The Political and Moral Economies of Dual Technology Transfers: Arming Police Drones

Abstract

This chapter argues that the transfer of military drone technology to civilian uses is more complicated than what is commonly envisioned in the scholarship addressing the militarization of policing. As a consequence of legitimacy problems—stemming from the drone wars—the drone industry is engaging in the strategic mobilization of the moral economy, with the goal of shifting the existing moral landscape. One outcome of such efforts is the emergence of the “public order” drone, whose purposes encompass both firefighting and law enforcement. Focusing on the armed police drone, a subset of the public order drone, the chapter offers an inventory of the moral economy that is at play. In particular, the chapter suggests that the arming of police drones should be thought of as a process, rather than as a one-time technological breakthrough or political decision.