A wide range of influential groups ranging from Greenpeace International to the u. S. Air force. His career is very interesting a way to like to go into. National security adviser to the New York Times, military analyst for nbc news, his the author and coauthor of 11 bucks and many articles for prestigious newspapers and journals. He is not want to shy away from controversy. Drones are definitely controversial right now. Every time you turn on the news theyre talking about drones and regulations. In writing this introduction i went online and twitter feed subjects were quite interesting. Post such as International Police agencies, countering growing threats of ieds, another says, arent marked air force 757 makes Emergency Landing in des moines. This is what conspiracies are made of. However the one that was posted yesterday was that hes going to be here at our bookstore and we are very cited to be on his list of tweets. Without further do please him a welcome william. [applause]. Thank you very much. I am also a vermont resident. I. My time in new york city these days. Today was an annoying day for me like most days are. It was annoying particularly because i was driving to an appointment and turned on the radio, i was listening to a story about drones on the radio. I was thinking okay, i heard the introduction of who is going to be on the show, some guy from industry, some lobbyist, some lefty journalists, so i could have just heard the radio often told you exactly what they were all going to say. Unfortunately, my drive to bedford was long enough that i had to listen to the show. They said pretty much what i expected. Which is that pretty much what we expect. Three years ago when i started working on a book on drones my publisher said to me, why dont you write a book on drones. I said i dont really care about drones and i dont i dont really know anything. He said, perfect. That is generally how i approach most of my projects. The journey that i took doing that really was an eyeopening one for me. I hardly wrote a book about drones. I wrote a book about what drones are all about in our society and what they mean. Im not sure concerned my on publisher was particularly happy. I see books as a very personal matter, i have written a lot of them. I see myself as a bit of an artist and a sense that they represent me in my thoughts. When i visited with people in the drone world, when when i started to talk to people in the drawn world, it became clear to me that nobody understood what the world was. It was so new that no theory or real understanding had developed yet. Dont read this book, okay. It has 100 pages of footnotes, it is dance, it is typical me, big words and theory. Here is what crystallizes it in my head. When i began to look into what the drone world was about and began to get into the science of understanding how drones work, how they take pictures, what they take pictures of, what happens to those pictures, who looks at them and what it is for, then where do we put it all. I discovered a really unknown area to mean. If it is unknown to me it is probably unknown to most people, it is hyperspectral imaging. Dont ask me to explain too much, hyper pectoral imaging is looking at something from a granular level that is beyond the image itself but it is looking at the met electromagnetic waves that make up everything. We we are a set of electromagnetic waves and hyperspectral imaging, the amount of data that is collected from on high, from, from a drone, or even from a satellite, is able to do things like look at a field and based upon molecular breakdown of an image tell you whether or not potatoes are growing in that field or barley is going in that field. What hyperspectral imagery became important for was looking for change detection. Dirt being moved and removed recently which might indicate a presence of an improvised explosive device on the road in afghanistan and iraq. So they would fly these hyperspectral imagers above the road, look for disturbed dirt, literally, then they would be places where they could pinpoint for explosive. Of course, the next step was wait a minute, we can identify people behind it. All we we need to have is a library of people. Again, without getting into too much technicalities the way it works is, you have this gigantic imager but it does not really know what it is same because it is just seen thoughts and binary code. The only way i can tell what it is looking at is by pulsing its own library of signatures, hyperspectral signatures. This is what i Toyota Pickup truck looks like in the hyperspectral scene. This is what a Volkswagen Beetle looks like. There are hundreds of thousands of hyperspectral signatures which have been created. They are stored in the National Signatures laboratory which is located in tennessee. This has been going on in the world of weather forecasting for decades. This is how you can tell there is water in the air from space. This is how you can tell there is ice, this is how you can tell this is really the basis of modern day weather forecasting. Now, we are doing it on such a level of intensity that we can actually have your signature, identify you. Theres no other signature like your signature. That is sort of the cutting edge of where we are now. So i wrote this chapter, sent it to a couple of scientist friends of mine because i sure packet dont know anything. I asked them to read it and they sent it back with some things and said well you know i might not explain the visual site in the way you do, youre in for it means this in short range of infrared me that it is emitting an infrared signal rather than just absorbing imaging. I made the the changes and i was happy with the chapter in the end, it is really the most boring but the most important. Assented to a friend of mine. An air force one star who was literally the head of intelligence for the middle east. I got a note back from him saying, interesting reading but a little too technical for me. Thats what i got. From a lot of people i talked to. We know how to look at the picture, we we know how to process the data, we know that it is saying that is bill larkin theyre walking down the street, we we are getting closer