A highly informative treatment of the current role and future potential of drones.
Drones have become nearly ubiquitous over the last two decades. Here’s a detailed look at how they developed and what they may become.
Boyle, a professor of political science and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, begins with an incident that epitomizes the image many readers have of drones: the 2011 assassination of Yemeni American imam Anwar al-Awlaki by an American drone. After looking at the legal and strategic concerns that weighed on that action, the author then steps back to survey the types of drones and their capabilities. “Targeted killings” have become the most familiar military use of drones, but they have an even more significant role in gathering intelligence, both by the military and by domestic agencies including law enforcement. However, their low cost increasingly puts them within the reach of rebel, criminal, and terrorist groups. Drones also have great potential for peaceful uses, such as disaster relief and delivery of medicine to remote areas by humanitarian organizations and by private enterprise—though most of these projects are still in the “proof of concept stage.” Some of the roles are still emerging as legal and technical issues are sorted out in response to the new technology. The author concludes with an examination of the nations—primarily the U.S., Israel, and China—for whom drone manufacture and export is becoming an important business as well as a look at future trends such as miniaturization (“nano drones no bigger than birds or insects”) and the potential of artificial intelligence–controlled autonomous drones, the proliferation of which heightens concerns about “accidental war.” Boyle illustrates his points with many specific cases and generally avoids the jargon that bogs down military history, and his global perspective is likely to make the text more useful in the long run.
A highly informative treatment of the current role and future potential of drones. (b/w photos)Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-063586-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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