Reject Swarm's Killer AI Drones & Reject Culture of War & Robotism, a Letter to Fayetteville City Council

It is said power concedes nothing without a demand, so we demand that the new dystopian, autonomous AI weapons corporation Swarm Aero be prevented from operating in our city, at all costs. Swarm brings a dark cloud of shame over Fayetteville, as does the University of Arkansas nuclear weapons program with Honeywell. This is distinctly outrageous after two decades of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Mayoral Proclamations against nuclear weapons and nuclear war, appropriately framing Fayetteville as a City of Peace.

Let's be clear: These are very dangerous untested AI weapons, not just for the thousands of men, women & children they promise to murder in "our" all-too-common imperialist & genocidal Wars of Aggression (The Supreme International War Crime, under International Law). Nearly 5,000 Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Experts have signed an open letter saying these weapons are too dangerous and should be banned. The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres also says these AI weapons should be banned. Guterres said, “There is no place for lethal autonomous weapon systems in our world, (which are) politically unacceptable and morally repugnant...Machines that have the power and discretion to take human lives without human control should be prohibited by international law.”

Additionally, there is a major international campaign to ban these weapons, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, led by a Nobel Peace Prize winner Jodie Williams et al. There are scores of other reasons to oppose these weapons listed on their website, such as they make all-too-common military murder of civilians and other war crimes even more likely.

Swarm says their AI death machines will not be loaded with "payloads," or bombs in honest, plain English, when they leave Drake Field, but AI machines have a mind of their own, which is why experts want them banned. These AI drones could decide they really don't like us humans after all, and decide to do a Kamikazee attack somewhere in Fayetteville, perhaps a dive bomb on Dickson Street or City Hall, or my house right next to Drake Field.

The current appeal is narrowly focused on zoning of Swarm, and yes Swarm should not be considered "light industrial,” and yes they will use lots of toxic chemicals just a few hundred feet from a tributary of the West Fork of the White River that feeds Beaver Lake, our drinking water. We just witnessed a massive chemical spill in Fort Smith that killed scores of fish and other wildlife and poisoned local waters, which should be a wake up call.

However, I am going to leave the zoning debate to others that have more expertise, and focus on a broader aspect of City Code. The Mayor and City Attorney have indicated they believe there is nothing we can do about Swarm, since it is a legal business. However, City Code states that business licenses can be revoked if they adversely affect the "peace, health and safety" of local residents, and Swarm indeed does that. Swarm poses potentially fatal risks from AI Kamikazee attacks and other technical malfunctions, as well as potentially fatal dangers to residents due to it being a target for state or non-state retaliation for endless US imperialist mass murder, invasions, coups and genocides. It's called blowback or the imperial boomerang.

Additionally, Swarm is harmful to the mental health of the Fayetteville Community and myself, as are all our war profiteering weapons companies nationally. The constant genocidal wars, that their profit-motive for Billionaire shareholders demands, are severely harming the mental health of our entire nation. The great philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, "It is no measure of (mental) health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." How can anyone with a soul or conscience be mentally healthy given our government's clear record of continuously murdering millions of people all around the world for imperialism and for arms industry profits, to make rich men richer? It takes a great deal of willful ignorance, propaganda, mental gymnastics, delusion and mental compartmentalization to not be bothered by the mountain of facts. To be "normal" and well adjusted to this sick society, is itself a worse form of mental and spiritual illness, a robotic soullessness.

One of the most brilliant minds of the last century was psychoanalyst and sociopolitical philosopher Erich Fromm, and he wrote in great detail about robotism in his book The Sane Society. Fromm argued that "The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots." He noted that the biggest dangers of our times are war and robotism, and he wrote that if we wish to form a Sane Society, we must:

"(Get) out of the rut in which we are moving, and to take the next step in the birth and self-realization of humanity. The first condition is the abolishment of the war threat hanging over all of us now and paralyzing faith and initiative. We must take the responsibility for the life of all men, and develop on an international scale what all great countries have developed internally, a relative sharing of wealth and a new and more just division of economic resources. This must lead eventually to forms of international economic co-operation and planning, to forms of world government and to complete disarmament. We must retain the industrial method….In the economic sphere we need co-management of all who work in an enterprise, to permit their active and responsible participation. The new forms for such participation can be found. In the political sphere, return to the town meetings, by creating thousands of small face-to-face groups, which are well informed, which discuss, and whose decisions are integrated in a new “lower house.” A cultural renaissance must combine work education for the young, adult education and a new system of popular art and secular ritual…"

Fromm argues that “humanistic communitarianism” is the only way to protect ourselves from the alienation of robotism:

"Man can protect himself from the consequences of his own madness only by creating a sane society which conforms with the needs of man, needs which are rooted in the very conditions of his existence. A society in which man relates to man lovingly, in which he is rooted in bonds of brotherliness and solidarity, rather than in the ties of blood and soil; a society which gives him the possibility of transcending nature by creating rather than by destroying, in which everyone gains a sense of self by experiencing himself as the subject of his powers rather than by conformity...

Man today is confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism or Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and the communist variety), or Humanistic Communitarian Socialism. Most facts seem to indicate that he is choosing robotism, and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. But all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in man’s reason, good will and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope. But, indeed, the shadows are lengthening; the voices of insanity are becoming louder. We are in reach of achieving a state of humanity which corresponds to the vision of our great teachers; yet we are in danger of the destruction of all civilization, or of robotization. A small tribe was told thousands of years ago: 'I put before you life and death, blessing and curse — and you chose life.' This is our choice too."

