In the early 2010s, the Pentagon announced plans to reduce U.S. troop levels while expanding its global fleet of drones. Joining us to discuss the civilian use of drones and the technological, policy and ethical issues of robotic warfare are Eric Johnson, one of the country’s leading experts in the development and operation of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles); Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University and a former ethics fellow at the US Naval Academy; and UCLA’s John Villasenor, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution.

Hammer Forum is made possible in part by Bronya and Andrew Galef.