Ian Shaw, lecturer in human geography at the University of Glasgow, combines his research interests about the use of drones in US national security measures and technology’s ability to transform worlds, to produce an extremely detailed account of how the drone enabled the United States to become the surveillance state supreme. Thus Predator Empire joins the expanding body of literature that analyzes the proliferating use of drones in US military strategy, but shifts focus onto US surveillance techniques. Its aim is to discover what it means for humans to exist in an “era of dronified state violence” (5), as Shaw argues that the use of drones has transformed the geographies and infrastructures that construct us as human beings within society.
To begin, Shaw argues, after the American Revolution the United States shunned imperialism, the spatial expression of empires, and decided to set up trade markets instead. However, a century later,...