and closer to being able to find the target, but how it all works and threats together, how this giant enormous machine that is needed in order to do that, i have no idea. So as i started this book on drones i thought i have to write a book on drones im going to buy a drone, im going to fly it and im going to learn what the mystique is. And i did. Im going to give you a little reading my experience with my drone that i bought. My first outdoor flight did not go very well. I was worried about the wind. This baby only weighs 14 ounces, less than a box of pasta. I set the max up in else to to e bar, bar, two trees, the house, the driveway, before the battery ran down, i crashed into the mall. I just cannot get the hang of the controls and could not for the life of me figure out how to get the drone to come back once it darted away. Specks of dirt in the gears that turn the propellers were my first maintenance job, other than that, my little patriot, my little parent drone, actually proved pretty hardy. Not only that, the video produced was beautiful and obviously intentionally hilarious. The parent that came to a wedding i went to the next week. I hope to find a big enough flat space, far out enough away from the water to practice. It is very hefty i told my set stepson who badgered me to break it out so we could fly. Im not going to let you fly until you watch the instructional video i told him. Two minutes later he was back, ready. It was not like i was teaching them how to shoot a gun. But as owner and commander of my own embryonic squadron, i became ridiculously officious, carefully showing showing him how to connect it to the iphone, how to do the self tests, instructing how to landed on my command, fretting about the wind and using words like a loft, like i knew what i was talking about. It was breezy. Then then i let galen take the controls. The wind from the ocean buffeted and pushed our little parrot around, but galen almost effortlessly got the hang of it right away. Flying it to the top of the house were staying in, crossing the road between two electrical power lines, watch out a yelp. Darting the parrot back to the front lawn, flying at this win that way and then landing it. He loved it, i loved it, i was humbled. When i debriefed galen, my squadron assistant after this and other missions, he said the trick for him was calibrating himself to the rhythm of the drone. What actual pilots call feeling the plane. Though unlike the pilot of a manned airplane, the germ pilot does not actually feel the inertia and acceleration caused by a gust of wind. They call galens generation, Digital Natives. His instinctive aptitude truly says something about our society and about the expansive world of the data machine that drones represent. Whatever happens in the wiring of a brain that allows young child to so easily pick up a second language, the Digital Natives have acquired a new way of absorbing and interacting with our holy digital world. Still, it drives me to distraction when i watch how how galen or any of his contemporaries operates. They have multiple things going on at once on the laptop, ipod, phone, tv, they have have several chat sessions open in a variety of applications, texting on the phone as well, they will be watching the show and watching a ballgame, theyll have a Youtube Video running and are listening to music and sometimes they have a few homework assignments going with actual books and mortar brooke books. The relentless command is only compound by the speed at which music and video are transmitted globally. Not just at the home wifi network, but, but also through the satellites, cables, fiberoptic networks needed to move at all. Galen and his generation didnt conform to the machinery of our day. The machine conforms to their expectations. That is what i learned. The machine conforms to our expectation. Why do we have drones . 14000 today and climbing, 70000 worldwide . Why was there a radio show this morning about regulation of toys that are going to be under the Christmas Trees this year in great abundance . Theyre going to be under the Christmas Tree under great abundance because the price has gone down. The very parrot that cost me, three years ago, 400 dollars, is now hundred dollars, is now selling for less than 200. That is the way of the world, electronically. All of these people are talking about, while the federal government will regulated because drones are being flown in bad places, bad people could be flying drones, pretty soon pretty soon where going to have drone licenses for toys. But what it represents is that it really represents a change in our society. The accumulation of this information, the capability, the capability can fire drone from my house for 30 minutes to distances as far as i can essentially create a line of sight communication with the drone, so one wireless terms its like 160 feet. That is 200 dollars, if you want to spend 2000 to get the drone that you pay for, if you want to spend 20,000 dollars you get the drone that you pay for. If you want to for. If you want to spend 2 million you can, we even have now, billiondollar drones. Drones that stay up there for over 24 hours that can serve ale the entirety of the land mass of asia in one day. We get what we pay for. Like my little parent, choosing what to do with it, how to evaluate the information that is coming in, where to put it, where to store, how to move it, how to find it then later on when you want to find it the second time. This is what it is all about. So when i was in the army as an Intelligence Analyst the ratio of Intelligence Analyst to soldiers was about one to 100. That is that is to say for every person who carried a gun in the military there is about one intelligence person behind them. Some at the battalion level of Say Something like 1500 people there might be a group of ten or 15 intelligence people as part of that battalion. Today, the ratio is exactly reversed. For every one soldier in the field today, there are 100 intelligence people behind them. Now, that is just the reality of the backend of doing anything. For every car on the road there are thousands upon thousands manufacturers, repairs, insurance