7 ms·

> As an engineer, I am fascinated by it all. As a human, I am horrified that we democratized violence on this scale. How do you even defend against this in a t

by vasco 1y ago

> As an engineer, I am fascinated by it all. As a human, I am horrified that we democratized violence on this scale. How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? When a small drone with a grenade or homemade explosive is so accessible? Any Christmas market in central Europe these days is surrounded by car barriers to prevent mass run-overs, but what do you do when soon someone has the idea of dropping some molotov cocktails from drones in public places? Answering my own question I guess you can already throw one manually without a drone. Securing public places is weird, I'm glad it's not my job.

bboygravity 1y ago
[flagged]
- throawayonthe 1y ago
  [dead]
- lostlogin 1y ago
  Of we could use the opposite of isolationism, something being cut by governments at this time: soft power. Aid programmes and helping some of the more impoverished countries grow. Bombing Middle Eastern countries has been tried for about a century. It doesn’t seem to have helped.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Let's not be naive. Aid programs are a great idea when practical, and I'm certainly not in favor of indiscriminate bombing. But unfortunately in many countries, including Middle East conflict zones, any foreign aid is just stolen by local armed groups and used to fund terrorist activities. How do you think the leaders of Hamas accumulated billions in foreign bank accounts?
    - oneshtein 1y ago
      Leaders of Hamas has no bank accounts, AFAIK. Did you mean cryptocurrencies? If so, it's unlikely that these funds are personal savings. Usually, locals doesn't steal from locals in conflict zones, because their throats, or throats of their families, will be cut by other armed locals in no time. Invaders and mercenaries often rob or kill locals in many, many cases.
      - nradov 1y ago
        Don't be naive. Leaders of Hamas have control of foreign bank accounts. Probably cryptocurrencies as well now. Those funds are the personal proceeds of theft and embezzlement. They steal aid money directly, or steal supplies and sell them for cash. The locals can't do anything to stop them because Hamas has all of the weapons: there are no other armed locals. Hamas violently suppresses the locals who even try to protest against theft of foreign aid. https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-live-luxury-lives-in-qatar/ https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-... https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-must-end-shameful-crackdown-against-protesters-gaza https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-mu...
  - heyjamesknight 1y ago
    15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. When exactly did we bomb them?
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      And the Saudis are still our bestest buddies. International relations are weird.
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      Good point. The stated motivations were less direct for sure, but do relate to US foreign policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_a...
- IX-103 1y ago
  That would be one approach, though I think it is unlikely to be a successful one. The topic is autonomous drones. Presumably these drones don't stop to go through customs on the way to their targets, and have no reason to respect borders. They're too small for existing radar to track, so enforcement would be difficult. For that matter, since they can be left in a quiescent state for relatively long periods, there's no requirement that anyone involved be inside the country. They could be shipped internationally through existing shipping services to arbitrary addresses near a target, unpack themselves by cutting through their packaging, and attack a preplanned target.
- dvfjsdhgfv 1y ago
  I don't think any country welcomes extremists like ISIS combatants willingly. So you would need a way to weed them out. It's not just difficult, it's practically impossible.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Not sure how that would even work in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Ukraine has lots of ethnic Russians and Russia has lots of ethnic Ukrainians.
- deepsun 1y ago
  Literal enemies don't need an invitation. Ukraine was able to smuggle several literal trucks loaded with weapons, deep into literal enemy territory, and put them near airbases where cruise missiles were launched from.
hyperbovine 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw
- bdelmas 1y ago
  Thank you for the video! This is so much coming. Plus with thermal cameras too which is even more scary. On the same topic it reminds me Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (from 2005!) where an AI called "Masse Kernels" was automatically creating missions sent to different PMCs, managing war assets, supervising the war effort, coms, and the like... Feels also that's coming, at least in some forms for now.
  - grg0 1y ago
    And that video links to several petitions here: https://autonomousweapons.org/take-action/ https://autonomousweapons.org/take-action/
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
>How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? When a small drone with a grenade or homemade explosive is so accessible? I can see this from the other perspective. I've read stories for the past 30 years now about police forces and swat teams abusing people, murdering people because someone filled out the address wrong on a warrant, etc. And I wonder, in the coming years, if those sorts of scenarios will be quite as one-sided as they are today. What will that world look like? >Answering my own question I guess you can already throw one manually without a drone. Sure, but can you throw one from 2 miles away, can you throw 30 simultaneously? Can you then instantly escape without much of any evidence of who you are being left behind, not even a blurry traffic cam picture? The scale of the mayhem is a quality all of its own.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Speaking just for myself, I am not currently stockpiling explosive-carrying drones in preparation for an encounter with over-zealous police. Yes, such incidents happen. They could even happen to me. Still, I don't worry about them enough to go to that length. (Nor do I see things ending well for me if I did.)
