This essay critiques the ticking bomb scenario as represented in Eye in the Sky (2015).

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Abstract:​

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The ticking bomb scenario is a thought experiment that dramatizes a falsely unambiguous decision point—a bomb is ticking, and a prisoner is tortured until they reveal the information that can prevent the bomb detonating—to frame a misleadingly persuasive narrative that attempts to justify torture. This chapter examines Gavin Hood’s 2015 film Eye in the Sky, which frames a classic ticking bomb scenario with the key difference that the violent political technology that provides the solution is a drone strike. This film is explicitly staged as a debate about the morality, ethics, and legality of drone warfare, including a foregrounded consideration of collateral damage and human rights. I argue here that it also reveals the limitations of any critique or understanding of drone warfare that relies on the granular basis of emergency ethics. The framing of the story telescopes towards an inevitable use of force, which, although it has regrettable consequences, is represented as justifiable and ethically defensible. Like arguments justifying liberal interventionism that position imperial violence such as military invasions as virtuous defences of human rights, Eye in the Sky’s ticking bomb narrative positions drones as a military technology with the potential to save lives.