
mmooss 58 minutes ago [-]
People's rights are not luxuries, but the purpose of government: "... to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men ...".
They are a necessity to achieve freedom and stability.
31 minutes ago [-]
aaron695 15 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
havenbarnes 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ghurtado 3 hours ago [-]
No, not dozens of Innocents. About 1500, which is a lot more.
You should read the comment that you replied to again. You're railing against a fact, not an opinion.
spacecadet 2 hours ago [-]
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.
nickff 2 hours ago [-]
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).
spacecadet 2 hours ago [-]
It always has been.
croes 1 hours ago [-]
They mean the 5% of 1250 killed by drones
mikkupikku 1 hours ago [-]
We know what he meant, and he's being obtuse. Thinks thousands of deaths due to rampant crime somehow aren't or shouldn't be part of the discussion when the collateral cost of law enforcement efforts are discussed. Very dumb.
jibal 55 minutes ago [-]
This is apparently a RW projection zone. You won't get anywhere with these people.
jibal 2 hours ago [-]
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.
mikkupikku 1 hours ago [-]
If you can't handle additional context being brought to the conversation, maybe its best for you to duck out.
jibal 56 minutes ago [-]
So much projection here from RWers, as usual. I will bow out of this, due to the massive levels of intellectual dishonesty and bad faith.
aaron695 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bawolff 3 hours ago [-]
> 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.
RobotToaster 3 hours ago [-]
> private contractors
Mercenaries with drones, just great.
bawolff 44 minutes ago [-]
It is kind of interesting how they get around being called mercenaries (mercenaries are very restricted under international law and have much less rights). I think they usually claim various technicalities.
trhway 3 hours ago [-]
My understanding that 100% were killed extrajudicially. Only hope that when it comes to US the drones would carry Tasers.
bawolff 52 minutes ago [-]
At this point the situation in Haiti looks a lot like a war (non international armed conflict). I don't think extrajudicial is a term generally used for people killed during war.
tokai 2 hours ago [-]
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.
It bears remembering that all of this was reported by a group of Haitians in Brooklyn who publish and staff the Haitian Times.
They deserve recognition for maintaining the standards of good journalism in what is, by any measure, a difficult era.
itsthecourier 3 hours ago [-]
"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
riffic 2 hours ago [-]
extrajudicial killings? isn't that a sterile euphemism for murder?
datsci_est_2015 52 minutes ago [-]
I think vigilantism (to which I am personally morally opposed) also falls under the umbrella of “extrajudicial killing”, even though it is often not prosecuted as murder. Also any killings performed by law enforcement individuals outside of due process. Some recent famous cases in the US of both of those categories, for example.
antonymoose 2 hours ago [-]
War is hell.
throwaway5752 4 hours ago [-]
Of course it is Erik Prince's company.
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.
jihadjihad 3 hours ago [-]
> Blackwater, of the Nisour Square Massacre infamy in the GW Bush administration
And sadly the infamy continued into the prior Trump administration. In 2020 Trump pardoned all four employees who had been convicted in 2014.
logdahl 4 hours ago [-]
Haven't heard this name before, would someone care to fill me in on a tl;dr? Sounds horrendous.
daneel_w 4 hours ago [-]
Blackwater, private "defense" contractor, track record of killing with impunity.
mentalgear 4 hours ago [-]
What do all the worst companies in the world have in common? Blackstone, Blackrock, Blackwater ..?
Always that Black prefix, like something out of a bad action movie.
jayd16 4 hours ago [-]
The scoundrels at Black & Decker
itsthecourier 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
Blackwater renames itself every so often to get away from the bad press, so its not in the name anymore.
I dont know what blackrock did to be evil. Seems like a pretty generic company that sells basically every type of stock.
vkou 3 hours ago [-]
Blackrock provides management services for a significant percentage of all global wealth, which makes it an excellent target for:
* People who think a cabal of reptilian globalists control the world.
* People who think that capitalism is an emergent system that is destroying our culture, social cohesion, and environment.
cjbgkagh 3 hours ago [-]
Also Black Cube, I had a long list but seem to have misplaced it. Black seems to hint at secretive when you can say spy agency.
peddling-brink 4 hours ago [-]
Well, where do you think they got their ideas from?
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.
watwut 4 hours ago [-]
Well, palantier dont have black in the name and is the same awful.
TurdF3rguson 4 hours ago [-]
Palantir is the seeing stone used by Sauron to do surveillance in LOTR
bawolff 3 hours ago [-]
I've always wondered if they just didn't get the reference or if they are just self-aware that they are evil.
In the books its not just that sauron uses it for evil, he also can use it to turn anyone else that uses it evil.
oefrha 3 hours ago [-]
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.
MidnightRider39 3 hours ago [-]
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)
TurdF3rguson 3 hours ago [-]
To me it feels like an inside joke. Like there's one guy out there who pointed out that they're Sauron and they're fucking with him specifically.
akomtu 3 hours ago [-]
The AI of Sauron? The actual eye in the underworld and its proxy on Earth?
