[p2p-research] Drone hacking

[Andy Robinson]

"I don't know who is doing what and why, but you'll have to agree
that in terms of ROI a few kT in a major high-density location
are extremely well invested."

Depends what they're aiming for.  If the aim is maximum civilian casualties
for medium expense, regardless of bad publicity, then yes.  I'm not sure
this is the strategic game that insurgents are playing though.  I suspect
911 was about provoking America into getting trapped in a quagmire in
Afghanistan which would eventually drive it out of the Muslim world by
attrition or else ruin its economy (similar to the American strategy against
Russia in the 80s).  "al-Qaeda prime" has been pretty quiet since 911.  The
various small-scale plots and attacks in the North and outside the main
troublespots since then, when they aren't just black-ops or overreactions,
have been by local 'cells' (groups of friends really) who use the al-Qaeda
model without firm organisational links.  None of these groups seem to have
had anything like the money or weaponry available to insurgents in the main
troublespots or to the 911 attackers.  i.e. people who don't have the
technical knowhow to make a fertiliser-bomb go off, let alone to smuggle in
nuclear materials.  In addition, I think most of the insurgents are local
fighters concerned about local issues.  The number of people actually
interested in attacking outside the local battlefront is quite probably
minuscule.  Otherwise, well, there's all kinds of things they would be
trying.  Shipping in suicide bombers or Mumbai-attack-style gunmen being the
most obvious, and cheapest.  Given how much contraband and how many people
get in undetected, I can't imagine it being logistically difficult, yet it
has not happened even once - which makes me think that either they aren't
all that interested strategically in attacking outside the main
battlefields, or the constituency of recruits for global attacks is
absolutely tiny.  Notice that all the post-911 attacks have been carried out
by local residents - people aren't being shipped in to carry out attacks.

Things like EMP, remote-control, etc - I'm talking about future
possibilities.  Twenty years ago, drones and the Internet would have sounded
unreal.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20091220/5c980510/attachment.html>