A Response to Mark Rober's Apologia for the Military-Industrial Complex in "Vortex Cannon vs Drone"
A Response to Mark Rober's Apologia for the Military-Industrial Complex in "Vortex Cannon vs Drone"
An anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
The video opens with Rober standing in front of a fancy-looking box, saying:
Hiding inside this box is an absolute marvel of engineering you might just find protecting you the next time you're at a public event that's got a lot of people.
When he says "protecting you," the video momentarily cuts to stock footage of a packed sports stadium, the first of many "war on terror"-coded editorial decisions, before returning to the box, which opens and releases a drone. This is no ordinary drone, he says, but a particularly heavy and fast drone, designed to smash "bad guy drones trying to do bad guy things." He explains how "it's only a matter of time" before these bad guys' drones attack infrastructure "or worse," cutting to a photo of a stadium for the third time in just 30 seconds.
This seems like a pretty slanted piece to me. The fact that the atrocities in Gaza are happening with US-made weapons doesn't mean that all weapons are bad or that there aren't places that legitimately need anti-done systems. The systems shown are inherently defensive, even if the same companies make offensive systems as well. And I don't remember Mark saying the drones were cooler than the Patriot, I remember him saying that they were significantly less expensive (though I didn't go back and watch to confirm).
This piece seems to be saying that there can be no good use of military systems, and we shouldn't say anything positive about them, because some of them are being abused, which is nonsense.
I'm very upfront about my slant. I'm biased against war, and against those who profit off weapons of war. The site exists to advocate openly and honestly for the world that I (and my collaborators) want to live in, and that world just doesn't include popular YouTubers making ads for companies worth billions of dollars that make death robots owned by billionaire ghouls, even if some of their products aren't as bad as others.
I don’t remember Mark saying the drones were cooler than the Patriot, I remember him saying that they were significantly less expensive (though I didn’t go back and watch to confirm).
He has an animation about how they're recoverable and talked about how they're part of their program that use new technology like SpaceX and such. He definitely hyped it up.
This piece seems to be saying that there can be no good use of military systems, and we shouldn’t say anything positive about them, because some of them are being abused, which is nonsense.
"Because some of them are being abused" is a comical understatement when talking about the American drone program, or American militarism in general.
But more importantly, that's just not what I said. There's a huge difference between "there can be no good use of military systems" and criticizing one of the single most influential educational YouTubers with more followers than there are people in most countries for uncritically repeating American "war on terror" style propaganda towards children while fawning over an arms dealer.
I guess I just feel differently than you. I think Mark was spot on that drones pose a threat, that there's a real need for anti-drone technology, and that the technology is really cool and aligns with the kinds of things he's been doing for years. Have you not seen the countless other devices he's made that target stuff and shoot nerf darts?
I'm not in any way supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza, I just think that weapons of war, both offensive and defensive, are necessary, and I don't have an issue with companies making a profit from selling something that's necessary. I also don't think that drone weapons are inherently bad (Ukraine is using them effectively to defend against an invasion). They can be less indiscriminate than the big bombs that were used in their place prior. My biggest issue (with any weapon) is with targeting civilians, or having complete disregard for civilians in the area.