  - fancyfredbot 1y ago
    Give it a go and you might be surprised! Stockpiling explosive-carrying drones in preparation for an encounter with over-zealous police can be an educational and absorbing hobby. Many people are sceptical of how things will end for them, but once they start they are drawn in by the friendly and supportive community and doubts like this are quickly forgotten.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    Also, the fear of drones is their offensive use. I'm not sure a cop intending to officer-involved-shooting you for looking vaguely like a shoplifter is going to clearly announce his intentions, then wait for you to dig your weaponized drone out of the trunk of your car, boot it up, and get him with it.
stego-tech 1y ago
I mean…you can’t, at least not right now, not for civvies. Let’s consider some of the current countermeasures: * Flak/Shrapnel/Birdshot: An excellent last-minute defense if you’re calm enough to line up an accurate shot, but data shows that equipping civilians with these sorts of weapons en masse is a bad idea for safety and well-being. That’s a no-go. * Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before drones adapt by flying under the nets or changing payload to something to dissolve it. A kamikaze drone could also be enough to destroy an opening for more to swarm. In a civilian context, they’re an excellent deterrent for high-population areas, for now, albeit unsightly. * Buildings: Safest for now, provided the structure is relatively hardened and the windows are secured. But most civilian structures aren’t guarded against explosions or external attacks, and even those that are require a human to vacate it eventually. Once inside however, there’s more options for stopping an attack - for now - like interior netting, small arms with pellets or buckshot, or even lasers to blind the optical sensors. Impractical for civilian deployment at scale, presently, and highly variable. * Jammers: Good against piloted drones, but as the article points out, the current crop of dev work is geared towards autonomous slaughterbots instead of human decision-making. Jammers are restricted by most countries and, if left functioning after an attack, could hinder first responders. If left on constantly, would disrupt civilian work. So that’s a no-go. * LASERS! Probably the best deterrent in the short term for civilians, I would wager. A randomized strobe of a high-powered IR laser could devastate a swarm of drones’ optics, making navigation or target acquisition difficult or impossible. Sticking a piece of protective glass on the sensor would likely nullify it long enough to finish its mission, though. And that’s what distresses me, ultimately. The future depicted in Slaughterbots or Horizon is rapidly approaching, where autonomous drones can murder with impunity and are affordable enough that any threat actor could get their hands on it. Combined with modern databases of humans - faces, biometrics, profiles, locations, habits, schedules - we’re nearing an era where assassination or murder is a drone away. That is what horrifies me. And if there’s one thing my time in the defense industry taught me, it’s that nobody is trustworthy with that kind of power. Companies making these absolutely will use them (or condone their use) against dissidents, opposition, regulators, and governments. Pandora’s Box is already open, and I don’t think enough folks appreciate the horrors it will bring.
- tim333 1y ago
jfoster 1y ago
In Ukraine one way that they partially secure bunkers or buildings is by putting up nets around them.
ljsprague 1y ago
[flagged]
- sach1 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ljsprague 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - sach1 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - ljsprague 1y ago
        [flagged]
  - dang 1y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - sach1 1y ago
      Fair enough, is there a way to report these? I looked but tbh I am on mobile and I have a hard time with this media in this medium.
      - pvg 1y ago
        You can flag the comment and/or email hn@ycombinator.com
        1y ago
nkmnz 1y ago
fwiw, I think the car barriers never had the purpose to stop cars, but to show people that at least on some level someone cares about their perceived safety.
- forgotTheLast 1y ago
  Those barriers do serve their purpose but it's rarely a terrorist threat. Just do a web search for "drunk driver bollard".
- netsharc 1y ago
  Feels chicken-and-eggy. At the weekend, I was at a small town which had a half a mile long main road blocked off for a market day. They put up bollards to do so. Chances are, there were 0 persons planning a car attack on it. So there was an element of "We don't think anything's going to happen, but if it were to happen, we're prepared.". A bit like having a fire extinguisher when there's never been a fire. But would seeing the bollards also have the effect of discouraging the insane people of the idea of driving the car through the crowds the next time a market day is held? Oppositely, if they didn't put up any barriers, a psychopath seeing this and the realization that cars can be weapons might give them the idea of "I know what I can do for my act of terrorism..."
GoatInGrey 1y ago
