The History and Impact of Drones

Ask someone where drones came from, and they'll probably picture the military — surveillance footage, remote strikes, the war on terror.

They're not wrong, exactly. But the real story starts decades earlier, in a very different context. And it ends up somewhere almost nobody would expect: saving mothers' lives in rural Rwanda.

The Kettering Bug

The idea of an unmanned aircraft dates all the way back to World War I. In 1917, the U.S. Army asked engineer Charles Kettering to solve a specific problem: how do you hit a target without putting a pilot's life on the line?

His answer was the Kettering Bug, a biplane made of wood and cardboard that guided itself to a target and dropped its payload. It first flew in October 1918 — too late to see combat, but early enough to prove unmanned flight actually worked.

The drones we actually know today, though, owe more to one specific engineer: Abraham Karem.

Karem built a glider decoy for the Israeli Air Force during the 1973 war. He then emigrated to the United States and kept experimenting — in his own garage, with two other engineers and a pre-med student he'd met at a model-airplane meetup.

At the time, military drones were so unreliable that some needed a crew of thirty just to stay airborne. Karem's insight was that the fix wasn't bolting on more equipment. 

MQ-1 Predator

His garage prototypes eventually evolved into the MQ-1 Predator, released in 1996 — the aircraft that turned drones from a niche curiosity into a defining piece of modern military technology. Here's the part that actually surprised me most, though: what happened after the military stopped being the only user.

Drones spread into journalism, agriculture, disaster response, and — most strikingly — healthcare logistics. In journalism, drones gave reporters and everyday citizens an affordable way to capture aerial footage that once required a helicopter and a serious budget. That opened up entirely new ways to cover disasters and news.

But the healthcare example is the one worth sitting with.

In Rwanda, a company called Zipline delivers blood and medical supplies by drone, dispatched the moment a rural clinic sends a text-message order. According to reporting in Fortune, that system cut delivery times from several hours down to under thirty minutes.

Researchers tracking the program found it was linked to a major drop in blood-product waste, and in maternal deaths from delivery complications.

Sit with that for a second: the same category of technology once built to drop explosives on a target is now the reason some mothers are alive today.

None of this is friction-free, though.

The same camera that lets a journalist film a wildfire from a thousand feet up can also film someone's backyard without their knowledge. Researchers studying UAVs point to privacy, safety, and security as the three biggest ongoing concerns.

Those concerns are serious enough that the FAA held public hearings on drone privacy as early as 2013 — and legislators are still catching up.

In under a century, drones went from a secret wartime weapons project to a tool reshaping how we report the news, farm our fields, and deliver medicine to places roads can't easily reach. Along the way, they've forced entirely new conversations about who's allowed to fly over your house, and why.

Not many inventions manage to be both a weapon and a lifeline. Drones are one of the rare ones still becoming both, right now.

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AI DISCLOSURE: This post was a collaborating using Claude. I asked Claude to research the history and impact of drones. I then asked Claude to help me improve the text by correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I then asked Claude to organize that research into a blog post using a journalistic style. I reviewed the final draft and made final edits by adding images and links.

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Where Are the Anti War Voices?

For this assignment I explored two websites: Antiwar.com and The American Conservative. A lot of the articles that I saw on both sites were related to the ongoing military conflicts around the world that the nation is involved in. I've never heard of either of these websites before looking into them and there could be several different reasons for that. I'd assume that the main reason however is because websites or media outlets that have opinions or views that challenge our own government or popular beliefs reach a smaller audience.

The majority of people get their news and information from outlets such as CNN or Fox News for example. These websites help keep people updated but doesn't explore different perspectives in the way that these less popular websites do. 

When looking at Antiwar.com, one reason that it might not be as popular as some other websites is because of the founders principles. The founder is a Libertarian and focuses on Libertarian principles as opposed to typical Republican or Democratic beliefs.

I'd argue that although antiwar voices are rarer in mainstream news, they are still apparent. However, the reason that they aren't heard as much is because they have to be intentionally found. Most people who watch the news just want to stay up to date with what's going on in the nation and internationally. However, if someone were to want to explore a different perspective of current issues and conflicts such as through a Libertarian lens, then a website like Antiwar.com is extremely helpful.

Mainstream news sources focus on reporting current events and issues as opposed to sites like Antiwar.com and The American Conservative which focuses on analyzing these events and 

Although I don't believe that antiwar voices are being suppressed from the media, they are harder to find as they are rooted in smaller media outlets. These media outlets provide viewpoints that people will not find in common news sources. It's important to learn and research these different perspectives as it gives you a better understanding as to what's going on around the world.

