Taking their cues from modern warfare, the far-right American terrorist movement sees off-the-shelf or home-built first-person viewer (FPV) drones as a critical weapon in their own future war against the US government, which has American authorities on edge.
And there’s ample reasons for those fears: in the open and closed online spaces where far-right extremists congregate, talk is commonplace of how these cheap drones are revolutionizing current wars and will be the critical tools of a so-called second civil war.
“The use of FPV drones in the war between Russia and Ukraine, the use of drones by terrorist groups such as ISIS, and the use of drones by violent criminal groups, such as drug cartels, give examples that domestic extremists may seek to emulate or learn from,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a professional analyst who has tracked far-right extremists of every ilk, for close to a decade.
“Groups or individuals could potentially use commercial or home-made drones for reconnaissance purposes or in an offensive capacity.”
Far-right extremists are the government
Yea, why are right-wing terrorists doing this when they’ve already won? Have they not seen what is happening?
A serious answer: there are some far-right groups who are extremely anti-government and would like to see it overthrown regardless of their current political leanings, for a multitude of different reasons; some assume they will seize power for themselves, some hold perceived grievances against the state and feel it must be destroyed in retribution, and some wish to usher in some kind of libertarian utopia.
From my understanding they aren’t really that large in number, but the concern is that high tech weaponry could mean the size of their ranks is less of a limiting factor as to how much damage they can cause.
Imagine they bomb electrical substations, or take out every fuel tank at a natural gas depot at once, or fly a shape charge into a politicians head at 200km/hr like in that one Black Mirror-like short video someone did.
Golly, if only there was a way to arrest people like that. Too bad that’s a violation of the first amendment as long as it’s right wing white men.
At worst they will get a talking to
Even the most diehard right-wing jihadists
runningruining the government are subject to inspiring splinter ultra-right-wing super-jihadists. I can’t wait to see them get wrecked. At least then the ghouls in charge will be doing something useful. Even if they’ll say the enemy is woke and sweep it under the rug.
What is alarming is that far-right extremists are being enabled and endorsed in their violence at the highest levels of power by conservatives, the weapons aren’t the scary part by far and away. Their intent of and obsession with violence is what scares me.
I have been wondering for years why drone bombings aren’t more common with terrorism groups now. They even have off-the-shelf drones that can fly entirely through vertical flow sensors and AI image recognition.
Also for political assassinations. Sniping is so oldfashioned, when you can hit your targets while being nowhere near the area where it happens.
Apparently it’s not terrorism if the government is enabling it…
I’ve been expecting the first self-driving car bomb for a few years now. Could even be a remote controlled car bomb. The tech is there and these cars aren’t impossible to steal.
I think it’s mostly training and payload availability.
I don’t see why they would spend extra on a fancy “ai” drone when they could use a pilot and place him far away. Spend the savings on more drones, payloads, non-standard frequency hardware.
There’s a tiny part of me that wishes they’d start wrecking shit it as a wake-up call to the country, but (in a perfect world) without casualties.
Without sacrifices this is not possible, unfortunately we will have to admit it.
The AI/image recognition is more for when the drone gets jammed that it can still find it’s target.
lol as if the US has many non-standard fpv jammers, especially somewhere terrorists would strike
I’m not sure why you put AI in scare quotes — image recognition is a form of AI, and one that predates any LLM or generative technology. OCR A was invented in 1966.
Because it’s an overused term that I’m tired of seeing everywhere. Machine learning, image recognition are both nicer and more specific.
edit: my problem is that whenever someone says “AI”, without much other context, you have no idea if you’re talking to someone who actually knows a thing or two or the biggest moronic llm investor on the planet. Being more specific shows that you’re not the latter.
This also grinds my gears. Calling everything related to machine learning or LLMs “AI” is fully part of the grift. It’s important to make the distinction.
nah, In the states it’s more common and accepted to just shootup your local school.
Makes sense, guns got greater availability and much lower barrier for entry
I’m honestly more concerned about bio-weapons than explosives, considering the ease and availability of DIY gene editing in your kitchen. Not all NAZIs are stupid and evil. Some of them are smart and evil. How long until some loon manages to make, for example, an aerosol spread version of rabies and flies it over minority and/or liberal areas?
Yes, I read too much science fiction, but it seems to me that this scenario is 100% possible with our current technology.
I mean, any day now Bobby brain worms is going to come out of the cdc vault covered in every virus and disease they have to be the ultimate patient zero.
Well, he does like to go swimming in raw sewage with his grand-kids, full immersion too. He’s probably in the vaults now tasting everything to see if it’s the cause of autism.
A complete 180 from “drones are skeet targets”
Are they even smart enough?
It took them fucking 3 years of seeing them in action to even contemplate this?
Yeah, because this isn’t Battlefield Earth. You can’t stick cave men in jets and expect them to know how it works. Drones had to get so Fisher Price My First UAV easy that these fools can use it with their usual trailer park kitchen-made kinetic setups.
There’s a non-zero chance our government assessed this risk and did it anyway in order to openly assassinate citizens and terrorize the general public.
The legal guns help justify expansions of the police state. They’re never going to ban guns. Its far easier to use fear to control everyone and say your opponents will take away your pacifiers. The drones will be exactly the same in purpose but it adds a layer of surveillance.
