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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   31405 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Given that he's smart and tech savvy, I'm rather surprised he didn't use a kamikaze drone. Using a drone for a political assassination in the US would have been a lot more game changing.

On top of worries about the drone itself others have expressed, an explosive payload that's stable enough to be loaded on a drone, but reliable enough that you can plan on being able to trigger it, that's powerful enough to guarantee a kill but that's also light enough to fit on a small drone, that's not the kind of thing that you can get anywhere, and trying to acquire it is likely to attract more attention from the authorities than acquiring a gun.

If terrorism is your objective, a guaranteed kill isn't really necessary. A drone can probably carry enough of a highly flammable liquid or powder and cause severe burns or death and in many ways that's the stronger signal. It would however result in a lot less of a folk hero image though.

Yeah, the victim surviving and appearing on TV with injuries won't garner the assassin much sympathy.

Why does the drone need to explode?

I’ve seen drones drop grenades that have killed in war footage

Yeah, but grenades are not as easy for civilians to acquire as guns, don't have that big a range and you'd need quite a bit of testing to get the sequence right for pulling the pin, cooking them and dropping them from a specific height. And in war you can usually iterate on failures, but an assassin doesn't have that luxury, one failure means the target goes into hiding or goes around with beefed up security and if you tried to use drones, that security will have jammers and will be looking for any drones that tries to get close.

okay fine we do not yet live in a Cyberpunk dystopia, my claim is withdrawn

We're getting close to it though. In a couple of years, when military kamikaze drones have become ubiquitous in all military armories (and thus can disappear from military armories), when the people with the knowledge to make them at home, from places like Ukraine and the ME, have spread everywhere, then I think we'll have a whole new thing to worry about.

Wile E. Coyote was also pretty smart and tech savvy.

Eventually, someone will make a killbot and succeed. But, as a one off, there's too much that can go wrong. And it's certainly no guarantee against being caught.

A lot of rockets have to blow up on the launchpad before we can get to Mars.

Seems complicated and pretty likely to fail. The logistics are also questionable; he'd have to hide away somewhere in the middle of the city with his gear, and then either keep the drone in the air as he waited (which will get noticed), or launching it when the victim was approaching (which takes time and requires you to rush positioning etc). Much easier to hang around with a gun in your pocket.

Also if your intent is to cause terror you'd want to show that anybody could be a potential terrorist. Very few people could construct a viable kamikaze drone, while a lot of people can buy a gun and stand on a street corner.

Thinking about this for one minute: you can have an accomplice. One person watches for the target to show up and gives the signal. The other launches the drone from a hotel room window. Escape with nobody having any clue what either of you looks like.

Also if your intent is to cause terror you'd want to show that anybody could be a potential terrorist.

I think having the VIP's head blow up and the only advance warning was a buzzing sound for one second beforehand would cause a lot of terror. Every security detail is woefully unprepared for this.

Escape with nobody having any clue what either of you looks like.

Drones have serial numbers, and their components have serial numbers. There's probably a dozen different identifiers baked into flight controller board.

So maybe no face information, but all the interactions involved in the purchase of the drone would be available. Maybe if you stole the drone, but even that would give away a fair amount of information about who you are. Or if you recovered the drone post assassination, but that's adding yet another possible failure point.

mmm, got it, kamikazee quadcopters: when you want the enemy to know it was you

Quadcopters: for that personal touch

Hm, yeah, thinking about it that would create an enormous uproar for sure. Even if you spent a huge amount of time and resources to perfect the plan people wouldn't really know that; you'd have lots of people assuming anyone can now buy a drone on aliexpress and easily assassinate people without getting caught.

As for the viability itself, it's still kinda iffy:

  • I think letting out a drone from a hotel room window might easily get noticed as well? They aren't exactly silent.
  • The police is going to wonder where the drone came from, and for sure check out who rented the rooms in the nearby hotel.
  • A switchblade-style kamikaze drone seems exceedingly hard to make yourself. The repurposed commercial drones used in e.g. Ukraine simply drop grenades, and take a lot of time to position. That works for soldiers hunkering down for a long time in trenches, not so great for a person walking to his car.
  • Renting a hotel room takes time. You'd have to know the exact itinerary of the target to prepare all that in advance, and sit around waiting for a really long time for the moment to strike. The more time it takes, the more potential for mistakes and random events leading to your discovery.

You aren't thinking about the details. The more people and technology you involve, the more things can go wrong and the more footprints you leave to investigators.

Ted only evaded the feds for so long because his crudely built bombs were built out of garbage and he lived in complete isolation. That's not a luxury most terrorists can afford.

It's a lot easier to get a shitty handgun and plain clothes that can't be traced than either drones or explosives. That's the level of operation you'd expect out of a cell with an existing network to obtain assets, not out of a lone wolf.

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