Opinion I,Robot. You,human target.

“The insect eye is not,and does not need to be,high resolution to make this computation,so it follows that low resolution sensors can be employed in robotics and serve the same purpose,” she told me.

Call this bio-mechanics — biologically inspired engineering principles. It’s a booming field. You’ll find fruit flies tethered to pins under microscopes that will tell a robot sensor how to mimic the insect for navigation. The feedback loop for the robot is simple: If an object is expanding at a certain rate,that equals proximity,so turn away!

The US military is interested in such experiments because robotics is its hot new thing. The loss of more than 5,000 US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 has concentrated minds on putting robots rather than flesh and blood in harm’s way.

When the United States went into Iraq in 2003,it had a handful of pilotless planes,or drones; it now has over 7,000. The invasion force had no unmanned ground vehicles; the US armed forces now employ more than 12,000. One is called the PackBot and is made by iRobot,manufacturers of the popular robot vacuum cleaner called the Roomba.

Since taking office,President Obama has shown a quiet predilection for drone warfare. There are two programs in operation: a publicly acknowledged military one in Iraq and Afghanistan and a covert CIA programme targeting terror suspects in countries including Pakistan.

As Jane Mayer notes in a groundbreaking piece in The New Yorker,“The intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates,how it selects targets,who is in charge,or how many people have been killed.”

According to a study by the New America Foundation,Obama has authorised as many strikes in Pakistan in nine and a half months as George W. Bush did in his last three years in office — at least 41 CIA missile strikes,or about one a week,that may have killed more than 500 people.

The dead have included high-value targets like Osama bin Laden’s oldest son and Baitullah Mehsud,the Taliban leader in Pakistan — as well as bystanders. Circling drones have struck panic. But as Mayer notes,“The embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion,given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.”

These are targeted international killings,no less real,and indeed more insidious,for their video-game aspect. The thing about robotic warfare is you can watch people get vapourised on a screen in Langley,Virginia,and then drive home for dinner with the kids. The very phrase “go to war” becomes hard to distinguish from going to work. That’s a conflation fraught with ethical danger. The barriers to war get lowered.

It’s time for a reckoning,especially from a president who campaigned so vigorously against the “dark side” of the war on terror. Congressional review of the drone programs and the full implications of robotic warfare is essential to cast light and lay ground rules. The Obama administration should not be targeting people for killing without some public debate about how such targets are selected,what the grounds are in the laws of war,and what agencies are involved. Right now there’s an accountability void.

There are also broader questions. When robots are tomorrow’s veterans,does war become more likely and more endless? Do drones cow enemies with America’s technological prowess or embolden them to think America is not man enough to fight? What is the psychological toll on video-screen warriors?