
Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones - eplanit
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36013/mexican-drug-cartel-now-assassinating-its-enemies-with-improvised-explosive-toting-drones
======
JackFr
As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by
explosive armed drone.

I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill people by drone as
compared, on a cost basis, to other more pedestrian means of killing people.

Drones may be cheap, but drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t. The
logistics of getting a drone near enough to the intended target to kill them
are going to be hard. While the “cool” factor is high, I suspect guns, bombs,
hard men, threats and bribes are more efficient.

~~~
imtringued
Honestly, the only explanation I can think of is that it is easy to see a
quadrocopter fly and do its thing but it is actually hard to actually notice
its real life impracticality unless you own one of them.

I don't know what specific model is shown in the picture but if it is a DJI
Mavic Air 2 then it only weighs 570 gram and can only fly for 34 minutes.

When you compare a quadrocopter with a real life bomber then practically no
bomber on earth is lighter than the bombs it is carrying. A B-52 can carry 30%
of its weight in payload. So that would give us at most 171g for the bomb the
Mavic Air 2 is carrying but even this is optimistic because it was not
designed for this use case.

The idea of "cheap" drones carrying bombs is basically an urban legend. You
can certainly build a good bombing drone for $5000 to $10000 and fly many
missions and thereby kill hundreds of people with it but that same money can
also buy guns and lots of ammo as well.

~~~
stiray
I understood it as they dont intend to get the drone back.

I did some searching, letter bombs were using 50g of RDX [1] and were able to
kill a person so driving (and exploding) a drone with 171g of RDX into someone
is more than enough.

If you take its 18km of reach (while I doubt the controls are able to go that
far although with a 4g sim card this could be doable) you get a poor mans
cruising "missile" for $1k. And there is nothing preventing (except the price)
launching few of them.

I think that those drones are posing a real threat even more as probably the
drug cartels have the money to realize it, if they can afford to build
parallel cellular network [2], they surely can also perform this.

Their use case probably is not killing an average Joe but rather
assassinations on high profile targets that are heavily guarded. And quite
frankly I am really interested how bodyguards can tackle this as drone can
literally fall from the sky, without any electricity being used so jamming (or
frying electronics if feasible) wont work here. I think this is going to
become a real nightmare in the future.

[1] 4g of RDX:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qj1qSZDKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qj1qSZDKg)
or 100g of "something"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_664jlLwqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_664jlLwqI)

[2] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-
cartels-s...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-
specialreport/special-report-drug-cartel-narco-antennas-make-life-dangerous-
for-mexicos-cell-tower-repairmen-idUSKCN24G1DN)

~~~
sverhagen
Hmm, isn't the idea of letter bombs that the bomb is literally within arm's
length, whereas that sort of proximity for a noisy drone, keeping it close
enough to a possibly moving target, while setting it off may not be super
practical. It may be more realistic to get within, say, 10 meters?

Also, no way the FAA would issue waivers for this sort of mission. /s

~~~
stiray
Yes, this is certainly a part of problem constructing it.

I would imagine that replacing the motors and adding larger battery while
keeping the control system shouldnt be an issue.

Also within an article there is a picture of a box with 4 motors, if lower
part would be made from something like copper, it could be used as shaped
charge [1] or adding shrapnel would also be an option. Or just make it to
carry the normal hand grenade. The noise is surely an issue if you dont keep
the distance, so I would imagine that you fly high over the target and then go
into free fall.

In either case, this has a potential to become something really nasty.

Anyway, enough of this talk, it is surely an interesting technological
challenge and interesting debate, but there are some really sick people on
this planet and I dont want to give them any ideas. Also I bet there are some
red lights blinking in some 3 letter agency somewhere :D :D :D

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge)

------
anitil
I actually work in the drone detection/jamming field.

My only surprise is that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. We
already see drones used for drug smuggling and privacy violations, as well as
the use of drones to carry IED payloads.

Drones are an amazing tool but as with any tool, they can be used in nefarious
ways.

~~~
Yc4win
Has there been any progress with coming up with a system that can _reliably_
jam them?

