Over the past decade, the United States military has shifted the way it fights its wars, deploying more technological systems in the battlefield than human forces. Today there are more than 7,000 drones and 12,000 ground robots in use by all branches of the military. These systems mean less deaths for US troops, but increased killings and precision elsewhere for the United States war machine. With lethal drone strikes being carried out in secret by the CIA and occurring outside of officially declared war zones such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the secret use of robots and drones in this way evokes serious questions about the operations of the United States and what this means for the rest of the world as more and more autonomy is developed for these technologies.

Fracking In America takes a look at the continuing instances of water contamination and environmental damage occurring throughout the United States as a result of hydraulic fracturing—an industrial process used to fracture rock in the search to exploit natural gas deposits. As the frantic effort to extract gas accelerates, the impact of fracking expands also, with increasing pressures on fresh water supplies, continuing threats to health and wider ecosystems…

With the United Nations laying out a deadline for 2013 on claims to the Arctic seabed to be exploited for oil, minerals and gas; countries such as Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Greenland are all attempting to stake a claim. As the beginning battle for territory intensifies, the rapid disappearance of the Polar ice caps opens up potential shipping routes, which further fuels the blood lust by those in power to exploit the region. The Battle For The Arctic heads to the Far North to see first-hand who and what is threatened, and exactly what is at stake with these final grabs for energy, territory, and power.