53 minutes ago [-]
input_sh 2 hours ago [-]
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.
aaron695 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
system7rocks 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Helloworldboy 3 hours ago [-]
4. Just do your job and don’t listen to screeching harpies in the HN comments
vkou 4 hours ago [-]
If we can get AI further into this process, we can fully launder all responsibility from the humans ordering these.
Manuel_D 3 hours ago [-]
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.
max_ 4 hours ago [-]
The human brain is largely for decoration. It's job is to cool blood and absorb "vapors" from food. Aristotle got it right.
It is not largely capable of "thinking"
We are proactively destroying human society. And many people are rallying behind it VCs investing in killing machines.
Citizen's largely don't care, they are largely passive.
It sort of reminds me of Richard Feynman who claimed he was extremely depressed. After the use of the atomic bomb.
It was something very stupid for a so called genius to say.
You work on a mass murder tool, then complain that a mass murder tool you worked on was used for mass murder.
casey2 4 hours ago [-]
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.
ericmay 4 hours ago [-]
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?
casey2 4 hours ago [-]
Whose going to participate in ethnic cleaning (or gangs) when they can be zapped from anywhere?
It's a much larger deterrent
bawolff 3 hours ago [-]
I feel like that goes both ways. Why not participate in ethnic cleansing when you can zap the people you hate from the comfort of your home?
cumshitpiss 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
pocksuppet 4 hours ago [-]
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.
lazide 3 hours ago [-]
Looks at history….
There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?
levinb 3 hours ago [-]
Much more frequent conflicts, yes.
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.
lazide 3 hours ago [-]
Ghenghis khan?
levinb 2 hours ago [-]
A different model of war and Empire.
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.
lazide 18 minutes ago [-]
Bwahahahahaha
3 hours ago [-]
kjkjadksj 3 hours ago [-]
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.
casey2 3 hours ago [-]
>also no
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?
system7rocks 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Legend2440 3 hours ago [-]
No, let's not. I really don't want to live in a world where the bad guys have killer AI drones and we don't.
tshaddox 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Legend2440 3 hours ago [-]
If the other guys have child soldiers, you don't need child soldiers of your own to defeat them.
If the other guys have an army of killer robots and you don't, you are going to die.
JoshTriplett 3 hours ago [-]
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.)
IncreasePosts 2 hours ago [-]
Nukes are intrinsically complex and require a high degree of skill, time, and resources to pull off.
Attack drones can be as easy as strapping an off the shelf grenade to an off the shelf drone.
cauefcr 3 hours ago [-]
You should take a hard look at who really is the bad guy.
SkinTaco 3 hours ago [-]
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?
rexpop 3 hours ago [-]
"The use of drones in these areas causes more collateral damage among the civilian population than it truly neutralizes gangs."
Helloworldboy 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
odie5533 3 hours ago [-]
Option 4 - Summon Shoggoth and no one exists to go to jail.
SkinTaco 3 hours ago [-]
Good thing I transitioned last year, I like my job
gopher_space 3 hours ago [-]
I think the way I'd put this is that taking certain jobs will permanently define your career and nobody will tell you about it.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/haiti
Another example: Feminism? Only happened with women in the workforce. Women in the workforce? Only when the Industrial Revolution happened and the economy could support the roles. Industrial Revolution? Only happened when farming and trading got good enough that 90% of the population didn’t need to be farmers first. Very few moral enlightenments have ever actually happened absent economic preconditions, or would not be reversed if the conditions degraded.
They are a necessity to achieve freedom and stability.
You should read the comment that you replied to again. You're railing against a fact, not an opinion.
> 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.
Mercenaries with drones, just great.
[0] https://docs.un.org/en/S/RES/2793(2025)
They deserve recognition for maintaining the standards of good journalism in what is, by any measure, a difficult era.
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.
And sadly the infamy continued into the prior Trump administration. In 2020 Trump pardoned all four employees who had been convicted in 2014.
Always that Black prefix, like something out of a bad action movie.
I dont know what blackrock did to be evil. Seems like a pretty generic company that sells basically every type of stock.
* People who think a cabal of reptilian globalists control the world.
* People who think that capitalism is an emergent system that is destroying our culture, social cohesion, and environment.
All the worst companies seem to all be LOTR themed.
In the books its not just that sauron uses it for evil, he also can use it to turn anyone else that uses it evil.
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.
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)
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.
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.
It is not largely capable of "thinking"
We are proactively destroying human society. And many people are rallying behind it VCs investing in killing machines.
Citizen's largely don't care, they are largely passive.
It sort of reminds me of Richard Feynman who claimed he was extremely depressed. After the use of the atomic bomb.
It was something very stupid for a so called genius to say.
You work on a mass murder tool, then complain that a mass murder tool you worked on was used for mass murder.
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.
It's a much larger deterrent
There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?
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.
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?
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.
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.
If the other guys have an army of killer robots and you don't, you are going to die.
Attack drones can be as easy as strapping an off the shelf grenade to an off the shelf drone.