What is most surprising is that this could still come as a surprise. The greatest crime lies not in an open flouting of the law but in the recesses of its sovereign application. This ordinary military atrocity lies well within the law, and except under the most imperative conditions, it does not have to emerge. Most of the time it does not need to. Contemporary forms of atrocity are hugely legalistic. They are the rule rather than the exception, not so much because the law has been suspended, but rather because it has been spelled out in accordance with the interests involved to the point where it capitulates with scant resistance. This kind of atrocity is formalistic, cold, technically rational, and backed up by particular conditions—the same elements that are supposed to make the killer robots of the future eminently ethical.

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 680