Digital test beds as sites of shifting targets and scholarly interventions

This commentary is a response to Thao Phan’s article that tracks the relationship between contemporary digital test beds and histories of colonialism, racism and empire. Building on Phan's arguments, I suggest two possible further expansions: one is to link drone experiments with global logistics and militarism, and track how the end of experiments enables a slippage between military and commercial targets of emerging technologies by iteratively producing new forms of targets. The other one is to ask how testbeds could also operate as sites for scholarly experiments and interventions on the test, to different ends and to a different success.