![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/wikileaks.jpg\" "\\"wikileaks\\"")
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The New York Times just printed a gushing (one might even say jingoistic) report<\/a> on how the military is using new technology to tap into Generation Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s social networking skills to nail insurgents and protect American troops, all from thousands of miles away. Read the Times\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 account, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d think this is mostly an exciting technology, which earnest, freckle-faced youths can use to scrub bad guys while they befriend their tougher colleagues on the ground, via chat rooms.<\/p>\n But as even that article acknowledges, the technology sometimes goes awry, like the time in February<\/a> when Predator drones in Afghanistan snuffed out the lives of 23 innocent men, women and children \u00e2\u20ac\u201d just one of many such incidents.<\/p>\n Well, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another perspective on what it means to turn the enemy (or those assumed to be) into pixelated blobs: Wikileaks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 video of a U.S. helicopter<\/a> annihilating as many as 12 people in 2007 on a Baghdad street, including two Reuters journalists.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not embedding the video on this site because it makes me feel physically sick to watch it, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really no commentary I can give that will add to its value. You will note, however, how much the clip looks like a short segment of Grand Theft Auto<\/a>. Right down to the dialogue: After the first round of shooting is finished, a voice says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and another begs a dying man to pick up a weapon, implying that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d then have a license to kill.<\/p>\n In some sense, this is just a raw dispatch from war. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never been in a war, and I can only assume that its dialogue has been and always will be full of the most unpleasant things imaginable.<\/p>\n There is a particular coldness to this killing, though, and I think the technology has something to do with it. I hardly think we should celebrate it. The military says that rules of engagement were followed. If that is true, that is an indictment of the technology.<\/p>\n To see a sanitized version of the Wikileaks video, take a look at this BBC report<\/a> on the detention of a US military analyst, possibly for leaking the tape.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a gamer, so I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t aware just how similar video games are to the video from Wikileaks. If you had the stomach to watch that clip (beware, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extremely violent and disturbing), you will probably be shocked to see just how similar the game Call of Duty is to the actual experience:<\/p>\n