U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

This is deeply tragic. I wish the story gave more details. Based on the provincial governor's statement, it sounds like U.S. forces were relying on the Afghan government's intelligence assessment.

I also wish news sources would be more careful about suggesting that there are autonomous killer robots in the sky. The drone didn't target anything. A remote pilot did, based on information he/she was provided.

The US can't sustain casualties and maintain any popular support for the war or the reputation of the military, so they use remote control killing machines on people the media don't care about. Unless you have people on the ground (and even then!) you can't really be sure of your intel. This media strategy allows them to not care about the quality of the intel. While the power of the state is still terrifying, it is vastly weaker than during the Vietnam era.

It's both typical and disingenuous to name an attack after the instrument rather than the agent that wields it.

Truck attacks, drone attacks, knife attacks - one might be forgiven for thinking these objects have developed minds of their own.

Or perhaps the insinuation is that most humans themselves are mere instruments of the cultures and institutions they're embedded in.