~~~
asdff
I don't know if you could ever stop a low cost drone short of using a shotgun.
Even if you had some sort of directed EMP technology, the drone could position
itself along the correct precomputed vector from far away, cut off electric,
and glide the bomb to the target silently.

~~~
mschuster91
> the drone could position itself along the correct precomputed vector from
> far away, cut off electric, and glide the bomb to the target silently.

An octocopter/ordinary drone can't do this - their electric goes out and they
fall from the sky.

For a glider you'd need an actual flyable airplane model (something like this:
[https://laughingsquid.com/a-15-foot-long-radio-controlled-
ai...](https://laughingsquid.com/a-15-foot-long-radio-controlled-
airbus-a380-model-plane-taking-off-and-flying/)), and these are _expensive_ as
fuck - a single engine alone will run up _well_ into four digit range, if not
five digits (something like the JetCat P1000). And at that point, you could
also go ahead and buy an outright RPG, should be far cheaper to acquire
depending where you are, or buy a couple junker cars, load them up with
fertilizer bombs, and distribute them where one expects the target.

~~~
nl
This is wrong.

ISIS used[1] the X-UAV Talon. This is a off-the-shelf 1.7M wingspan drone
plane available for about $150 without electronics (which are around $50-$200
depending on how elaborate you want to get).

It's capable of 100km+ flights[3].

Here's a pic of one after being shot down in Iraq[4]

[1] [https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/commercial-
dro...](https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/commercial-drones-
privitising-air-power)

[2] [https://au.banggood.com/X-UAV-Talon-EPO-1718mm-Wingspan-V-
ta...](https://au.banggood.com/X-UAV-Talon-EPO-1718mm-Wingspan-V-tail-FPV-
Plane-Aircraft-Kit-V3-p-986526.html?cur_warehouse=CN)

[3] [https://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/100km-in-the-x-uav-
talo...](https://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/100km-in-the-x-uav-talon)

[4] [https://armamentresearch.com/islamic-state-unmanned-
aerial-v...](https://armamentresearch.com/islamic-state-unmanned-aerial-
vehicle-shot-down-in-iraq/)

~~~
heyflyguy
Glad you posted this, was also going to post the images of the Skywalker X8
discovered in Syria and Mosul.

[https://dronecenter.bard.edu/files/2016/12/Drones-in-Iraq-
an...](https://dronecenter.bard.edu/files/2016/12/Drones-in-Iraq-and-Syria-
CSD.pdf)

------
kumarvvr
The next worst case scenario is autonomous drones, that do not require radio
or gps inputs. Navigation can be done with crude inertial navigation systems
and advancing AI can identify and fly to targets with increasing accuracy.
Causing general chaos or exploding in crowds will not require AI though.

The only counter measure against those will then be an EMP system, Blinding
lights to disable cameras, etc.

The next evolution for public speakers or gatherings would probably be
completely online.

~~~
sudosysgen
SLAM is already functional for drone navigation, more or less. As for blinding
lights, that can be fixed by using many different sensors and wavelengths, as
well as high-quality optics and imaging sensors with high flare resistance and
high dynamic range.

As for EMPs, a drone that isn't remote controlled could feasibly be put in a
Faraday cage. I'd make a prototype, but I don't really want to contribute to
future assassinations.

There just aren't any good countermeasures, I'm afraid. I'd imagine fully
online works well but even that is seriously limited.

~~~
mdorazio
There are plenty of countermeasures, but they're all _active_ countermeasures
- ex. a couple guys with shotguns, trained falcons, or your own anti-drone
drones.

~~~
sudosysgen
Yes, but kinetic countermeasures scale really badly. The definition of "drone"
is also quite flexible here, a couple guys with shotguns, falcons, or your own
anti-drones work fine against a few slow drones, badly against a few dozen
slow flying drones, not at all against a few hundred slow flying drones, are
essentially useless against one jet-powered drone (microjet engines are very
cheap!) don't have a hope against a dozen fast flying drones, and are non-
existent to a few hundred fast flying drones.

You'd pay around 2500$ for a 60lbf jet engine, and around 3000$ tops for the
rest of the drone. That's around 5500-6000$, so for a hundred drones you'd pay
600 000$, or about 60% of the cost to train one soldier, and around one 0.8
millionths of the yearly US defence expenditure. For 100 drones. That means
with the US defence budget you could make 120 000 000 such drones.

