"The automation of comply or die..."

Yeah, this is just what I needed to cheer me up.

The final benefit of Drone Diplomacy: drones make it possible to apply coercion at the individual or small group level in a way that a blunt instrument like a carrier battle group can't.
What does this mean?

It allows truly scalable global coercion: the automation of comply or die.

Call up the target on his/her personal cell (it could even be automated as a robo-call to get real scalability -- wouldn't that suck, to get killed completely through bot based automation).

Ask the person on the other end to do something or to stop doing something.

If they don't do what you ask, they die soon therafter due to drone strike (unless they go into deep hiding and disconnect from the global system).

With drone costs plummeting, we could see this drop to something less than <$1000 a strike in the next half dozen years (particularly if kamikazee drones, like Switchblade, are used to reduce explosive payload requirements).

I'm hardly the only one to have considered that there's no way that approach won't be applied domestically. They're just working the bugs out on nameless Pakis, because they're politically cost-free. Oh, I'm sorry - does that sound like my tinfoil hat is wrapped too tight this morning? Allegedly unarmed drones are already overflying American cities, and we were solemnly promised that could never happen. Just like we were promised tasers would never become "compliance tools."

No, you're quite right. Silly me.

Scanning down through the comments, I see the usual discussion of how one goes about fighting the drones that will never, ever menace American citizens. I'm going with kamikaze RC anti-drone drones, myself. Seems much more practical than pie-in-the-sky .50s or particle beam weapons, but that's just me...