In “Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation,” Michael Horowitz, Sarah Kreps, and Matthew Fuhrmann argue that the risks of drone proliferation are modest or low for use in crisis bargaining, deterrence, and coercive diplomacy.1 Although they correctly highlight the potentially stabilizing effects of drones and note that many popular accounts of the potential risks from drones succumb to unjustified hype, their analysis overlooks four reasons why the utility of drones for interstate bargaining may be higher than they estimate.
First, Horowitz, Kreps, and Fuhrmann argue that drones could increase the amount of information available to government actors by providing real-time surveillance of potential flash points. By making surprise attacks more difficult, surveillance drones can exert a stabilizing effect in crisis bargaining situations (p. 30). One implicit assumption of their argument is that more information advances the quality of decisionmaking. Although generally true, this argument overlooks...