John Oliver took a look at drones on Last Week Tonight and didn’t like what he saw. Oliver’s focus is military drones, not hobbyist quadcopters, and he targeted recent US drone strikes on Pakistan and Yemen.
This clip highlights something truly disturbing: Drone attacks have gone from an event to a humdrum military tactic without fanfare. Oliver points out that a majority of Americans support drone strikes abroad without knowing much about the drone program.
“There is something strange about the fact that we launched deadly drone strikes in two sovereign nations that almost no one here heard about,” Oliver says, noting that the Obama administration has launched more than eight times the number of drone strikes than the Bush administration.
For a show that offers a comedic perspective on the news, Last Week Tonight deftly makes the unexamined support of drones look deadly serious.