Here, the military atrocity was, contrary to Arkin’s assumption, not the result of mistakes on the part of lower-rank soldiers confused by the “fog of war” or carried away by the passions of combat. There was nothing spectacular about the point of origin of this atrocity. It was simply a matter of fixing the threshold of a relevant variable. What would be the figure corresponding to the variable “minimum carnage”? We do not know. More than thirty citizens killed? Okay. But this little decision affecting a decision, effected by a single word or one tap on a keyboard, has multiple very concrete—all too concrete—results.

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 679