But if one changes one's theoretical spectacles, swapping those of orthodox economics for an analysis in terms of class relations, the phenomenon takes on a different aspect. What is at stake in a tendency to substitute capital for military endeavor is not only an upset in the conditions affecting the political calculations of the democratic sovereign but also, and more fundamentally, an increased social and material autonomization of the state apparatus.

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 595