Indeed, our society has deep trends of conformism and robotism. Those that robotically & unthinkingly obey all laws and orders, with no First Regard for Justice, are losing their humanity. Many of our supposed Christian churches promote robotism, as does our corporate-controlled government and media, but worst of all is our National Religion of Militarism and War, the most mentally and spiritually damaging. Military Veteran turned peace hero Matthew Hoh spoke well on this Religion of Militarism and its consequent culture of violence.

It is no coincidence that we are the world leader in spending trillions for war and weapons, and world leader in killing millions of people with bombs, and we are also world leader in school shootings. It can logically be argued that Swarm’s existence increases the likelihood of a school shooting in Fayetteville. If we teach our kids that war, war machines and violence is fun, sexy and heroic, don’t be surprised when they sometimes kill people. Accepting or rejecting Swarm sends a strong message to the youth, one way or the other; that we are community of peace or a community of mass murder and blood money.

Dr. King once said, "(By) allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing...we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes." Similarly, we teach our children other sick lessons when we glorify or accept mass killing machines in our community.

I can speak with absolute certainty that my mental health is severely harmed by our governments endless slaughter, often racist slaughter just as evil, if not more evil, than slavery. I have been in a constant state of extreme anger, depression and anxiety knowing very, very well what our government has been doing to dozens of nations, in large part for war profiteering weapons companies like Swarm. These weapons are not for defense! That is a lie. We are the nation that is attacking other nations for decades. Other nations build weapons in honest defense, because they are scared of us for damned f***king good reason!

Just since WWII, we have killed and severely harmed tens of millions of people in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, etc, etc, We have overthrown dozens of nations with coups, including democracies, and including Ukrainian democracy in 2014, which caused the Ukraine war, killing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. The Fayetteville Council exposed its ignorance on this war when it passed a de facto pro-war "support Ukraine" resolution, totally oblivious to the mountain of facts that USA provoked this massively predicted and massively avoidable war. Just listen to the prestigious Professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs if you want to know the truth about that disgusting war; watch the documentary Ukraine on Fire (links to sources in this article I wrote). Our politicians and media MASSIVELY LIED about that war, as per usual.

I also wrote a piece published in the excellent journal Covert Action Magazine that dissects how the propaganda machine works and how the US empire works, which way, way too many Americans do not comprehend fully, by design. If everyone came to understand these two things, they would be immunized from the next round of pro-war lies and propaganda.

Now Swarm and other war profiteers misleadingly use Ukraine as a justification for their weapons. They are also using war with China as justification, as our government arms Taiwan to use as a proxy to wage war with China, just as they used Ukraine to wage war with Russia by proxy. They will happily kill hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese and Chinese, just as they did to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.

According to the Lancet, our leaders also intentionally killed 38 million people with economic warfare, starvation sanctions and medical sanctions. Remember Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright infamously said on 60 Minutes, killing 500,000 Iraqi children with sanctions was “Worth the Price.” That is pure genocidal evil akin to the bipartisan Gaza extermination, arguably as evil as slavery.

If we stopped attacking everyone, and committed to stop wasting trillions on weapons, and stopped increasing the nearly $40 trillion national debt for war, other nations would happily disarm with us. They openly say they do not want war. We are the problem and the aggressor. We are the only one with over 850 foreign military bases surrounding all the nations we say are so evil, and we practice massive war games on their borders.

If we stopped being evil and stopped wasting trillions of tax dollars building death machines, including AI death machines here in Fayetteville, we too could have world class high speed rail like China. These war profiteering weapons companies are corrupting and bankrupting us economically, spiritually, mentally and are keeping us from doing really good things. We are losing not just money but our brightest minds at Universities are being funneled into making death machines instead of things that would improve our lives, and solve clean energy problems. Its the schools to mass murder machine pipeline.

We must heed President Eisenhower's Cross of Iron Speech: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people….

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Swarm also poses an adverse mental health risk to University students that are poised to help manufacture AI killing machines. Just as soldiers get PTSD from killing people abroad, causing many to commit suicide, students that wake up to the lies and gain a conscience may face severe mental health issues once they see the weapons they made end up killing children and other innocent people, as our government constantly does. My dear veteran friend Jacob George, a Fayetteville Antiwar Hero, took his own life due to PTSD, or moral injury as he called it, and recorded an excellent music album on PTSD before he left us. Facilitating U of A students to make AI weapons is likewise inviting moral injury, when they realize the destructive consequences of their creations.

I live right across the street from the new Swarm Aero Factory and Drake Field. My family gets to experience all the negative consequences of Fayetteville City Government's harmful choices related to Drake Field and surrounding businesses. I drive by Swarm every day, and all the glorified death machines at the Military Museum, where busloads of school kids get told death machines are fun, while Fayetteville city attorney once ruled that carefully painted Peace Poles by school kids were bad. The city can't endorse the political message of peace, I think the argument goes, but the city can promote warfare and war machine businesses? This kind of messaging is unhelpful if we want to do all we can to stop school shootings, and create a less violent culture.

Please do all you can to Stop the Necrophilliac Culture of War and Mass Murder. There is nothing more evil than making profit from killing people, including defenseless kids. Swarm is very much part of this Death Machine. Fayetteville has a chance to be a courageous national leader for Peace, instead of passive, servile & craven to the single most destructive institution on the Planet, the War Profiteering Military Industrial Complex.

Many Fayetteville residents recently gathered at St Paul’s Episcopal Church to watch the superb documentary called “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” which clearly showed that the US Imperial War Machine is by far the single greatest environmental problem, on multiple levels, not just climate, but by mass poisoning water, soil and air, mass destruction of ecosystems, and mass killing of wildlife, not to mention our own species. There are really a million reasons to stop the war machine, thousands of books are written on this, from many angles. I can recommend a few dozen, if anyone is interested.

President Eisenhower once said, "The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give, it to them."

Give us Peace & Shut Down Swarm!

Abel Tomlinson