Strategic drones

US drone strikes are popular with the electorate and overseen by the President. This pa- per investigates whether the US President uses drone strikes strategically for political gain. We document that US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen are sig- nificantly more likely before US elections, when popularity has high payoffs. We find no changes for unpopular, piloted airstrikes. Consistent with unusually high drone approvals, abnormally cloudy skies before US elections lead to a postponement or redirection of strikes to other target countries. To examine whether drone strikes are used strategically to di- vert attention from damaging media coverage, we gather closed captions from all cable TV coverage of the President and analyze their tone using natural language processing. Drone strikes are more likely in weeks when news anchors cover the President more negatively, a relation that holds both during and outside of election periods. We find no such relationship for piloted airstrikes or during weeks of high news pressure.