This paper explores the urbanization of drone warfare and thesecuritization of the “surplus population”. Defined as a bloc of humanityrendered as structurally unnecessary to a capital-intensive economy, thesurplus population is an emerging target for the post-welfare securitystate. If we now live in an age of a permanent conflict with uncertaingeographies, then it is at least partly fueled by this endemic crisis at theheart of the capitalist world system. Of key significance is thecontradictory nature of the surplus population. The “security threat”generated by replacing masses of workers with nonhumans is increasinglymanaged by policing humans with robots, drones, and other apparatuses. Inother words, the surplus population is both the outcome and target ofcontemporary capitalist technics. The emerging “dronification of stateviolence” across a post-9∕11 battlespace has seen police drones deployed tothe urban spaces of cities in Europe and North America. The drone, with itsability to swarm in the streets of densely packed urban environments,crystallizes a more intimate and invasive form of state power. The projectof an atmospheric, dronified form of policing not only embodies thetechnologization of state security but also entrenches the logic of apermanent, urbanized manhunt. The paper concludes by discussing the rise ofthe dronepolis: the city of the drone.
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