The op-ed is nothing more than vacuous drivel coming from someone with no more understanding of drones than of quantum physics, string theory, or (apparently) logic. After confessing her fear of skies thick with drones (never mind that our skies are already thick with planes with 9.8 million manned flights crossing our skies in 2012), she shows the value of her hand almost as soon as she starts, "So if they can’t land on my head, why do they make my head hurt? Maybe because they are redolent of President Obama’s unhealthy attachment to lethal drones..." I suppose she can't be bothered with the fact that the aircraft in the sky today have the military to thank for much of their development (First jet aircraft? Luftwaffe). To reject the use of drones based on their military application is tantamount to rejecting air travel because airplanes can be (and frequently are) used to drop bombs on people. In fact, if she could trouble herself to look at the numbers, she would see that of all the weapons released by aircraft in Afghanistan from 2009-2012 (18,559), only 6.8% of them were released by drones. How is it that they are public enemy No. 1, the evil machines raining death on the Middle East when they account for 7% of the lethal air power used and the other 93% gets a free pass?
After she finishes with her journalistic masterpiece about the potential lethality of these innocuous little aircraft she makes an entirely unrelated and unsupported statement about the "unhealthy attachment to indiscriminate surveillance" of our spy agencies. This is a matter of opinion, and many people agree, but it is quite out of context and not entirely applicable here. Not even the Snowden leaks could produce evidence of surveillance on Americans in America (by drone or otherwise), which is the only type of surveillance restricted by our laws. Our spy agencies act within our laws, so if you want them to act differently you might consider changing the law. I will readily concede that the idea that spy agencies may be tempted to spy on us from above is not unfounded but neither is the idea that drones could revolutionize our daily lives in ways that we cannot yet predict. The Wright brothers gave rise to next day air freight, intercontinental air travel and, yes, even drones. Do you think they would have expected that?
And, as if her murderous privacy-invading drone point wasn't clear enough (It was plenty clear, just not logical) she goes on to provide some tenuous link to the latest episode of Homeland. I won't even bother addressing the absurdity of connecting reality to a TV drama.
After all of that nonsense she does manage to put together part of a factual and sensible statement. She says that Bezos is simply putting on a PR show and catering to our desire for instant gratification. This may be true, but that is his job; he has built his entire company on the foundation of providing anything you want as soon as you want it. The highly successful Amazon Prime is centered around providing anything Amazon sells in 2 days at no additional charge. Can you blame the man for pushing the delivery time envelope? Further, while the items she might order would be argyle sweaters, some of us (like us in the lab) order things that we can't get locally and need yesterday. Turning 2 day shipping into 30 minute shipping has the potential to turn 2 wasted days into barely enough downtime to eat lunch. And her implication after this that other companies following suit is also a bad thing is equally off base; why is a coffee being delivered by drone any worse than a sandwich or a pizza being delivered by bike or car?
She then goes on to mention lobbying and movie producers and some stuff about jobs. To be quite honest I'm not sure what she was doing here. She provides some of the biggest reasons drones should be integrated into the airspace (100,000 jobs, $90 billion industry) with no explanation, no support or rejection. Then, with a similar nonsensical transition, she returns to Amazon's drone delivery and a quote from Politico (a political news outlet with presumably as much drone expertise as our dear friend Maureen or Barney the Dinosaur) that highlights the danger of operating drones in a city. Sure, current generation drones probably aren't reliable enough to safely conduct this sort of task, but does that mean the drone of 5 years from now will still be incapable? Does our current track record of dizzying rates of technological advancement suggest that we will make no meaningful progress in this area in the next few years?
Next, she is on to another "drones will take away your last shred of privacy" argument. I would refer her back to the second paragraph for a refresher on why this isn't a sound logical argument.
Finally, she goes back to breaking down her own case with a few of the multitude of valuable uses of civilian drones before making another absurd reference to Hollywood as if it has any relevance to reality. Her op-ed ends just as weakly as it started; same old fearmongering tactics, new half-baked examples. I understand that people are afraid of change but have we not seen for a hundred years or so that our fears are generally alleviated by overwhelming benefit?
Phew, ok, now that I have that out of the way, I'd like to turn to some brighter news. First, Lian Pin Koh, the director of ConservationDrones.org, recently gave a talk at TED in Edinburgh, Scotland. His talk is certainly inspiring and shows the real power of the aircraft we work with, but I was a little disappointed that I wasn't invited to speak. I'm kidding, kinda. While the work they are doing is impressive it in no way exceeds our accomplishments and I would even say that we are quite a few steps ahead of them, as we are much more advanced in the area of multirotor-based imaging. They have gotten their aircraft out to more places and collected more data, which definitley counts for something, but the systems they have developed do nothing that ours can't. This is actually heartening for me, as it shows that the progress we have made over the past 16 months is really meaningful and basically TED-worthy.
Finally, I'll share a few stories of us in the news. We have already gotten some good attention as a result of these and I really think it will help us as well as drone development in general.
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