Nobody in Ukraine is separated from the carnage, least of all the soldiers. The value in the points system is in communicating target priorities down the line. It's just another technological improvement in the vein of, say, the radio. All technological improvements will seem to have the effect of dehumanizing people. But war is fundamentally dehumanizing. In fact, for most soldiers dehumanizing the enemy is a necessity, because otherwise they can't pull the trigger. The dehumanization to be worried about is the dehumanization of people from the perspective of non-combatants, especially those isolated from the war, like Americans.

Where technology creates greater moral hazards in war is when it helps insulate the leadership and population from the consequences of war, and so lowers the sociological and political costs to violence. In that sense having a professional rather than conscripted army should be much more morally repugnant than e-points. Again, no one in Ukraine is isolated from consequences in any meaningful way.

The Ukraine War is the most televised war in history. Especially in the beginning I forced myself to watch the videos, just so I wouldn't get lost in abstraction. The human suffering is gut wrenching. You can watch men getting shredded down; soldiers embracing each other in fear and helplessness moments before they're killed or maimed. Debates over e-points, to me, reflect a failure to appreciate the reality, a reality which is only hidden from one's view by choice. (After a few videos that left me crying, I figured I saw enough to ensure I was dutifully more engaged with the reality than the typical non-veteran at a comfortable remove.)

If anything drones and the necessity of having to record a kill for "points" is arguably an improvement over traditional aerially bombardment. Being forced to watch people injured and killed comes with a greater cost, even for veteran soldiers. On HN we take for granted that, e.g., Facebook employees forced to sift through child porn continually pay a price no matter how long they've been at the job, yet seem to assume soldiers watching a drone video feed feel no different than playing a video game. That perspective betrays a certain callousness that is in some respect even more worrisome than these technological advancements on the battlefield.