people, you think of it, think of it in your head as the industry behind cars. Drones are no no different. Drones are no different, so therefore on different then manned aircraft that are taking pictures of were satellites that are taking pictures, or eavesdropping, or cyber spy. All of the data that we are collecting today. Our real problem is utilizing that information in a useful way. Our real problem is that we have experienced this revolution and information so rapidly over the last 15 years of constant war, that we do not even understand what it is that we are doing. So, let me give you an example. Its really simple to get today. About one year ago, president obama announced that the United States was going to take military action against isis and syria. A new campaign. What did he say . First he assured the American People that there would be no boots on the ground, while what does that mean therefore . It means that we set out the unmanned machine to do what the on man machine has become so perfect at doing. The second he said, once we we collect the intelligence that we need, we will be able to eradicate isis. Fastforward one year. I know you will read in the newspapers, you watch, you will read it, the United States has only bonds, has only dropped 6900 pounds in one year. Ergo, we are doing a terrible job. When the russian started bombing a couple of weeks ago they were dropping 60 bombs per day, in fact theyre up to about 3000 now. So in less than one month, they have a drop tapas many bombs as the United States has dropped in one year. But it doesnt matter, because if every bomb we are dropping is hitting a meticulous target, a selected individual, a selected command center or something important, im not saying it is, im saying im saying this is how the strategy is designed. The economy behind it determines what the strategy is. We do not like to go out and carpet bomb anymore. When the russians gone bomb and syria him drop barrel bombs, literally i can tell you the guys in the air force to fall in the pit to gone, how primitive it is. Yet these 6900 bombs represent the culmination of the effort to be meticulous in a way it masks whether or not what were doing is effective or even the right strategy. That is what drones represent. They represent this perfection of what we demand, which is that we demand that we are not bothered by conflict in the world. That our sons and daughters do not have to go to war, that we are not affected by it. As this machine has become more and more capable, we has lost sight of what it is we are fighting for and about. Because merely mastering the data and mastering the machine has become so intense. Secondly, and i saw this and people that i interviewed, from the top lawyer to the cia director, the current cia director who is the architect of the drone war when he was in the white house. They all basically said the same thing. There is an efficiency associated with the operation that makes it seem like it is right. If i come to you and say to you, i am going to bomb the Elementary School tomorrow, here is a 3d model of it, here is pictures of it, here is the hyperspectral images of it, heres my, heres my weapon, it has a 96 reliability rating, and i will have two weapons on the drone just to make sure, and i know exactly what the weather will be, i have been studying the school for three weeks, hero be the results in the expected casualties, here is the benefit, the school will be no more. Again, they will translate that to bad guy anywhere. The decisionmaker does not have a decision to make. Thats a pretty good briefing. Okay, go do it. One of my supposed to say . What what do we do the day after tomorrow . We have been doing this for 14 years. Nobody asks what are we going to do the day after tomorrow. We have been so good at doing it that no one dares haskett. That is what i ask in my book. In a respectful manner, not saying that the people who are doing it are evil, not sane the war being gam because a bush, clearly this is a bipartisan war. Clearly, the obama administration, contrary to popular belief did not invent the drone war, it inherited the drone war. It did not inherit it because somehow strategy change, it inherited it because technology advanced. Theres a reason why we killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. It was because we killed another person in 2006. Why, because everything we put together to be able to find that one person in iraq and kill him from the air was the model that then became the model to kill an important person, single individual who is trying to hide on the planet anywhere. All of the same techniques came into play. You have seen the movie and i am not going to say that the movie is not for real. But what the movie does not really show is that it is just all the same techniques. If you map of the world meticulously enough, then unlike the days when i was in the army and we approached, i was in berlin so we knew all of the villages around berlin, we knew east berlin like the back of our hands. You could say this building is that, this is a tree, this is the road, this is the line of sight for fire, this is the safe area, today, it is a joe blow lives in apartment one. Mary jones lives in apartment two, henry smith lives in apartment three, the building is made out of reinforced concrete. That is mapping. It is geospatial intelligence. That is is what we are doing today. Mapping the world to this level of meticulousness to wear some day, and we we are already doing it in parts of the world, when something is out of place it is the tipoff to take action. We read in the New York Times that this is an awful development that we are being sloppy, we are conduct deans signature strike that we do not really know the people we are killing, etc. , etc. Yet, et cetera. Yet, it is exactly the opposite of all of that. Yet this is the finale of evil, this is godlike power. We are so meticulous that what we are doing we are completely and utterly convinced of the righteousness of doing it. That is the story of drones. We are overwhelmed with the data that is collected in the mapping of the world, just just in the same way that we are overwhelmed with wh