
China Agrees to Return Seized Drone, Ending Standoff, Pentagon Says - JumpCrisscross
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/world/asia/china-us-drone.html?_r=0
======
electic
Every single drone should have a self-destruct rail inside. When the drone
disappears, or is seized, it can be activated. The terms of the destruct can
be set on deployment. For example, if you're deploying the drone in a theatre
of war and it is moved outside of the scope, it can be set to explode unless a
cryptographic key is transmitted in time.

My guess is as more and more parts of war are automated with drones, the
latest tech will have to be protected somehow.

~~~
MichaelBurge
"The Chinese government were hailed as heroes today, as they foiled a plot by
the US to terrorize key shipping lines with a mobile targeting bomb."

~~~
shshhdhs
"Two seaman were killed and another critically injured when the explosive was
remotely triggered"

~~~
electic
Yep, after they seized a U.S. drone and attempted to dismantle it.

------
dba7dba
China also seized South Korea's newly developed K21 IFV few years ago.

The static model had been shipped on Maersk shipping for display at an
international arms convention.

The Maersk cargo ship made a stop in Hong Kong and Chinese authorities seized
it on some technicality and kept it for weeks before returning it.

~~~
nradov
"Our basic directive is to rely on the war industries of the imperialist
countries and of our enemy at home. We have a claim on the output of the
arsenals of London as well as of Hanyang, and, what is more, it is to be
delivered to use by the enemy’s own transport corps. This is the sober truth,
not a joke."

\-- Mao Tse Tung

It looks like nothing has changed.

------
anexprogrammer
"We've finished X-Raying and scanning it, you can have it back now"

~~~
raverbashing
Exactly this

Lots of American equipment have self destruction/disablement systems for
occasions like this

I wonder if this drone has similar capabilities

~~~
John23832
Aquatic drones can't have that capability.

It's pretty hard to transmit and receive radio waves underwater, so these
drones are autonomous. They're given a mission, they go do it, and then they
return to a spot to be manually retrieved. Apparently, while a group of drones
was being retrieved, china "accidentally" snagged one. Back to the capablities
though, since these drones are autonomous, you probably wouldn't know one was
taken until you do a count after retrieval. Once it's gone, you might know
where it is by GPS, but not who has it. Even if you can say, "Hey, it's in
China", you don't know what it's immediate environment is. All of those things
make self destructing a pretty dangerous/irresponsible thing to do.

~~~
netsharc
Self destruct doesn't have to mean a huge kaboom. "rm -rf /", followed by a
high enough voltage to fry the chips might be enough.

I wonder if it has some GPS bad zones programmed into it, if it finds itself
in e.g. Chinese territory, it could do the above.

------
jlebar
It is the opinion of almost every other country in the world that these are
international waters. China doesn't get to change the facts of international
law just by claiming there's a "dispute".

I looked back through your comment history. I don't mean to accuse you of
anything, but if I were someone from the Chinese government whose job was to
argue for the positions of the Chinese government on HN, I think I would
sound...a lot like you.

~~~
dang
That's a personal attack, albeit with a fig leaf of nasty insinuation. You
can't comment like that here, and smearing other users as shills without
evidence is also not ok. Please don't do these things again.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13202981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13202981)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
jlebar
Understood.

I wonder if you could suggest a better way to phrase this point. Like, is it
out of bounds to say that someone's comment here and comments in the past
sound to me like Chinese propaganda? I guess that is what I was trying to say
(and I grant that I didn't say it well).

Sorry for causing a scene.

~~~
dang
I don't think there's a civil way to say that because it's fundamentally a
personal slight for a political reason. In fact it's a kind of name calling,
which the site rules don't allow.

I do think it's ok for users to remind each other that HN isn't for pure
politics. But not to score a political point.

Thanks for replying so politely!

~~~
jlebar
While I have your attention, I'd like to register a concern about this bright
line it sounds like you're trying to draw.

A tactic currently being employed by Trump is to claim that questions of fact
or science are actual political questions. For example, his surrogates have
said that NASA is "politicizing" climate science [1].

