If our ears are no longer prepared for such praise, now that the drone paradoxically reembodies that representation, that is no doubt because the twentieth century has taught us to recognize its dark face. Where the Berlin philosopher saw a triumphant teleology pointing the way to a rationalization of state violence, the twentieth century, horrified, discovered something quite different. When John Ulric Nef took up this theme at the end of World War II, his tone was far less confident: “Progress has purged actual warfare of much of the emotional anger which accompanied the struggles of olden times. Except among the infantry, killing has become so impersonal that the killer resembles a boy with a toy pistol, or a man in a bathroom stepping on cockroaches.”

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 959