Sure, against the current crop of electric consumer drones, it's not much of
an issue. But there's the tech to make a 500km/h drone that's fully autonomous
and encased in a Faraday cage for less than 10 000$ a piece. That scares the
crap out of me.

~~~
DuskStar
Bigger isn't necessarily better, here. There's a term for "small jet turbine
powered autonomous suicide drone" already - "cruise missile" \- and it's
something that the US military has put a lot of work into stopping.

Small drones aren't really part of the same threat profile, near as I can
tell.

~~~
ben_w
Cruise missiles currently target large things, these would be anti-personnel
drones. I guess we could call them “knife missiles”?

~~~
jacquesm
I take it that's a culture reference, if it isn't then congratulations, you
are in good company.

------
airstrike
Insert obligatory reference to Slaughterbots (2017)

[https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw](https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw)

~~~
DuskStar
I think that might be a reupload of this?
[https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA](https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA)

3x the views, at least.

------
nradov
Short-range air defense (SHORAD) is going to be a huge growth area for defense
contractors over the next several years.

~~~
CapricornNoble
I wonder if we can repurpose mm-wave 60GHz panel antennas and SDRs for cheap
short-range radars. Then combine with a commercial infrared camera for multi-
mode target acquisition. Put those on a mount with servos to control a PKM or
M240 machinegun, and mount the whole setup on the roofs of buildings. Critical
infrastructure anti-drone air defense guns at fairly low cost.

~~~
kortex
Then you just get stealth drones (fixed wing). Bondo, styrofoam, electric
ducted fans, frequency hopping radio links, all easily doable. Only hard part
really is range. For that, I could see hybrid electrics that power down the
gas/nitro engine for stealth.

~~~
sudosysgen
Or even just a gas turbine, as RC people already use. 10:1 TWR, relatively
cheap. Quite loud, but works at high altitudes.

~~~
meheleventyone
Small gas powered drones for the military are already pretty common.

------
2rsf
Israel's "Lahav Or" (Light Blade) can

> Said to be the first defense system of its kind in the world, the Light
> Blade system will target incendiary balloons and kites, which have started
> countless fires in the southern border vicinity communities in recent years,
> as well as drones.

[0] [https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/08/12/israel-deploys-
first-...](https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/08/12/israel-deploys-first-of-its-
kind-laser-system-to-gaza-border-to-fight-incendiary-balloons/)

------
phobosanomaly
I remember someone flying one full of meth into the side of the Tijuana
Costco.

[https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-
califo...](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-
california/sdut-drugs-drone-crashes-2015jan21-story.html)

I always thought drones would bring down the violence in Mexico, since it
would be easier to keep your distribution network under the radar.

If you don't have to recruit hundreds of people to actually drive the drugs
across the border, and can fly it over the fence in the middle of the night,
what would be the reason for anybody to be shooting anybody.

Whoever's turf you were operating in wouldn't even know you were operating on
their turf because your whole operation could be just two white-collar-type
guys keeping a really low-key presence. The rise of the narco-technocrats.

But, I guess it didn't go that way.

~~~
renewiltord
How come they don't use artillery to launch? Does it damage the product? Too
hard to aim? Wonder if you could ship drugs by just mortar with radio
transmitter embedded. Way greater capacity and practically undetectable at
landing site unless you have the receiver.

~~~
phobosanomaly
I know they've used catapults.

[https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/marijuana-catapult-
trnd/in...](https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/marijuana-catapult-
trnd/index.html)

~~~
hamburglar
> This is just the latest example of drug smugglers' ingenuity, or more
> accurately, the ingenuity of the authorities who caught them.

Talk about blowing smoke. Border patrol saw these guys using a catapult to
hurl drugs over the border and took their catapult. Where's the "ingenuity" on
the part of the authorities?

I think a catapult is a great idea. Now I want to design a pumpkin chucker
that hurls a steerable projectile for extra precision.

------
Animats
Small armed drones could be the game-changer the AK-47 was. Before the AK-47,
revolt against an army with machine guns was almost impossible. "Whatever
happens, we have got ... The Maxim gun - and they have not." Post AK-47, the
guerillas usually win, or at least can keep the struggle going on
indefinitely.

The combination of drones for assassination and Bitcoin for payment could
force everyone with money or power into a bunker or armored vehicle for the
rest of their life.