Privacy Online

Before watching these presentations about privacy and digital footprints, I knew that companies and governments collected information about people. What I did not realize was how widespread that collection has become and how much of our daily lives can be tracked.

Automatic License Plate Reader

One of the most shocking examples involved automatic license plate readers. These systems photograph vehicles and convert license plate numbers into searchable records. I was surprised by the story of a man and his two daughters whose license plate was recorded while they were simply leaving their driveway. They were doing nothing wrong, yet their information was still collected and stored.

The presentations also discussed cell tower dumps and Stingray technology. Learning that law enforcement can identify the locations of large numbers of people or scan entire neighborhoods to find a specific phone was unsettling. To me, these technologies raise serious concerns about civil liberties because they collect information about everyone, not just suspects.

Private companies are collecting data as well. I learned about digital dossiers, which combine thousands of data points to create detailed profiles of individuals. Companies can gather information through user activity, tracking technologies, and behavioral marketing. I was particularly shocked to learn that terms of service agreements, which most people never read, can have major consequences.

These issues affect me, my friends, and my family because we all use smartphones, social media, GPS, and websites every day. Every click, search, and post contributes to a digital footprint. The TED Talk described these technologies as "electronic tattoos" because they leave lasting records that tell stories about our lives.

I think the government should take a more active role in limiting how long personal information can be stored and ensuring that collected data is properly disposed of when it is no longer needed. The presentations suggested that city councils could require police departments to delete certain records rather than keeping them indefinitely.

As individuals, we need to be more aware of what we share online and recognize the value of our personal information. The idea from the TED Talk that stayed with me most was that our digital footprints may create a kind of immortality. Once information is collected, it can be very difficult to make it disappear.

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AI DISCLOSURE: This post was a collaboration using Microsoft Copilot. I took detailed notes while watching two TED Talks about online privacy and data collection. I include my own opinions and reflections on how online privacy issues affect people. I then asked Copilot to help me improve the text by correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I then asked Copilot to organize my notes into a blog post format. After review, I made final edits such as adding pictures and link. 

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TED TALKS

Protect Dissent

Among the eight values of free expression, Protect Dissent is one that resonates most with me because unlike other speech theories, it goes deeper than the obvious argument that all humans have the right to freedom of speech. Instead, it focuses on when the First Amendment matters most, which is when we are discussing topics or ideas that we disagree on or are controversial. 

Steven Shiffrin argues in his book, Dissent, Injustice, and the Meanings of America, that everyone should view dissent as one of the most important values relating to freedom of speech. In other words, he claims that freedom of speech needs to be protected when people challenge or criticize the government, or when their views and beliefs may be controversial to some. 

The International Service for Human Rights states that "dissent involves the exercise of individual and collective rights of expression, association, assembly, and participation in public affair". I think this definition offers another important perspective of Protect Dissent. It illustrates how free speech, along with having the right to criticize the government, also includes the right to gather, petition, and protest with the community. This is how a lot of the change in the government gets made, when people who share a common goal come together and utilize their rights to free speech.

Suffragettes Protesting in London, 1912.

The women's suffrage movement is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of people petitioning for change. Many people, including myself originally, don't believe that protesting and petitioning has any effect. However, when looking at the women's suffrage movement, it's clear that this isn't true. Women having the right to vote just like men do seems obvious, however, it wasn't always like that. People protested and fought from 1848 until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.

 One of the biggest events that took place throughout the movement was the Seneca Falls Convention. It took place in New York in 1848 and was the first woman's rights convention in the nation.

This relates to our discussion in class about how people drive and lead change instead of the courts. Communities come together and petition for change and this was seen in, as mentioned, the women's suffrage movement as well as the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement. 

I see examples of Protect Dissent in action every day. Social media is the biggest example I can think of. Many of the videos I see on social media apps such as TikTok, Instagram, and X are people talking about and/or criticizing the government. 

This shows how change can be led by the people because anyone can post and gain attention on the internet if people agree with their ideas and beliefs. However, a negative side effect to people being able to freely express themselves is the backlash. People are often attacked online or even physically in person, specifically for their beliefs. 

Kim Jong Un

The First Amendment appears more important when looking at other countries where they don't have the same rights as us in the United States. One country that comes to mind is North Korea, where freedom of speech is very restricted. In schools and workplaces, people are "expected to monitor employees" and report them if anything is suspicious.

In this nation, people don't have the right to say whatever they want about the government or disagree publicly online. However, in other countries like North Korea, there are serious repercussions to those actions.

Protect Dissent mainly stands out to me because it dives deeper than just the basic idea of having the right to say whatever you want. Free speech is most important when people disagree and are expressing their own opinions and viewpoints.