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.”
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