It's going to be an analogue of the situation with firearms today where the assailant has an asymmetrical advantage over civilians but not the countermeasure (police). Also, the US military has been stockpiling kinetic drone countermeasures for about four years now. The idea is you get a hardened, ~11 pound autonomous drone that slams into the target at roughly 90 mph and physically destroys it before returning home. Add on 1-2 year-old US EW technology that now disables autonomous drones (yep, even autonomous drones), and you can establish a very comprehensive defense. The point I'm making here is that the tech is not only possible, but it exists. Is it perfect? No. Though defense against firearms and explosives today isn't perfect either. Namely because of response times of the countermeasure. So in that sense, we aren't entering a uniquely dangerous situation. Edit: I think what will happen is that the first time a UAS is used on civilians, flying drones around population centers will be banned without permit. That way, if a drone is seen flying without a permit, it gets taken down on sight.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  The "unique" part is two-fold. 1. It's cheap. 2. It's anonymous. The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. And eventually terrorists catch up. (Probably after the Russia-Ukraine war ends and some skilled people from both sides are unemployed) It's infeasible to blanket every inch of civilian space with kinetic or EW anti-drone systems. They may become commonplace at mass events (concerts, parades, gatherings, etc.) but will never cover all soft targets. And unlike the nearest analog in chemical weapons, drones are dual-use, stable, and easily assembled. The only reason the 1995 Tokyo Subway attacks [0] weren't worse was because of ineptitude. Someone could be a quarter as intelligent and successfully fly an FPV drone into a target. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Chemical_weapon_production https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Ch...
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    > The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. Also motivation and incentives. The reason we haven't seen many drone attacks on civilians is that it is far more lucrative to get civilians to buy your product than to kill them, and the companies that actually have the resources to mount a credible drone attack are making a lot more money doing the former. Terrorism in general has always been far more overhyped than actually a problem - the median number of terrorist deaths per year in the U.S. from 1970-2020 is 4, making your odds of being killed in a terrorist attack significantly lower than being struck by lightning. And the reason is simply that it's deeply irrational. What do you have to gain from killing a random stranger?
seadan83 1y ago
> How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? You can't, and you don't. That is why it is called terrorism. Safety and freedom are sometimes antagonistic goals. This is an example. Terrorism is defended against by not changing society despite the terrorism. It is violence with a political goal, if the politics do not change, the terrorism fails. Not every soft target can (nor should be) hardened, there will always be soft targets.
- I-M-S 1y ago
  Interesting, my take is completely the opposite - you defend against terrorism precisely by changing the society as the material circumstances change, so that the disenfranchised can have their interests represented and achieve a political goal without having to blow stuff up.
  - allthingsgo2 1y ago
    well, in another case of individual resorted to act thru political violence in New Zealand's Christchurch mass murder... the PM changed the State-wise gun-law but one can also argue that deterrance against 'spreading of terrorism belieaf system' can also be enhanced if the State was to re-enact death sentence for home-grown mass-murderer, no? Soft-targets will always be there and so is mass hysteria, yes?
  - seadan83 1y ago
    (1) Depends on the society. We perhaps agree based on which society we are discussing, and who the terrorists are. (2) "Defending" soft targets I posit is just an impossible task unless society becomes so locked down that it is unrecognizable. Lots of Sci-Fi has been written on this topic, eg: 'thought crimes', 'judge dredd'. Sticking to the theme of point (1).. The French revolution was lead by terrorists. They terrorized the aristocracy (and arguably had no other outlet): "cede power or you'll keep getting your heads chopped off." The aristocracy then ceded power. Whether society is forced to change or voluntarily changes is almost an immaterial difference at that point. OTOH, consider if someone started blowing up libraries in the US. If the response is to shut down libraries, then the population has been terrorized. Bombings in subways were common at a point, if the subways shut down - the population has been terrorized. In the 1960s, (US) police used dogs against voter registration organizers. To have been terrorized would have been to stop voting, stop voter registration. That terrorism was not successful. OTOH, lynchings in the US were a prevalent form of terrorism. IE: "this is what happens when you 'don't know your place'". It worked. I recall there is data showing a large change in regional population dynamics for _decades_ following a lynching. Timothy McVeigh could have done stuff within the libertarian party, but instead chose a path of violence. Timothy McVeigh failed, he blew up a building and that is all that happened. The 9/11 hijackers chose a path of violence as well. The 9/11 terrorism OTOH was arguably massively successful - a huge wedge developed between cultures & religions, US society radically changed and the US government was successfully baited and began fighting wars that drained its diplomatic, military and financial power. So, I think for repressed societies, one persons terrorist is another's freedom fighter. In 'open' societies, the terrorist is trying to change the society in some way, through violent means (a shortcut). Changing the society in that way is achieving the aims of the terrorist.
dyauspitr 1y ago
Well you can’t just throw a Molotov because in that case you’re going to get caught. You can place a drone, go home and have it drop the Molotov the next day and no one would know who did it.
- WhyNotHugo 1y ago
  Drones aren’t as anonymous. Not sure about other brands, but DJI requires tying it to an email and phone number. It also sends back home a lot of information about your phone, geolocation, network, etc. I’d be surprised if they couldn’t easily tie it to your real life identity. A few folks on this site might know how to work around these measures. Most of us would probably fail on some subtle way. You’re average terrorist isn’t nearly as tech savvy.