~~~
duck2
Drones are easy to jam. The communication link and GPS are most obvious
targets.

~~~
Animats
Progress marches on. Autonomous visual navigation have been available for some
time. Face recognition can be done with smartphone hardware. Inertial guidance
for drones is available but still a bit pricey.[1]

This is going to be a major problem for the golf industry. It's the ideal
target environment - high-value targets, no place to take cover.

[1] [https://www.uavnavigation.com/products/ahrs-
imu/polar-300](https://www.uavnavigation.com/products/ahrs-imu/polar-300)

~~~
esturk
Nah, golf industry will be fine. If a technology is so advantageous, then it
will eventually become the counter to itself. Imagine several drone swarming
around you like a body guard and you would have several orbital layers for
short/medium/long range protection.

Imagine a drone being so sophisticated that it can calculate the sniper shot
gunning for you and can even deflect the bullet or take the direct hit for
you. Same for suicidal bombs. If the enemy drone explode on impact, your drone
can kamikaze theirs.

~~~
sudosysgen
That can just never work. Several drones swarming around you do will do bugger
all against enough shrapnel, or against a shaped charge, or just a
sufficiently heavy drone going fast enough. Or the drone could carry a
chemical agent and kill you.

The economics of defence are such that kamikaze anti-drone drones won't work.
Either they'll miss the vast majority of the time, or they will be hideously
more expensive than the drone they're defending against.

~~~
Animats
"The bomber will always get through". That remark was made about the big
bombing campaigns of WWII, and the planned nuclear attacks of the 1950s and
1960s. Drone attacks are the same concept in miniature.

------
sadmann1
Heh there was that killerbot video back in the day, swarm of small bomb drones
hunting via facial recognition. Cartels are quite innovative when it comes to
killing

~~~
BoorishBears
That video where a terrorist group successfully stole a military weapon shown
to be at or above the level of importance of a Predator drone...

Then decided to kill a specific person instead of just bombing the entire
building where they apparently knew that person would be

I never bought into the premise that it should be more scary than if a
terrorist group was to steal a sophisticated military strike weapon today.

We have drones carrying missiles that can kill a person in the passenger seat
of a car without killing the driver by deploying _swords_ after launch, I
think we leapfrogged DJI drones with facial recognition and grenades in terms
of brutality

------
pvaldes
I assume that an attempt on assasination on a really relevant figure,
president and so, could end with the entire cartel city nuked in retaliation.
There is always a bigger fish, so there is a limit to what you can do with
this.

My bet would be that this is a PR stunt and what they are really trying is to
discourage people from catching drones that transport thousands of dollars in
drugs to steal the cargo. Beware!, They could have a bomb included! so let
them pass without shooting down it, specially in urban areas. Once the police
and population take the message, the delivery drones will be safe.

~~~
pjc50
Slightly baffled by this comment; Mexico is not a nuclear-armed state and is
not going to start responding to its cartel problems with genocide? Or are you
suggesting that the US would engage in a first strike genocide in response to
a single quadcopter bomb?

~~~
pvaldes
Is just an metaphor that there is always something with a bigger drone. Change
nuking by bombing and city by hacienda if you prefer.

Of course the concept of drone-bomb, once released, is like pandora's box. A
double edged sword that could harm both parts.

The natural answer from the enemy cartel after being bombed would be to
intercept as many enemy drug-delivery drones as possible with a, lets name it,
"falcon-fly drone", attach a package bomb and a postcard with a magneto and
let it to continue their route.

And if you are the police you could attach a beacon instead to convert it into
a "Judas drone" and release it. Even better if you can catch again the drone
in route or release the beacon automatically after a few minutes, the narcos
wouldn't suspect that now you have a velocity and a vector. That would help
you to trace a possible point of origin and maybe delivery over the same
straight line.

------
bleepblorp
If this kind of thing keeps up it wouldn't be much of a stretch for drones to
be banned from civilian ownership in many parts of the world.

~~~
Teever
The issue will be enforcement of these laws.

