With regards to the drone discussion around 40:00:
The main challenge of weaponized drones in civilian hands isn't whether or not they can strike government infrastructure or other such targets through defenses... but just the fact that they *can* means that those defenses have to be built.
For example, consider if the next ten years are spent with exactly 0 restive groups throughout the West actually assembling any such FPV bomb-drone. They just sit around, twiddle their thumbs, and rant at each other on X. But the various governments are spending the whole decade sweating bullets: they know that these drones *could* exist, and just because their internal intelligence service says they haven't seen proof of anyone assembling such drones isn't an ironclad guarantee.
So those governments have to harden... *everything*. Water pumps, sewages stations, airports, military bases, government offices, government parking lots & warehouses, aqueducts, power substations, power lines... the list goes on forever. Each of these places in theory needs a defensive mechanism against the theoretical threat of the sort of drones that Russia and Ukraine have been producing by the hundreds of thousands (are you certain that Pavel and his mates are going to shutter their FPV bomb-drone factory after the war? Or will they gladly sell to foreign anti-government groups... with a bit of a nod and a wink from their own government?)
Of course they don't have the resources to deploy such defenses everywhere, so they triage and choose to defend only the most important locations. But even in the best-case scenario, that's money and effort which is *not* going into all of the other things that government wants to spend money on.
So even if someone develops an affordable, 100% effective anti-drone proofing machine the mere existence of such weapons after the Ukraine War is going to have an effect on government resources.
With the recent attack on the Russian Nuclear Triad with FPV drones committed by Ukraine last month, I think all governments are sweating bullets regardless. It's clear now that nation-state actors can attack one another's crucial infrastructure without going over the line of low-level-conflict. It's only a matter of time before we see nation-state sponsored FPVs used to strike in the heartland of many nations, the United States included.
It's a genie-out-of-the-bottle situation. Least we can do is officially state that armed FPV drones fall under 2A for local militias.
Definitely. It's why I try to be specific that (IMO) what small-scale drones have done *isn't* "let citizens pose a threat to their governments" but rather "let citizens receive deniable help from a foreign government against their own".
Which opens the door for smaller anti-government groups to leverage that against their own government: "Hey, better back off on [Policy X] that we don't like, or else we'll appeal to one of your foreign competitors to slip a few of their drones into our hands."
Come to think of it, that may actually be one of the few things that could lead to Western governments finally halting their various crusades against their native populations: about the only practical defense that I can think of against this sort of thing is for a government to genuinely just not be hated by any meaningful number of their citizens, and then not to import foreigners who may disagree with those citizens. When it would be so easy for any attacker, the only 'winning move' is just to make sure that there are as few potential attackers as possible.
With regards to the drone discussion around 40:00:
The main challenge of weaponized drones in civilian hands isn't whether or not they can strike government infrastructure or other such targets through defenses... but just the fact that they *can* means that those defenses have to be built.
For example, consider if the next ten years are spent with exactly 0 restive groups throughout the West actually assembling any such FPV bomb-drone. They just sit around, twiddle their thumbs, and rant at each other on X. But the various governments are spending the whole decade sweating bullets: they know that these drones *could* exist, and just because their internal intelligence service says they haven't seen proof of anyone assembling such drones isn't an ironclad guarantee.
So those governments have to harden... *everything*. Water pumps, sewages stations, airports, military bases, government offices, government parking lots & warehouses, aqueducts, power substations, power lines... the list goes on forever. Each of these places in theory needs a defensive mechanism against the theoretical threat of the sort of drones that Russia and Ukraine have been producing by the hundreds of thousands (are you certain that Pavel and his mates are going to shutter their FPV bomb-drone factory after the war? Or will they gladly sell to foreign anti-government groups... with a bit of a nod and a wink from their own government?)
Of course they don't have the resources to deploy such defenses everywhere, so they triage and choose to defend only the most important locations. But even in the best-case scenario, that's money and effort which is *not* going into all of the other things that government wants to spend money on.
So even if someone develops an affordable, 100% effective anti-drone proofing machine the mere existence of such weapons after the Ukraine War is going to have an effect on government resources.
With the recent attack on the Russian Nuclear Triad with FPV drones committed by Ukraine last month, I think all governments are sweating bullets regardless. It's clear now that nation-state actors can attack one another's crucial infrastructure without going over the line of low-level-conflict. It's only a matter of time before we see nation-state sponsored FPVs used to strike in the heartland of many nations, the United States included.
It's a genie-out-of-the-bottle situation. Least we can do is officially state that armed FPV drones fall under 2A for local militias.
Definitely. It's why I try to be specific that (IMO) what small-scale drones have done *isn't* "let citizens pose a threat to their governments" but rather "let citizens receive deniable help from a foreign government against their own".
Which opens the door for smaller anti-government groups to leverage that against their own government: "Hey, better back off on [Policy X] that we don't like, or else we'll appeal to one of your foreign competitors to slip a few of their drones into our hands."
Come to think of it, that may actually be one of the few things that could lead to Western governments finally halting their various crusades against their native populations: about the only practical defense that I can think of against this sort of thing is for a government to genuinely just not be hated by any meaningful number of their citizens, and then not to import foreigners who may disagree with those citizens. When it would be so easy for any attacker, the only 'winning move' is just to make sure that there are as few potential attackers as possible.