I'm concerned about this expansion of the boundaries of what are considered
political questions into things that aren't because it has a chilling effect:
Once something is deemed political, there are certain places where we can't
talk about it. But for my part, I think a world where a politician can prevent
us from having a (civil) discussion about e.g. climate change, or net
neutrality, or the implications of tax cuts for the rich, or whatever, on HN
merely by declaring it to be "political" is a pretty bad world. Not just
because I like talking to smart people about science and technology, but
because it prevents us from organizing to become a force for good.

The OP's point was, it seemed to me, about the facts of international law and
a critique of the media. It certainly was inflamatory (as was my response),
but if law and the media are off topic because they're political, well,
doesn't it follow that net neutrality, Google/Facebook's responses to fake
news, and so on, are also political? Do you want to cut off conversations
about those topics too?

Maybe there are certain topics you'd want to rule out from HN because they
inevitably lead to flamewars. Moreover maybe most or all of those topics are
things politicians also disagree about (and thus are "political"). But perhaps
the thing that you are against isn't "political" discussions per se, but
rather flamewars on touchy subjects. Or, something like that?

I am afraid that over the next four years, things we used to think of as
factual or scientific questions will be reframed as political questions, on
which everyone is entitled to their opinion, and which we can't discuss in
civilized places like HN. In fact I think we're already seeing this reframing.

Anyway, running an online community is hard, I don't pretend to know how to do
that. Good luck, and I'll try to follow the rules, whatever you all decide.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-
ear...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-
trump-eliminate-climate-change-research)

------
mikeryan
Unpresidented

------
bootload
History buffs will realise that situations like this can be done purposefully.
For example the _" Gulf of Tonkin"_ incident in August 2, '64\. [0] A wary
China inspects the device, hands it back and defuses the situation.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident)

~~~
knz
The Gulf of Tokin involved an actual "attack"/rounds fired not seizure of
equipment. It's a different order of magnitude.

~~~
bootload
_" even today we're finding that--as in the Tonkin Gulf incident--very
equivocal, limited evidence as to who did what and why and what happened is
being used right now by hawks to encourage us to engage in hostilities
again."_ \-- Dan Ellsberg [0]

This is history, so I tend not to get too worked up about it. What I will say
is we only know, what we are told and the truth is getting pretty slippery.
That quote above was by Daniel Ellsberg who was the ^Snowden^/^Assange^ of his
time. An insider who saw the nonsense behind the LBJ/McNamara explanations of
Vietnam and released the Pentagon Papers.

Read the post below and if you have questions about this, ask Dan himself ~
[https://twitter.com/DanielEllsberg](https://twitter.com/DanielEllsberg)

[0] _" Why the Gulf of Tonkin Matters 50 Years Later (1/2)"_ ~
[http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=...](http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12180#pop1)

~~~
knz
Hence "attack".

------
xnull2guest
The article presents many opinions as though they are facts.

One of the crucial aspects to understanding the South China Sea situation is
the dispute of the sovereignty of the waters. The New York Times doesn't
provide context on the sovereignty disputes, or provide the Chinese argument.
Instead misleads its readership by quoting "international waters in the South
China Sea."

This is an editorial error of enormous magnitude affecting the quality of the
publication. An non politicized publication would write "disputed waters in
the South China Sea."

Indeed, you can read back only a couple of years where US media reporting did
exactly this. The recent propaganda push inside US media has been to use the
term "international waters" in association with the geography to affect public
opinion.

~~~
revelation
This is a great article for a role reversal. Imagine a Chinese military
"research" ship off California gathering data on "water salinity". There would
be calls for nukes.

~~~
greglindahl
Actually, no. Back during the Cold War, Russia sent "trawlers" close to the US
all of the time. No nukes were fired.

~~~
revelation
This makes the point. (We are still around after all, so yes, "no nukes were
fired")

~~~
greglindahl
I think you're missing the point. The US policy is symmetric. Here's the
agreement signed with the USSR to try to reduce the possibility of collisions
etc with the "trawlers" that the USSR had parked in international waters
outside US naval bases:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Soviet_Incidents_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.%E2%80%93Soviet_Incidents_at_Sea_agreement)