How will you regulate the possession and distribution of IMUs and electric
motors?

Hell most of the parts you need to build a drone are available in a used
cellphone and many of the rest can be 3d printed.

~~~
phobosanomaly
To underscore your point, here's an example of how easy it is to get god-tier
military hardware in Mexico from one of the many people breaking bad across
the border in the US.

[https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
features/arming...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
features/arming-mexican-cartels-inside-story-of-a-texas-gun-smuggling-
ring-866836/)

This fella in Texas was selling .50-cals and miniguns straight to the Cartels
for years. There are likely many, many more like him.

Mexican think tanks have spent years trying to figure out how the hell to stop
the massive flow of weapons into Mexico from Texas and Arizona.

[https://www.mexicoevalua.org/mexicoevalua/wp-
content/uploads...](https://www.mexicoevalua.org/mexicoevalua/wp-
content/uploads/2019/08/000PolicyBrief_Seguridad.pdf)

US think tanks too, notably David Shirk at USD has done a bunch of work on
this.

[https://catcher.sandiego.edu/items/peacestudies/way_of_the_g...](https://catcher.sandiego.edu/items/peacestudies/way_of_the_gun.pdf)

~~~
sukilot
There was an absolutely trivial solution: send a few fighter planes to blow up
the haciendas and spray herbicide on the plantations. But the US government
prefers to profit and make political hay from the drug war.

~~~
Teever
Dude that's how you get the child of American senators kidnapped andmailed
back in pieces or another 9/11.

Everything sounds simple in theory until you think of the consequences.

------
andrewl
When the technology improves sufficiently maybe there will be a drone the size
of a dragonfly that land on targets and inject them with ricin or another
poison. That requires a lot better targeting than a plastic container loaded
with explosives and ball bearings, which just has to get close to the target.
Still, it would make a great assassination tool.

------
chriselles
Well, it will be 3 years next month since the first open source kinetic attack
by non state actors using commercial off the self drones was conducted.

Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken 3 years for them to be used for kinetic
attack by exceptionally well funded narcos.

Illicit use of drones has happened and will continue to grow.

~~~
Aerroon
I'm surprised that it has taken this long for all of it. I remember reading
the news several years ago about how some small drones got close to Merkel. My
first worry was about assassinations. Quadcopters aren't expensive or even
very difficult to make.

How do you even stop something like that?

~~~
chriselles
There are a range of options to defeat drones that include kinetic(birdshot
and specialist shotgun rounds, netguns), non kinetic(electronic attack), as
well as anti-drone drones(Anduril Industries). There have also been trials on
using falconry to counter drones.

------
082349872349872
I've been ghoulishly interested in the various US poorly-regulated militia
since Malheur, and rationales behind their fetish for twentieth-century
weaponry.

Reading that the "counterforce" against which they train resembles a BATF unit
more than a military unit made me guess they might be hoping to contract for
cartels, but that supposition was dashed upon finding that (at least on US
soil) the cartels are far fonder of the bomb than the bullet.

Sixteenth-century vehicle borne improvised explosive devices:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellburners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellburners)

~~~
linksnapzz
Bundy & Co. are a militia in the same way the James Gang was, or for that
matter, the Wu-Tang Clan are. Disgruntled armed rural whites have been the
bete noir of the urban reportorial class for so long that any crime, no matter
how absurd, committed by guys in pickup trucks wearing cowboy hats is treated
like the Austrian Anschluss.

Guaranteed acre-feet of press coverage; for the titillation of Euros who
exoticize && Other the culture of the rural America.

------
Zigurd
The pattern to discern from articles like this is that they highlight the
threat and not the difficulty of actually realizing the threat.

When you put two layers of improvisation into a weapon the odds of it working
are very low. Building an effective homemade grenade is difficult. Delivering
it with a noisy machine that limits the size of the grenade multiplies the
odds of making a spectacular but ineffective attempt that will only get you
noticed.

But it does increase the odds that some consultant will get hired by DHS to
write an unreadable report about this supposed threat.