by vasco 1y ago

bboygravity 1y ago

[flagged]

throawayonthe 1y ago
[dead]
lostlogin 1y ago
Of we could use the opposite of isolationism, something being cut by governments at this time: soft power. Aid programmes and helping some of the more impoverished countries grow. Bombing Middle Eastern countries has been tried for about a century. It doesn’t seem to have helped.
- nradov 1y ago
  Let's not be naive. Aid programs are a great idea when practical, and I'm certainly not in favor of indiscriminate bombing. But unfortunately in many countries, including Middle East conflict zones, any foreign aid is just stolen by local armed groups and used to fund terrorist activities. How do you think the leaders of Hamas accumulated billions in foreign bank accounts?
  - oneshtein 1y ago
    Leaders of Hamas has no bank accounts, AFAIK. Did you mean cryptocurrencies? If so, it's unlikely that these funds are personal savings. Usually, locals doesn't steal from locals in conflict zones, because their throats, or throats of their families, will be cut by other armed locals in no time. Invaders and mercenaries often rob or kill locals in many, many cases.
    - nradov 1y ago
      Don't be naive. Leaders of Hamas have control of foreign bank accounts. Probably cryptocurrencies as well now. Those funds are the personal proceeds of theft and embezzlement. They steal aid money directly, or steal supplies and sell them for cash. The locals can't do anything to stop them because Hamas has all of the weapons: there are no other armed locals. Hamas violently suppresses the locals who even try to protest against theft of foreign aid. https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-live-luxury-lives-in-qatar/ https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-... https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-must-end-shameful-crackdown-against-protesters-gaza https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-mu...
- heyjamesknight 1y ago
  15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. When exactly did we bomb them?
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    And the Saudis are still our bestest buddies. International relations are weird.
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    Good point. The stated motivations were less direct for sure, but do relate to US foreign policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_a...
IX-103 1y ago
That would be one approach, though I think it is unlikely to be a successful one. The topic is autonomous drones. Presumably these drones don't stop to go through customs on the way to their targets, and have no reason to respect borders. They're too small for existing radar to track, so enforcement would be difficult. For that matter, since they can be left in a quiescent state for relatively long periods, there's no requirement that anyone involved be inside the country. They could be shipped internationally through existing shipping services to arbitrary addresses near a target, unpack themselves by cutting through their packaging, and attack a preplanned target.
dvfjsdhgfv 1y ago
I don't think any country welcomes extremists like ISIS combatants willingly. So you would need a way to weed them out. It's not just difficult, it's practically impossible.
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Not sure how that would even work in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Ukraine has lots of ethnic Russians and Russia has lots of ethnic Ukrainians.
deepsun 1y ago
Literal enemies don't need an invitation. Ukraine was able to smuggle several literal trucks loaded with weapons, deep into literal enemy territory, and put them near airbases where cruise missiles were launched from.

