My son is three, and like many three-year-olds, he loves Paw Patrol.
We were watching an episode, Paw Patrol Pups Save a Lost Tooth and I saw something that frightened me.
Chase is one of the pups. He is supposed to be a police dog and a traffic cop.
In this episode, the pups are looking for a lost tooth to put under some kids pillow for the tooth fairy. Chase uses his drone to search for the tooth.
HOLY SHIT!!!
In Adventure Bay, the police dog is equipped with a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper (Preadator B) UAV.
I am seriously concerned about the universe of Paw Patrol in which a dog with a 10-year-old genius master can command something that has the capacity to launch Hellfire Missiles.
I’m even more concerned about what this can teach the youth of America:
That is is perfectly normal for the police to use Predator drones for routine searches in the US. That seems like very dangerous slippery slope to a police state. Normalized by a children’s cartoon.
Maybe I am reading too much into this.
As long as the K9s are in charge, I’m cool with it.
*shrug* Cops have been using helicopters (which can be armed with all kinds of nasty things) for generations now. Blue Thunder aside, they haven’t broken out in door guns and Hellfire pods yet. The problem is the mindset, not the equipment.
On that note, you’re going to see a LOT more police drones in the future. They can fill most of the normal roles a police heli can (surveillance, traffic control, urban patrol, pursuing suspects) but are cheaper- cheaper by far when you include insurance, maintenance, and training costs- and don’t cost you an officer if one gets caught in a microburst or throws a Jesus Nut. They won’t be armed for the same reasons police helis aren’t armed, but they’ll have cameras, IR gear, and spotlights just like police helis do. I actually expect to see the first law enforcement-specific drones within the next few years and to see them supplant if not replace outright most police aviation programs within the next ten.
I understand all your points. What concerns me is that the use of drones will take that to the next level. Pilots need to eat and sleep. Helicopters are expensive to fly.
I fear that drones will invite the use of constant aerial surveillance. That we will live under the continuous scrutiny of unmanned drones patrolling our skies.
I have a problem with red light cameras. The idea that out on some rural highway, I go 10 over, and then get a ticket in the mail because a drone caught me speeding toes the line of a police state.
Then look at it this way:
1- It’s not possible to deny that England is way ahead of America on the surveillance state curve and on the statist vs individual curve. Yet, provably, not only are they not capable of suppressing nonstatist politics, they’re not even capable of suppressing political violence. And even with a much larger concentration on police surveillance, they still don’t have a sky full of drones over London.
2- Unless your cartoon dog actually starts justifying not just finding bad guys but cratering them, he’s about as much a gateway drug to police Hellfire strikes as G.I. Joe was to fascist paramilitary assault squads.
3- Every kid plays cops and robbers and most middle class kids under a certain age believe cops are heroes. Some of them grow out of it and some get a sharp lesson that Officer Friendly isn’t necessarily their friend. It’s part of growing up.
4- To quote Freud, sometimes a cartoon dog is just a cartoon dog. Remember, the generation that was raised on Mickey Mouse and Howdy Doody produced the Weather Underground, gg allin, and the Folsom Street Pride Parade.
I want one. I could attend antifa rallies from the comfort of my own home.