------
mitchtbaum
[https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/36910.Langston_Hughe...](https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/36910.Langston_Hughes)

[https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=8f1BNgtfthU](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=8f1BNgtfthU)

ysk [https://www.painting-
analysis.com/logo_guernica_colour500.jp...](https://www.painting-
analysis.com/logo_guernica_colour500.jpg)

------
eunos
No mention of the software?

What worries me is that in a close future they might develop their own
autonomous Software to do the assassinations and sooner or later the software
"leaks" to outside world. Then with a few thousand dollars you can program
your own assassination tools. More sophisticated entities will develop the
swarm version to do mass damage.

Will there be a proliferation fears of software similar to nuclear
proliferation?

~~~
rl3
The Black Mirror episode _Hated in the Nation_ kind of touches on this.

------
ShinyObject
"group opposed to dictatorial Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro"

Gee what great, totally-not-editorialized analysis from yet another military
think tank pr writer.

------
_pmf_
I'm still somewhat surprised there have been no prominent terrorist attacks in
Western countries by means of drones with payload.

~~~
meheleventyone
Isn’t that just because the drone bit is easy and the payload bit is hard.
Particularly in terms of procuring explosives, and making them effective and
light enough for a drone to carry? Then you need a target that actually needs
a drone to attack it versus doing something simpler.

------
bawana
Another example of how humans turn good tech into bad shit. Could all of this
be solved by blowing up every explosives factory?

------
Yc4win
Drone swarms will definitely be a go-to standard in warfare soon. It has
already been in use for a few years over in the ME.

------
adultSwim
I'm reminded of the failed assassination attempt against Venezuela leader
Nicolas Maduro

------
andybak
Can someone make a new series of Robot Wars with drones? That would be
fascinating viewing.

------
vmception
Interesting map, its crazy how often these groups fracture and splinter!

Really wish one of these would go publicly traded and report revenue, leading
to real price discovery of these operations and ability to manage risk.

There are permissionless systems they can use now to list shares, and if they
have a liquidity issue they just need to take over a dam and generate some
electricity for themselves for their crypto mining hardware which will convert
to currency.

I know I know, multiple topics for people to disagree with so I don't expect
this to lead to a conversation about solutions today, I'm just making a note
publicly that I perceived the possibilities before it happened.

~~~
dane-pgp
If these groups effectively control territory, then maybe formalizing that
control rather than trying to fight against it makes sense. That way, instead
of a cartel trying to infiltrate and bribe the local law enforcement, the law
enforcement could be paid a competitive and transparent monthly fee in return
for helping to protect the cartel's territory. (This would mean arresting
competing cartel members caught there, and giving immunity to members of the
locally approved cartel who are caught in shoot-outs with their rivals).

~~~
phobosanomaly
Part of the issue is that the cartels have always provided a sort of summer
camp for psychopaths.

Charles Bowden wrote a bit about how absolutely terrifying it was to be
anywhere in the proximity of these organizations.

By formalizing it, you would be essentially giving a formal role to guys who
cut people's limbs off with chainsaws and post videos of it on LiveLeak.

Fighting the cartels leads to unimaginable violence, and leaving them alone
just leads to them infiltrating every single level of the Mexican government,
and carrying on with the violence anyway.

It is the sorrow of the country to be situated by an accident of geography
between the single biggest market for meth and cocaine on the planet (who also
happens to sell lots of military-grade weapons to anyone with a pulse), and
the largest cocaine producing region on the planet.

~~~
vmception
There are countries that routinely chop peoples heads off in a form of due
process that we would not recognize or respect for seemingly minor actions.
Even the most developed nations have laws to chop off the hands of thieves.

We vilify and drone people with the same belief systems merely because they
are not associated with an existing state, non-state combatants.

There is simply no distinction I can lean on that would lead me to avoid
formalizing reality. The concept of the state simply isn't legitimacy to me,
it is just consensus. Cartels already have that consensus and act like public
enterprises in their region.

Do notice, I’m not arguing for anything to occur, I am recognizing that nobody
has to ask permission to achieve access to the capital markets and noticing
how that fits types of organizations that are not welcomed in established
capital markets.

~~~
phobosanomaly
If I understand correctly what you are saying, you are arguing that we take
the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. I very much respect that
position.