hyperbovine 1y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw

bdelmas 1y ago
Thank you for the video! This is so much coming. Plus with thermal cameras too which is even more scary. On the same topic it reminds me Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (from 2005!) where an AI called "Masse Kernels" was automatically creating missions sent to different PMCs, managing war assets, supervising the war effort, coms, and the like... Feels also that's coming, at least in some forms for now.
- grg0 1y ago
  And that video links to several petitions here: https://autonomousweapons.org/take-action/ https://autonomousweapons.org/take-action/

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

>How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? When a small drone with a grenade or homemade explosive is so accessible? I can see this from the other perspective. I've read stories for the past 30 years now about police forces and swat teams abusing people, murdering people because someone filled out the address wrong on a warrant, etc. And I wonder, in the coming years, if those sorts of scenarios will be quite as one-sided as they are today. What will that world look like? >Answering my own question I guess you can already throw one manually without a drone. Sure, but can you throw one from 2 miles away, can you throw 30 simultaneously? Can you then instantly escape without much of any evidence of who you are being left behind, not even a blurry traffic cam picture? The scale of the mayhem is a quality all of its own.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago
Speaking just for myself, I am not currently stockpiling explosive-carrying drones in preparation for an encounter with over-zealous police. Yes, such incidents happen. They could even happen to me. Still, I don't worry about them enough to go to that length. (Nor do I see things ending well for me if I did.)
- fancyfredbot 1y ago
  Give it a go and you might be surprised! Stockpiling explosive-carrying drones in preparation for an encounter with over-zealous police can be an educational and absorbing hobby. Many people are sceptical of how things will end for them, but once they start they are drawn in by the friendly and supportive community and doubts like this are quickly forgotten.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  Also, the fear of drones is their offensive use. I'm not sure a cop intending to officer-involved-shooting you for looking vaguely like a shoplifter is going to clearly announce his intentions, then wait for you to dig your weaponized drone out of the trunk of your car, boot it up, and get him with it.

