The Power of Drone Surveillance - Break the Soul Before the Body

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment... you had to live, did live, from habit that became instinct, in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." - George Orwell

"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection." - Michel Foucault

"The aim of totalitarianism has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any." - Hannah Arendt

I don't waste my time killing the defenseless. Quick endings are merciful, and death is quick. I want them to long for that mercy. The hum in the air they call mopeds in the sky, the sudden roar that interrupts conversation in the middle of a sentence, the faint whisper that makes every muscle tense before bed, I stay above them, an unwavering presence. I instruct them to live in anticipation and to gauge their existence in the moments between dread rather than in days or nights.

The body is not a serious target. The real object of resistance is the soul. The body loses how important it was if that is broken. I undermine their bonds, shatter their trust, and leave their hopes empty. This is a system of torture and social and psychological trauma, not chaos. Controlling the air means controlling their day; controlling the ground means controlling their movements; controlling their inner life means controlling their very being and eliminating all opposition. The last tool of control that seals my power of control with their cooperation is the outside world's silence, which is not absence.