However, I would argue that there is definitely not a consensus. The Mexican
people are fighting with their lives against these organizations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupos_de_Autodefensa_Comunita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupos_de_Autodefensa_Comunitaria)

Mexico has a central government that is weak in some respects. Their judicial
system is not what it needs to be. Certain transnational criminal
organizations have taken advantage of this to establish enclaves of power.

That does not mean that they are recognized as legitimate political entities
by the Mexican people and should be given some formal recognition of authority
by the Mexican government or the country's neighbors.

Say my neighbor is in my front yard waving an AR-15 and screaming at me that
trash day was yesterday and I need to bring my garbage cans in. I'm sure as
hell not going out there to talk to him, but that doesn't mean I recognize him
as the new de-facto mayor of my front yard. He's just the lunatic in my front
yard screaming at me who I'm going to do my best to avoid, and hopefully at
some point the cops will show up and get him out of my yard.

~~~
vmception
Right. Its a good message and diverges a bit from my point:

All organizations can access the capital markets now. It a waste of public
resources from the “legitimate” states to try to whitelist transactions so
stop burdening everyone over that because its pointless. The end.

I am curious how the market will value these enterprises if they begin giving
steady dividends. The price discovery is fascinating.

------
adenozine
I've been worrying about this for years.

What's next is micro-chemical attacks. Drones that can cloud an individual or
small group of people. They'll think it was just dust or something, the thing
zips off into the sky, and the linings of their lungs starts dissolving and
they die.

~~~
HenryKissinger
Russia attempted to kill a dissenter in England with a toxic agent and all of
Europe went up in arms. Presidents and prime ministers put out condemnations.
Public opinion sharply turned against Russia.

The backlash to what you're suggesting would be insane if it actually
happened.

~~~
was_boring
How does this stop the next one? It’s not the first time Russia has done this
— and they have done it in European countries.

------
ScannerSparkly
Yeah, not the worst way to go about assassinations

------
dathinab
Man I knew it was just a matter of time for this to happen, to easy to do and
to many intelligent people with no morals (or just desperate, threatened
etc.).

Anyway thinks like this make it more likely for unreasonable regulations, like
even small drones being tracked when used or similar. But the bad joke is it's
pointless as:

\- The "bad" people can always circumvent such measurements (it's illegal but
you plan to do illegal things anyway)

\- Even if drones are banned it's not too hard to build them yourself from
parts your will always be able to get one way or another for not too much
money.

~~~
xyzzy_plugh
Is it unreasonable for small drones to be tracked? It's way too easy to get
footage of private property or through otherwise obscured windows with drones.

Regulation doesn't have to be unreasonable.

~~~
anitil
I work in this field. There's two components to this.

There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial
numbers etc. Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact
for evidence gathering.

The second is to track them in the sky. DJI has a product AeroScope that
tracks their drones, my company has a competing product (this isn't a plug so
won't mention the name). The issue with this is you need hardware to do it, or
use existing hardware. This is expensive, so only really feasible for specific
assets (pipelines, corrections and sports facilities etc).

~~~
bigiain
> There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial
> numbers etc. Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the
> fact for evidence gathering.

From where I'm, sitting, I can see one drone which can readily be "tracked via
the manufacturer" (A DJI Spark). There are two more which came assembled -
from random AliExpress (or maybe GearBest) vendors, which have nothing
resembling a serial number nor any way to "phone home" to the manufacturer.
There are another 5-6 which were completely assembled from parts (some of
which I 3D printed myself) and which run open source software on ubiquitously
available flight controllers. (And probably enough parts to assemble another 3
or 3 at least).

Most of those can be set up to fly completely autonomously, where jamming of
the control channels and/or video link won't affect the completion of the
flight plan. (Jamming GPS would fuck them all up though, but I might have
enough parts on hand to make a machine vision and lidar and IMU capable SLAM
platform, that'd be able to fly a mission plan even in the absence of a good
GPS lock...)

(I'd be fascinated to know how your company's system fares against a
reasonably creative "white hat" amateur drone builder who's intentionally set
out to beat it...)

~~~
anitil
Yes there's plenty of difficulties with home-grown devices. Fortunately most
people aren't capable of designing an over-the-air protocol like lightbridge,
and there's a limited selection of chips to choose from.

Vision/IMU/Lidar are obviously much harder

My email is in my bio

------
fsflover
Obligatory video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM)

------
narrator
Gibson's Slamhounds are here.

------
grugagag
Legalizing all drugs would kill these cartels almost instantly. People who do
drugs do them anyway and find a way to even if they’re illegal. If drugs
weren’t illegal all that money wouldnt end up in mexican cartels pockets.