stego-tech 1y ago

I mean…you can’t, at least not right now, not for civvies. Let’s consider some of the current countermeasures: * Flak/Shrapnel/Birdshot: An excellent last-minute defense if you’re calm enough to line up an accurate shot, but data shows that equipping civilians with these sorts of weapons en masse is a bad idea for safety and well-being. That’s a no-go. * Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before drones adapt by flying under the nets or changing payload to something to dissolve it. A kamikaze drone could also be enough to destroy an opening for more to swarm. In a civilian context, they’re an excellent deterrent for high-population areas, for now, albeit unsightly. * Buildings: Safest for now, provided the structure is relatively hardened and the windows are secured. But most civilian structures aren’t guarded against explosions or external attacks, and even those that are require a human to vacate it eventually. Once inside however, there’s more options for stopping an attack - for now - like interior netting, small arms with pellets or buckshot, or even lasers to blind the optical sensors. Impractical for civilian deployment at scale, presently, and highly variable. * Jammers: Good against piloted drones, but as the article points out, the current crop of dev work is geared towards autonomous slaughterbots instead of human decision-making. Jammers are restricted by most countries and, if left functioning after an attack, could hinder first responders. If left on constantly, would disrupt civilian work. So that’s a no-go. * LASERS! Probably the best deterrent in the short term for civilians, I would wager. A randomized strobe of a high-powered IR laser could devastate a swarm of drones’ optics, making navigation or target acquisition difficult or impossible. Sticking a piece of protective glass on the sensor would likely nullify it long enough to finish its mission, though. And that’s what distresses me, ultimately. The future depicted in Slaughterbots or Horizon is rapidly approaching, where autonomous drones can murder with impunity and are affordable enough that any threat actor could get their hands on it. Combined with modern databases of humans - faces, biometrics, profiles, locations, habits, schedules - we’re nearing an era where assassination or murder is a drone away. That is what horrifies me. And if there’s one thing my time in the defense industry taught me, it’s that nobody is trustworthy with that kind of power. Companies making these absolutely will use them (or condone their use) against dissidents, opposition, regulators, and governments. Pandora’s Box is already open, and I don’t think enough folks appreciate the horrors it will bring.

tim333 1y ago

jfoster 1y ago

In Ukraine one way that they partially secure bunkers or buildings is by putting up nets around them.

ljsprague 1y ago

[flagged]

sach1 1y ago
[flagged]
- ljsprague 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - sach1 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ljsprague 1y ago
      [flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - sach1 1y ago
    Fair enough, is there a way to report these? I looked but tbh I am on mobile and I have a hard time with this media in this medium.
    - pvg 1y ago
      You can flag the comment and/or email hn@ycombinator.com
      - 1y ago

nkmnz 1y ago

fwiw, I think the car barriers never had the purpose to stop cars, but to show people that at least on some level someone cares about their perceived safety.

forgotTheLast 1y ago
Those barriers do serve their purpose but it's rarely a terrorist threat. Just do a web search for "drunk driver bollard".
netsharc 1y ago
Feels chicken-and-eggy. At the weekend, I was at a small town which had a half a mile long main road blocked off for a market day. They put up bollards to do so. Chances are, there were 0 persons planning a car attack on it. So there was an element of "We don't think anything's going to happen, but if it were to happen, we're prepared.". A bit like having a fire extinguisher when there's never been a fire. But would seeing the bollards also have the effect of discouraging the insane people of the idea of driving the car through the crowds the next time a market day is held? Oppositely, if they didn't put up any barriers, a psychopath seeing this and the realization that cars can be weapons might give them the idea of "I know what I can do for my act of terrorism..."

GoatInGrey 1y ago

It's going to be an analogue of the situation with firearms today where the assailant has an asymmetrical advantage over civilians but not the countermeasure (police). Also, the US military has been stockpiling kinetic drone countermeasures for about four years now. The idea is you get a hardened, ~11 pound autonomous drone that slams into the target at roughly 90 mph and physically destroys it before returning home. Add on 1-2 year-old US EW technology that now disables autonomous drones (yep, even autonomous drones), and you can establish a very comprehensive defense. The point I'm making here is that the tech is not only possible, but it exists. Is it perfect? No. Though defense against firearms and explosives today isn't perfect either. Namely because of response times of the countermeasure. So in that sense, we aren't entering a uniquely dangerous situation. Edit: I think what will happen is that the first time a UAS is used on civilians, flying drones around population centers will be banned without permit. That way, if a drone is seen flying without a permit, it gets taken down on sight.

