@Peter S. Shenkin
I agree that in a war situation, the idea of carefully validating the right of each recipient to receive aid is misplaced. Even if fraud is a huge problem, there has got to be a better way.
Maybe, but maybe not; it all depends on the details of the problem as presented. An analogous scenario might be opioid drug prescriptions. You want the right people to get what they need, but the potential for abuse in the whole supply chain might require some invasive monitoring in order to find and fix the problem. And that could include the individual themselves, because whether it's drugs or food or anything else, anyone at any time could decide to misuse a valuable resource.
Further, the author says that the concept that "technology solutions can fix deeply embedded political problem" is one of "a number of unproven assumptions" that the effort is based upon.
First, I can't imagine anyone believing that assumption in the first place.
Really? There are a lot of people who think that the solution to police misconduct is to use body cams. The world is full of people who see a cheap technology and spin a story of how it can solve all of our human faults. Remember when the Internet was touted as something that would unite the planet? Instead we get companies like Ring making secret deals with police agencies to engage in surveillance capitalism.
But even if you could find someone who did, the entire misguided effort is aimed at more efficiently providing food to starving people.
It's not so simple. They want to feed the "right" people. In a war zone, food is a weapon. This is partly why you don't want to mix soldiers in with the civilian population. If a way can't be found to identify innocent people who are caught in the middle, humanitarian organizations are then forced to either withdraw or feed the war machine.
I prefer to think that giving food to starving civilians in a war zone is a good thing in itself.
Again, arguments can be made both ways. The addition of resources to any problem should be done with some overarching plan. Unless your plan is to further victimize civilians, you shouldn't just give them resources that armed soldiers can use to keep fighting. Starvation might be the symptom, but treating it doesn't cure the disease of war.
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