One of the difficulties with arming rebel insurgent groups in the pursuit of foreign policy goals is that they come and go but the weapons remain. ISIL wouldn't be so spectacularly well equipped had the US not poured billions of dollars into arming the Iraqi army (which became disaffected by the sectarian discriminatory policies of the Maliki government, widespread corruption and resulted in massive desertion in the face of ISIL's rapid and murderous advance).
One solution has been as to ask recipients of America's military largess to turn in video every time the weapons are used; but this obviously isn't fool proof.
So why not make this one of the first applications of the Internet of Things.
Each weapon would be equipped with a 'kill switch' [sic] that would allow it to be deactivated remotely, just as we are now doing with the slightly less lethal smart-phone. It might also feature an integral barrel-mounted camera that streamed video back to the donor's servers every time the trigger is touched. The weapon might also be programmed not to fire at targets with particular digital signatures, such as other similar weapons or clothing, flack jackets for example, that are also 'Internet enabled'.
The issue will be persuading gun manufacturers to research and adopt such technology. The gun lobby in the United States will likely resist any such ideas and so it will be up to Europe to advance the research agenda, implement and deploy these weapons. If military diplomacy is increasingly to be conducted by proxy, using nebulous self-organizing groups, this would a way of preventing the kind of blow-back we have seen so often over the past 30 years.
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