An operator, sitting deep in the bowels of a destroyer, controls the drone and launches the rocket. ‘That’s complete crap,’ Cassie says. ‘Everyone knows those fuckers are sitting in a bunker in Idaho.’ Either way, this represents a remarkable feat of engineering. This latest requires the identification, targeting and assassination of a carload of human beings from a position hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles beyond the boundaries of the state in which the car motors along. This is trial, conviction and execution by remote control. At least Bin Laden got the human touch. This is Philip K. Dick on a bad hair day. This is George Orwell suffering from migraine. This is Stanislaw Lem with a boil on his anal rim. The holiday cruise of the future involves safaris conducted from offshore destroyers, targeting carloads of suspected Muslim terrorists. I like to imagine the operator as he sits deep in the bowels of the destroyer twiddling the buttons of his controller. This is the logic of breeding a generation of couch-bound warriors.
