Coming to airspace near you soon? (Photo credit: Flickr user sancho_panza)

Drones are the latest tool in the ever-expanding security state, and part of the reason why is because they represent a huge new booming industry for defense contractors.

Earlier this year, I attended a Washington, D.C. conference of theAi??Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems InternationalAi??(AUVSI), the primary lobbying group for drone makers. While there, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), who gets the vast majority of his campaign cash from arms manufacturers, was praised for his role in getting Congress to authorize the widespread use of drones in American airspace for surveillance and other purposes. Read all about this conference in a report I filed at Republic Report.

Now that AUVSI succeeded in getting Congress to authorize the use of drones in American airspace, the lobbyists are now setting their sights on incentivizing government officials to use these robotic machines on Americans.

AUVSI will be hosting another conference this February in the D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia. They have yet to announce their slot of speakers, but are promising to have the support of Members of Congress. One thing they have announced is that they intend to hold a program discussing the use of drones for domestic “law enforcement and security applications.”

The coming rapid expansion of the use of robotic drones — particularly the use of these machines to spy on Americans here on our shores — has Ai??spawned a bipartisan backlash. Earlier this year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned that drone lobbyists were seducing Congress, and bold progressive Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) spoke out against their reckless use abroad as early as 2010.

But it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to properly regulate the use of drones or ever restrain the ever-growing military budget without curtailing the power of corporations that profit off of the security state.Ai??Click here to join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign and help kick Big Money out of our politics.