Right; if I were a properly humble intellectual, I would be writing things like "whether the pepper spray drones will be effective or not, I don't know", rather than calling them out as a cockamamie idea that will obviously backfire.

The people deploying them know how to make money off people's fears and the "we have to do something" mentality.

Seems fairly obvious that the people deploying them know how flawed the idea is, but there's money on the table for them to ignore the obvious flaws.