The drone — widely imagined as a weapon of war — is symbolic of the potency of the military-industrial complex. For more than a decade now, drones have been used by the United States of America in its military campaigns in West Asia and the Middle East. The unmanned aerial vehicle — the eyes in the sky, so to speak — became an agent of destruction after the Predator drone operated by the US was ‘enhanced’ with Hellfire missiles. Unsurprisingly, drones have since become quite common in modern conflicts around the world: Azerbaijan employed them to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh; Ukraine is using them extensively in its defence of its territory against Russia; Africa has also seen the use of drones for military purposes. Little wonder then that the market for military drones is expected to be worth $17 billion by 2027. But drones, like all technology, have a dual character: they have the potential to be used not for war but for the greater good. The use of a drone to deliver basic medicines to healthcare centres in Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh is one recent example of its humanitarian potential. Not only did the drone deliver essential medicines to a remote village in less than a quarter of the time it usually takes to reach by road but it also carried back pathological samples for testing. In fact, this is not the first time that the Indian Council of Medical Research has undertaken such a task: previously, it used drones to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to inaccessible areas in Manipur and Nagaland. Increasingly, drones are also being used around the world for other purposes, ranging from the survey of forested areas and the conduction of hydrological analyses to gathering data on crop health.

The wide-ranging application of drones proves an essential point: the character of a technological advancement is determined by the way it is harnessed. The internet evolved as a tool to connect people and help democratise access to information; yet, it has now been weaponised to spread misinformation. Artificial Intelligence, the latest marvel in the technology block, it is feared, has the ability to disrupt lives, labour and economies in a way that is unprecedented. But it also has the ability to revolutionise a number of spheres of human activity, including medicine and disaster-mapping. The real challenge, therefore, is to find a balance between the inception of technology and the simultaneous creation of a concomitant moral fibre concerning their usage. The gap between the two is quite a chasm.