ethbr1 1y ago
The "unique" part is two-fold. 1. It's cheap. 2. It's anonymous. The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. And eventually terrorists catch up. (Probably after the Russia-Ukraine war ends and some skilled people from both sides are unemployed) It's infeasible to blanket every inch of civilian space with kinetic or EW anti-drone systems. They may become commonplace at mass events (concerts, parades, gatherings, etc.) but will never cover all soft targets. And unlike the nearest analog in chemical weapons, drones are dual-use, stable, and easily assembled. The only reason the 1995 Tokyo Subway attacks [0] weren't worse was because of ineptitude. Someone could be a quarter as intelligent and successfully fly an FPV drone into a target. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Chemical_weapon_production https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Ch...
- nostrademons 1y ago
  > The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. Also motivation and incentives. The reason we haven't seen many drone attacks on civilians is that it is far more lucrative to get civilians to buy your product than to kill them, and the companies that actually have the resources to mount a credible drone attack are making a lot more money doing the former. Terrorism in general has always been far more overhyped than actually a problem - the median number of terrorist deaths per year in the U.S. from 1970-2020 is 4, making your odds of being killed in a terrorist attack significantly lower than being struck by lightning. And the reason is simply that it's deeply irrational. What do you have to gain from killing a random stranger?

seadan83 1y ago

> How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? You can't, and you don't. That is why it is called terrorism. Safety and freedom are sometimes antagonistic goals. This is an example. Terrorism is defended against by not changing society despite the terrorism. It is violence with a political goal, if the politics do not change, the terrorism fails. Not every soft target can (nor should be) hardened, there will always be soft targets.

I-M-S 1y ago
Interesting, my take is completely the opposite - you defend against terrorism precisely by changing the society as the material circumstances change, so that the disenfranchised can have their interests represented and achieve a political goal without having to blow stuff up.
- allthingsgo2 1y ago
  well, in another case of individual resorted to act thru political violence in New Zealand's Christchurch mass murder... the PM changed the State-wise gun-law but one can also argue that deterrance against 'spreading of terrorism belieaf system' can also be enhanced if the State was to re-enact death sentence for home-grown mass-murderer, no? Soft-targets will always be there and so is mass hysteria, yes?
- seadan83 1y ago
  (1) Depends on the society. We perhaps agree based on which society we are discussing, and who the terrorists are. (2) "Defending" soft targets I posit is just an impossible task unless society becomes so locked down that it is unrecognizable. Lots of Sci-Fi has been written on this topic, eg: 'thought crimes', 'judge dredd'. Sticking to the theme of point (1).. The French revolution was lead by terrorists. They terrorized the aristocracy (and arguably had no other outlet): "cede power or you'll keep getting your heads chopped off." The aristocracy then ceded power. Whether society is forced to change or voluntarily changes is almost an immaterial difference at that point. OTOH, consider if someone started blowing up libraries in the US. If the response is to shut down libraries, then the population has been terrorized. Bombings in subways were common at a point, if the subways shut down - the population has been terrorized. In the 1960s, (US) police used dogs against voter registration organizers. To have been terrorized would have been to stop voting, stop voter registration. That terrorism was not successful. OTOH, lynchings in the US were a prevalent form of terrorism. IE: "this is what happens when you 'don't know your place'". It worked. I recall there is data showing a large change in regional population dynamics for _decades_ following a lynching. Timothy McVeigh could have done stuff within the libertarian party, but instead chose a path of violence. Timothy McVeigh failed, he blew up a building and that is all that happened. The 9/11 hijackers chose a path of violence as well. The 9/11 terrorism OTOH was arguably massively successful - a huge wedge developed between cultures & religions, US society radically changed and the US government was successfully baited and began fighting wars that drained its diplomatic, military and financial power. So, I think for repressed societies, one persons terrorist is another's freedom fighter. In 'open' societies, the terrorist is trying to change the society in some way, through violent means (a shortcut). Changing the society in that way is achieving the aims of the terrorist.

dyauspitr 1y ago

Well you can’t just throw a Molotov because in that case you’re going to get caught. You can place a drone, go home and have it drop the Molotov the next day and no one would know who did it.

WhyNotHugo 1y ago
Drones aren’t as anonymous. Not sure about other brands, but DJI requires tying it to an email and phone number. It also sends back home a lot of information about your phone, geolocation, network, etc. I’d be surprised if they couldn’t easily tie it to your real life identity. A few folks on this site might know how to work around these measures. Most of us would probably fail on some subtle way. You’re average terrorist isn’t nearly as tech savvy.