Discussion
Drone strikes in Haiti that killed 1250, including 17 children, condemned by rights group
throwaway5752: Of course it is Erik Prince's company.
logdahl: Haven't heard this name before, would someone care to fill me in on a tl;dr? Sounds horrendous.
daneel_w: Blackwater, private "defense" contractor, track record of killing with impunity.
vkou: If we can get AI further into this process, we can fully launder all responsibility from the humans ordering these.
max_: The human brain is largely for decoration. It's job is to cool blood and absorb "vapors" from food. Aristotle got it right.It is not largely capable of "thinking"We are proactively destroying human society. And many people are rallying behind it VCs investing in killing machines.Citizen's largely don't care, they are largely passive.It sort of reminds me of Richard Feynman who claimed he was extremely depressed. After the use of the atomic bomb.It was something very stupid for a so called genius to say.You work on a mass murder tool, then complain that a mass murder tool you worked on was used for mass murder.
mentalgear: What do all the worst companies in the world have in common? Blackstone, Blackrock, Blackwater ..?Always that Black prefix, like something out of a bad action movie.
watwut: Well, palantier dont have black in the name and is the same awful.
jayd16: The scoundrels at Black & Decker
jihadjihad: > Blackwater, of the Nisour Square Massacre infamy in the GW Bush administrationAnd sadly the infamy continued into the prior Trump administration. In 2020 Trump pardoned all four employees who had been convicted in 2014.
cjbgkagh: Also Black Cube, I had a long list but seem to have misplaced it. Black seems to hint at secretive when you can say spy agency.
casey2: Drones and atomic bombs have prevented more mass murder than they've been used for.The people doing the most to actually improve material conditions in the third world are constantly poo-pooed by people who profit off these places remaining impoverished.I think the NRxers are right here you need to go in there and crack skulls. Few will invest in long term skills if they aren't valuable. The simple fact: In these next 10 years Haiti will see more growth than the last 40 years, thanks in large part to this partnership.
ericmay: Atomic bombs, probably. Drones? I’m not so sure I’ve heard that specific discussion point before. Why would drones be any different than machine guns or fighter jets?
casey2: Whose going to participate in ethnic cleaning (or gangs) when they can be zapped from anywhere?It's a much larger deterrent
bawolff: I feel like that goes both ways. Why not participate in ethnic cleansing when you can zap the people you hate from the comfort of your home?
tekla: Because you have motivated reasoning to dislike these companies, even though Blackrock and Blackstone are bog standard financial services companies and a random naming scheme is easy to grab onto.All the worst companies seem to all be LOTR themed.
itsthecourier: looool
itsthecourier: "Haitian authorities must urgently take control of the security forces and the private companies working on their behalf before more children die,” said Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas Program at Human Rights Watch."wow, such an insight, how didn't they think about that before?yeah, complaining about 1200 killings, without considering the rape/killings/displacement that would happen in their absence by Viv Ansamn
TurdF3rguson: Palantir is the seeing stone used by Sauron to do surveillance in LOTR
bawolff: I've always wondered if they just didn't get the reference or if they are just self-aware that they are evil.In the books its not just that sauron uses it for evil, he also can use it to turn anyone else that uses it evil.
pocksuppet: Atomic bombs, maybe. Regular bombs, no. Drones, also no. If war meant thousands of American soldiers had to swordfight with thousands of Iranian soldiers and possibly get stabbed and die, instead of just flying planes overhead, we'd have a lot fewer wars. War is easy when you don't have to risk your life.
system7rocks: If you are a tech guy and working with drones or any AI company that has even a bare relationship to some security firm, you have a few options:1 - Immediately share all information and intel with the public so as to spare any judicial accountability. 2 - Quit. 3 - Prepare to go to jail for the rest of your life. This is profoundly evil.
Legend2440: No, let's not. I really don't want to live in a world where the bad guys have killer AI drones and we don't.
cauefcr: You should take a hard look at who really is the bad guy.
SkinTaco: I suppose in the context of the article you're commenting on you're saying the bad people are the ones defending the women and children from being raped?
TurdF3rguson: To me it feels like an inside joke. Like there's one guy out there who pointed out that they're Sauron and they're fucking with him specifically.
system7rocks: My comment may not have been posted.If you work for an AI firm or drone outfit even loosely related to a security defense firm, here are your three options:1 - Quit, salvage what remains of your dignity. 2 - Share all information you can as a whistleblower to media, the world, etc. 3 - Prepare to go to jail. This is profoundly evil.Period.
SkinTaco: Good thing I transitioned last year, I like my job
akomtu: The AI of Sauron? The actual eye in the underworld and its proxy on Earth?
tshaddox: That presumes that “killer AI drones” are a valid way to accomplish some valid goal.For example, I do in fact want to live in a world where only the bad guys have child soldiers, use human shields, deliberately target civilians, and abuse prisoners of war.
casey2: >also noSo I guess FARC didn't surrender? Where do you get this idea that American imperialism can't possibly work? And can I have some of what you're smoking?
lazide: Looks at history….There certainly weren’t a lot fewer wars back when people had to physically stab each other with swords. Quite the opposite?
bawolff: > Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday that drone strikes carried out in Haiti over the past year have killed at least 1,243 people, including 17 children, many of whom had no apparent links to the criminal groups the attacks seek to squash.> Launched by Haitian law enforcement forces and private contractors working for Vectus Global between March 1, 2025, and Jan. 21, 2026, the strikes also injured at least 738 people, according to the organization’s report. At least 49 of the injured appeared to have no ties to gangs or other criminal groups.The first paragraph made it sound like the majority were bystanders, while the second made it sound like it was 5%.Maybe that is still unacceptable collateral damage, but it'd be nice if the article was more specific than "many" so we know what we are actually talking about here.
