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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   30491 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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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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