Gentrification, Robots, and Warfare: Deception and the Defense Industry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Kabul, Afghanistan

This paper examines the emerging robotics industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two principal components of the industry receive critical scrutiny here. First, robotics manufacturers have taken root in formerly industrial warehouses in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood. Fueled by Pentagon money and young, well-paid roboticists, the industry’s presence here has contributed to the gentrification of a previously working class neighborhood. Second, many of the robots developed in these factories are used in combat by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the attractive landscape the factories create, coupled with the playful image of robots that the industry promotes, obscures the violence of warfare in the Middle East and the displacement caused by gentrification in Pittsburgh. This paper attempts to unpack these roles and geographies of the robotics industry. In so doing, the paper critically explores the relationships between urbanization, capital accumulation, and US imperialism. In particular, this work expands academic understandings of urban geopolitics, showing not just how warfare shapes and destroys cities, as the literature has revealed, but also how urban development in the United States affects warfare in the Middle East.