I would expect more rigorous reporting from ars. The reason that encryption techniques protecting DVDs and games fail is that the thing doing the decrypting is

I would expect more rigorous reporting from ars. The reason that encryption techniques protecting DVDs and games fail is that the thing doing the decrypting is the thing that the enemy possesses: the game machine or dvd player. The machine has to have the decryption key in it somewhere, thus the whole stack of cards is a sham. This is totally the opposite. The drones need only have the capacity to encrypt their video and decrypt command/control information from the host. Both drone and host are unique devices that could (given their incredible pricetag) easily have unique public/private key pairs for each drone and each control station. Before takeoff each could be paired by an exchange of fresh keys. The only attack is brute-force with an as yet unavailable amount of computing power. That they failed to do something like this for so long, well, words fail me.