Predator and Reaper UAV Drones hit by Virus
Want to know how World War III really starts?
The control centre for the remote UAV drones (that’s unmanned American surveillance planes that fly by remote control) has been hit by a virus!
Although not connected to the internet, someone has stuck a USB pen drive infected with a virus into one of the PCs that run the remote control system for the Predator planes. Seemingly they run Windows XP – see photo. (this really happened in the last month).
Hypothetically speaking of course, if these PCs were connected to the internet, they might now be under the control of a bot-master, for sale to the highest bidder on the internet crime forums. Got a dispute with a business associate? Don’t send round a bruiser with a baseball bat, instead bomb the f**k out of them!
Okay, it didn’t happen yet, but it might quite soon. Imagine, in the very near future, when China own all the infrastructure and buildings within the EU (because of our own financial stupidity) – World War III could be easily sparked by UAV drones under the control (seemingly) of some 3rd party hacker bombing Beijing. What a great get-out clause for the real culprits… and a release from all our financial obligations. (great James Bond movie plot, if nothing else)
These drones are obviously able to act autonomously when not in radio communication with HQ (think about your own smartphone that already has GPS, a gyroscope & inertia sensor), but they still depend on radio signals to operate remotely. Imagine someone in a cheap plane with an array of radio jammers… What is the UAV to do next?
These UAV’s are just turning war into a video game for the remote operators – would you want one of your children running this remote control killing room? If you’re brought up killing people successfully on-screen in video games, then it’s a very small leap to doing it for pay from the US military in some remote server room (Remember, champions of justice, your opponents have families & children, who also dream of a better world).
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