Tonje Hessen Schei talking:
the gamers have been incredibly important for the U.S. military, and they have been targeting gamers in their recruiting strategies for the last decade. And this has been very successful, and it is now also spreading around the world. It is done in Germany and in Sweden and also in Norway. You know, gamers, their brains are pretty much wired to handle the challenges in modern warfare. And, you know, their eye-thumb coordination, their multitasking, their team fighting, the target shooting—they are basically perfect for the drone war.
And the relationship between the military and the entertainment industry, I think, is very, very important to take a close look at here. Our children are basically growing up playing real war scenarios from a very young age. And this game fight, you know, strange perception of war, has a big impact on them. To them, war is made to look fun, killing is made to look cool. And it really shapes them. And I think this “militainment” has a huge cost. And working with the drone operators, too, just seeing, you know, how the gaming attitude maybe is bleeding into how the drone program is operating, has been very disturbing to me.
Brandon Bryant talking:
I think that one of the big things that we should address is, like, there’s a lot of gamers that have been offended by stuff that we’ve talked about. And there’s a lot of gamers that are offended by, you know, talking about the correlation between violence and video games. And there’s a lot of studies that are out there that say that only certain video games cause certain aspects of this violence. And, you know, I’m an avid gamer—or I was, at least. I’m trying to get back into it. And I love this medium. It’s just the drone program destroyed my love of this medium, as well.
And I think gamers should be offended that the military and the government are using this type of thing to manipulate and recruit these guys. It’s a blatant misuse of power, abuse of power. It shouldn’t be something along the lines of, like, “Yeah, I want to play this game with my friends,” or even people that you don’t—you don’t see them face to face. You meet a lot of people instantaneously all over the world. We’re so interconnected. We’re more interconnected now than we’ve ever been in the entirety of human history. And that’s being exploited to help people kill one another.
Michael Haas talking:
On the other side of that screen, they’re very real. It feels like a video game, and it looks like a video game, but it’s very, very real. And to keep that in mind and not become disconnected from your own humanity and not to take away theirs—that’s what I’d want to leave them with.
Cian Westmoreland talking:
We should all take responsibility for what we do at all times. I have a cellphone in my pocket. It has metals in there that were extracted from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there’s been a war for 15 years and 4 million—I think 4.4 million people have died. I know that, and that bothers me.
____________
Cian Westmoreland
former Air Force technician who helped build a station in Afghanistan used to relay drone data.
Stephen Lewis
veteran of the United States Air Force and former sensor operator for the Air Force Predator program.
Michael Haas
former sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program and combat instructor for drone operations.
Brandon Bryant
former sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program.
Tonje Hessen Schei
an award-winning director and producer based in Norway. Her new documentary is called Drone, screening this evening in New York and Los Angeles.
— source democracynow.org