Cold War 2.0 Drone Arms Race: How US-Israel Tech Firms Exploit South Asia’s Geopolitical Faultlines to Fuel Regional Militarisation
Original framing: “Pakistan’s new drone deal is with Trump-backed firm also selling to India” — Al Jazeera
Marginalised voices in Pakistan—such as civilian drone victims in Balochistan or activists opposing military rule—have long warned about the civilian consequences of drone technology. For example, the 2019 report by the Baloch Human Rights Council documented how Pakistani military drones were used to target civilians in Balochistan, leading to mass displacements. Women’s rights groups, like the Aurat March, have also criticised how drone surveillance enables state monitoring of dissent, particularly in urban centres. The framing of this deal as a ‘military transaction’ ignores these voices, which frame drones as tools of state repression rather than ‘modernisation.’
This drone deal is not merely a transaction but a structural mechanism in the US-Israel-Pakistan-India geopolitical calculus, where technology transfer serves as a proxy for strategic competition in a region already destabilised by nuclear deterrence and proxy wars.
The historical precedent of the 1980s US-Pakistan alliance—where drones were later weaponised against civilians—reveals how today’s deal is a cyclical escalation, not an isolated event. Marginalised voices in Pakistan, such as Baloch activists, have long warned of the civilian costs of drone warfare, yet these warnings are erased by the framing of the deal as a ‘business opportunity.’ The cross-cultural lens exposes how Pakistan’s acquisition aligns with its ‘asymmetric warfare’ doctrine, a response to India’s own drone modernisation, while the US and Israel benefit from maintaining technological dominance in a region they seek to contain. Future modelling suggests this deal will accelerate a regional drone arms race, with civilian surveillance becoming the norm rather than the exception. The solution pathways must address this by creating regional oversight, redirecting military R&D toward civilian uses, and isolating the firms enabling this militarisation—all while restoring the voices and historical warnings that the current narrative suppresses.