RobotToaster: > private contractorsMercenaries with drones, just great.
odie5533: Option 4 - Summon Shoggoth and no one exists to go to jail.
trhway: My understanding that 100% were killed extrajudicially. Only hope that when it comes to US the drones would carry Tasers.
gos9: No <3
Legend2440: If the other guys have child soldiers, you don't need child soldiers of your own to defeat them.If the other guys have an army of killer robots and you don't, you are going to die.
JoshTriplett: Do not succumb to "we have to win the race" reasoning and escalation, when the race is leading off a cliff. It is, in fact, possible to stop things via international cooperation. Treat it the way we do nuclear proliferation. (Efforts to stop nuclear proliferation have not been perfect, but they've been incredibly effective and made it much more difficult to make the problem worse than it already is.)
Manuel_D: I don't think that's how it works. An anti radiation missile from the 90s had a pretty high degree of autonomy. I know the British ones could deploy a parachute when the radar stopped emitting and reacquire the target when it reactivated. The missile quite literally made targeting and engagement decisions on its own.The human that launched the missile is still responsible for it. Weapons that have autonomy are still given engagement parameters (e.g. limit target to certain geo bounds, engage between two certain timestamps). The humans that set those parameters and choose to deploy the weapon are responsible for what the autonomous weapon does.
kjkjadksj: Far fewer deaths. In those pitched battles it would mostly be about breaking the organization structure of the opposing line and having the soldiers disperse. Very few battles in history actually saw slaughter of tens of thousands and they remain notable as such.Wars of the gunpowder age have been far more bloody. Far more destructive to civilian life. Far more lasting damage to the environment.
bawolff: Blackwater renames itself every so often to get away from the bad press, so its not in the name anymore.I dont know what blackrock did to be evil. Seems like a pretty generic company that sells basically every type of stock.
vkou: Blackrock provides management services for a significant percentage of all global wealth, which makes it an excellent target for:* People who think a cabal of reptilian globalists control the world.* People who think that capitalism is an emergent system that is destroying our culture, social cohesion, and environment.
ghssds: You may have this impression from your cozy North-American or West European bubble. Biggest century for war casualities is the XXth century.
levinb: Much more frequent conflicts, yes.Much less total death and dying as well, though. Battles were short and small scale until the Civil War (maybe the Napoleonic Wars prior? Debatable). The largest battles of history prior to the industrial revolution were in the thousands, 10s of thousands of people. Forces were usually broken and defeated or fled after brief engagements. Brutal in experience, but smaller in scale.It was that perception of war as personal, intimate, chivalric, by old men that let to the peak atrocity period (PAP? Did I coin a term?) of ~1850-1950. WWI was really the first modern reckoning of industrialized, globalized war, that led to the staggering scale of suffering. Incomprehensible to the men that commanded it, as they were born and acculturated in pre-modern war era culture.But then the epoch-defining tool of the atom came along, and war has gone back to smaller scale, focused, targeted, "precision".So here we sit, straddling two eras again. Pre-drone and post drone. We have not fully reckoned with what the new era means. But it will come quickly, like most modern tool-culture cycles.
MidnightRider39: The Palantir themselves aren’t evil, they were made by the elves long before the events of LOTR. Essentially they are just a tool.However I heard that Thiels favourite book is the rewrite of LOTR from the perspective of Sauron, where Gandalf and the elves seek to destroy humanity and technology (at least that’s how I understood the gist, haven’t read it)
lazide: Ghenghis khan?
rexpop: "The use of drones in these areas causes more collateral damage among the civilian population than it truly neutralizes gangs."
adamiscool8: The title framing is weird when the report says maybe 5% of the 1250 were civilians, and the same rights group also reports more than 1500 civilians [0] killed over the same period in the horrific and rampant gang violence the government is using this technology to fight against.[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/haiti
havenbarnes: Oh so only dozens of innocents were slaughtered. Thanks for the good news.
ghurtado: No, not dozens of Innocents. About 1500, which is a lot more.You should read the comment that you replied to again. You're railing against a fact, not an opinion.
spacecadet: People don't think anymore, they just react... Im pretty sure Im done engaging on this platform for that reason. Nearly every comment is met by some crass remark that clearly demonstrates the person didn't actually understand the comment, just reacted to the trigger words within it.
levinb: A different model of war and Empire.Yes brutal, for the defenders of the castles and fortified cities they conquered.But again, very targeted at key sites so as to assert an Imperial-vassal relationship. Not to really to metamorph the populace, and run the day to day, which was left to local leadership.Their point was to demonstratively subjugate for the purposes of control and tribute, not to kill, replace, or even miscegenate. They were the mob-bosses of Eurasia, not the crusaders or jihadis.
input_sh: Pretty much private mercenaries that work outside of the usual army structure as "private contractors". They're usually the ones the US contracts to do the worst atrocities, as that gives the government a thin veneer of plausible deniability because they were behaving "independently". The US also does its best to make sure they never face any legal consequences for their war crimes.Also worth pointing out that, due to this "contractor" relationship, they never count towards official casualty figures. For example, if Iran were to kill 50k of them (I'm of course exaggerating to make a point), they wouldn't count towards US casualty figures, so it's also a way for the government to downplay the effects of foreign intervention to the general public.
riffic: extrajudicial killings? isn't that a sterile euphemism for murder?
nickff: This is best exemplified by all the comments (on varying posts) saying: 'I misread the title, and interpreted as X, haha!'. HN has unfortunately slid in the direction of Reddit (despite the HN Guidelines' denial of this).
