This is something that already pissed me off when drone strikes were discussed. While not caring about foreigners is probably the most important reason, there is another one that actually makes sense, and which is why I give Americans a little bit of benefit of doubt: Given the strict protections of your constitution, it is much easier to fight the parts that concern citizens of the US. Edit: accidentally submitted after the first word, rest of post added.
Drone strikes are also different. They represent currently a sort of danger to the world I don't think people really appreciate because they allow an elite to control more firepower with fewer henchmen than is possible otherwise. Air strikes are nothing new but in the past you had to contend with the fact that enough people might disobey orders to force a change of plans. With drones, the number of people you rely on is far less.
I remember a story that on 9/11 orders were issued to shoot down any aircraft left in the sky and that fighter pilots refused to carry out the order. How would things be different if it was 8 specially trained anti-terrorist folks commanding largely autonomous drones?
An excellent point, but you're not going far enough.
Machine intelligence keeps getting better, so it won't be long before we have entirely autonomous drones that just need general instructions to do their job. At that point..
The democratization of weaponry is what caused the end of feudal society, concentrating it might will cause its rebirth.
For a fictional take on this, see Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez.
Feudal society? I think at that point you won't be looking at something that resembles fiefdoms so much as global hegemonies....
I am not sure it will get that far though. More likely it will expand until the economic stress from an oversized national security budget and rising energy prices will force it to collapse with global consequences. For the record, no, I do not think those consequences will be pleasant for anyone :-P
I absolutely agree with you about drone strikes being even more dangerous. The analogy I saw was the mindset that causes people to be enraged about US citizens being killed/spied upon while being rather indifferent to the same thing happening to people in other countries.
"Show me the man and I'll find you the crime" though is very much more of a problem for citizens than non-citizens and so I think that it's reasonable to say that it is a lesser problem when foreign governments are spying on non-citizens abroad than when they are spying within their own borders.
As an American I would far rather be spied upon by the Chinese or the British than the American Government. I would further expect that if a British individual was concerned about the same thing, the NSA would be far less threatening than British intelligence.
