ABSTRACT
Building on the arguments developed in the previous chapters, this chapter discusses the origin, operation, and implications of targeting by means of the ‘disposition matrix’. Even though information regarding the disposition matrix is not a matter of public record, this chapter puts together different pieces of evidence in order to create a picture of how the disposition matrix combines counterinsurgency's knowledge of targetability with modes of visualisation in order to make targeting during a counterinsurgency an automated killing practice at ‘an industrial scale’. By the end of this chapter, the disposition matrix and its associated weapon systems – i.e. the military drones – will emerge as technological interventions that, much like the military uniform, bring the separate elements of targetability into a seemingly legitimate configuration of knowledge–vision that identifies, locates, and visualises targets on the basis of their social pattern of life.