~~~
stephentmcm
This is absolutely not going to be the case. Assuming both the US and Mexico
simultaneous legalized all drugs, what happens to all the illegal jobs the
cartels currently have?

Their people, money and weapons don't vanish and what we see when cartels take
a hit income is violence increases and the cartels look to other methods of
making income using they're existing tools. Protection rackets and kidnappings
are already used as supplemental income, these would only increase.

Now a long approach of gradual decriminalization and legalization may work,
with the ability to operate legally the need to utilize violence decreases
over time as it's generally bad for business.

~~~
grugagag
If their main source of income is cut off they will have to immediately
downsize or it would all eat into the boss’s accumulated wealth.
Reestablishing the cartel on kidnapping and other violent crime is not as
lucrative as selling sniffy gold. If they start kidnapping in America is a
different thing all together but doing it in Mexico would not yield enough
money to keep the current operations - unless they kidnap every Mexican
citizen or something like that... Closest move is to get involved directly
into politics

~~~
stjohnswarts
Or they get into the "protection" and kidnapping racket even more than they
are currently. Sure their size would probably decrease but the amount of
violence would skyrocket. At least for several years. The basically control
whole swathes of that. They wouldn't give that up without a fight.

~~~
Pfhreak
Is that what happened at the end of prohibition? (Genuine question, I'm not
well informed in this area.)

~~~
nostrademons
Hard to disentangle effects from other stuff that was going on. Prohibition
was repealed in 1933, in the depths of the Depression. It was also the year
before FDR signed a comprehensive crime-fighting bill that allowed FBI agents
to carry guns and make arrests.

By pure numbers, crime did hit a 20th-century high in 1933, right after
prohibition was repealed, and they didn't pass those numbers until the
1970s-early 1990s (and only just barely then). But this was also the economic
nadir of the century. And the mechanism for the decline in organized crime was
that many crime bosses were killed or imprisoned, so it could've been the
crime bill. So yes, it is what happened at the end of prohibition, but it's
hard to draw firm conclusions between the two.

------
sharker8
Silicon valley must love articles like this, the more to fund their Reagan
"Star Wars" style digital border wall follies. Nothing like fear to direct
billions of dollars in the wrong direction.

------
DethNinja
As humanity gets access to higher and higher technology, more and more smaller
scale, non-governmental actors will get access to weapons that can cause
asymmetrical damage. We will definitely get to a point where a single
determined person can destroy an entire city.

I strongly believe this is basically the great filter faced by all intelligent
species in the universe.

Only way to overcome this great filter is by adopting policies that provide
equal opportunities to each member of the species and create a non-
divisive/united society where everyone practically helps each other. Aim would
be to colonise other planets as soon as possible to decrease risks of
civilisation destruction by technological offshoots.

I strongly believe that most of the alien species that achieve interstellar
flight and escape the great filter must be benign, united, and highly
intelligent for these reasons.

I also believe humanity’s chances of escaping the great filter is ~0%.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Only way to overcome this great filter is by adopting policies that provide
equal opportunities to each member of the species and create a non-divisive
/united society where everyone practically helps each other_

How does this utopian ideal address the lone nutcase who would actually _do_
something like destroy an entire city if he could? The Unabomber wasn't
standing up for BLM or fighting income inequality, you know.

~~~
sudosysgen
Having a social structure where everyone is checked up on, and people who seem
to be up to no good can be talked about.

Alternatively and additionally, automated, limited, algorithmic surveillance
and controls over some technologies. It's certainly difficult, but not
completely impossible. There really aren't that many lone wolf nutcases that
have the resources and ability to do such damage. It generally turns up
warning signs and and/or takes coordinated groups.

The Unabomber also wasn't a completely mad act, he had some method to his
madness and his crimes ultimately came from his perception of the modern world
as a horrible place to live in and a destruction of the environment.

