Even Orwell may be shocked to hear that Congress has just passed a bill, the FAA Reauthorization Act, mandating that the Federal Aviation Administration create a comprehensive program for the integration of drone technology into the national air space by 2015. The FAA predicts that there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the friendly skies of America by 2020.
Currently all drones are "piloted" by desk jockeys who sit in air-conditioned offices, occasionally dealing some death at the push of a button. Imagine some publicly "educated" kid who's played Black Ops in his basement his whole life and is completely unattached to anything resembling real life sitting behind the joystick - only a finger twitch away from you being blown into bits...
So in this brave new world of big brother, with eyes in the sky 24-7 keeping Americans "safe", it would seem that the US military is being influenced by another pop-culture icon, namely the Terminator series.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Terminator movies, they are set in a dystopian future where an integrated autonomous strategic defence computer becomes self-aware and sets out to exterminate the human race. The star of the terminator movies is - in another twist of cruel fate - none other than the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays an autonomous killing machine known as the "Terminator"
Taking a cue from the radical environmentalist James Cameron (who recently fled the US), DARPA has come up with the first generation of completely autonomous drones, the X-47B. This robot plane will be able to carry up 4,500lbs of ordinance and will be almost completely undetectable - and we are sure the Pentagram will soon be asking the FAA to clear the skies for its menacing presence.
The LA Times, in a profile of the latest and greatest to come out of the military-industrial complex, asks, "New drone has no pilot anywhere, so who's accountable?":
"Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many."
So let's get this straight: unmanned, armed, autonomous drones will be scouring the continental USA for targets (sovereign citizens, marijuana growers, Ron Paul Supporters, readers of this blog etc) in the Global War On Terror?
But hey, all is not lost, it looks like the Iranians have already found out a way to commandeer US drones - live by the sword of technology and you will die by it.
During the interview, Salami stated, "The U.S. plane that we recently took over is not much more advanced than our drone technology. However, a combination of achievements and advancements in the areas of intelligence and aeronautics and guiding and controlling has been used in this aircraft, which can (help us make) technological achievements."
Most humans today, especially in the government indoctrinated US, have had rational and logical thinking bred out of them to the point where you could never communicate with them on anything except for the repetition of mantras they are told to repeat.
We'll take our chances with the robots.
At least if the robots have some form of artificial intelligence... better than non-existant intelligence... we may be able to talk some sense into them. Maybe in the not so distant future, there will be a DDoS attack on the Pentagram's servers, and the power will once more return to the hands of the people. Armies of programmers from around the world, like those who work with Anonymous, could find a way to short circuit or reprogram the drones.
Who knows, maybe we could get them reprogrammed and send all 20,000 en route to Washington DC, programmed to disarm the very police state that created them.
