Will terrorists be using drones and technology? | QUICK HITS 33

OK. So, access to drone technology is proven, as is use by terrorists and their capability. To use swarms, terrorists would need to obtain large numbers and also high explosive (HE) – or some small weapon to use. In this, radiological material is also a really option as it is not too difficult to procure if you think about it. [Remember the Radioactive Boy Scout?: https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/ and https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioactive-boy-scout-died-at-age-39/%5D But, the drone can be the weapon itself, even if it is not carrying a payload of HE or anything else. To be sure:
1. a large number of drones loosed near an airport or over a sports stadium could cause panic, fear and apprehension and mass disruption;
2. If you “seed” some of the drones with a weapon, (or led others to believe you have – remember AQ’s biological program?) then authorities will think the rest are also weaponised. And that is the point: asymmetrical warfare. It is not about what you actually can do – but what your enemy thinks you can do. And the response that provokes. This is the approach that Dhrien Barot intended with his AQ funded plot to buy and then burn thousands of smoke detectors. See https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioactive-boy-scout-died-at-age-39/.
3. You say in the podcast that terrorists are not an existential threat. Putting to one side the incorrect use of “existential” – I guess you really are not suggesting they are not a threat to black sunglasses, stripy T-shirts, berets, Gaulois cigarettes and impossibly gorgeous but aloof blondes, I guess. It is true they are not a threat by their singular actions to the constitutional order BUT: the threat they pose – apart from loss of life which can be very high – is the response by authorities in dealing with this menace. In the last two decades, Western democracies have implemented many laws that erode civil and political rights, intrude into the lives of citizens and effectively curtailed to varying degrees democratic institutions and practices. We now in the West have a surveillance state. So, while the terrorists have not by their direct actions destroyed Western liberal democracy, they have provoked responses from governments that have led those governments to begin dismantling those societies. We are now a little more authoritarian. So, they are a threat to western liberal democracies, because they provoke responses from us that involve dismantling the constitutional order.
Moreover, terrorists foment in society suspicion; they erode social cohesion, create division, and provide a fertile ground for divisive politics, which is exploited by populist politicians. Society becomes “US” and “THEM”; patriots and traitors (or suspected traitors). And this, in part, is what has fueled the emergence of the “unorthodox” right (and left, in some cases): ethno nationalists and various forms of supremacism, conspiracy theories (e.g. in the US, Qanon) not only in the US, but also Europe, Russia, China, India and so on; distrust in science and in government – exploited by the same populist politicians, who peddle conspiracy theories about “elites” and globalists – and various forms of antisemitism – code for the “Jewish conspiracy”. And just look at the Western countries losing their minds over free speech following the mass murder in Christchurch. We now have less of it.
The terrorists have succeeded to a large extent.
So, I disagree that terrorists are as ineffectual or as irrelevant as you suggest. The problem is one of focus and depiction: understanding not just their motivation but intent. The security services focus on loss of life; the terrorists focus on change of the system, not only via coercion, but from our fearful response. They have won. In many Western countries, the constitutional order has been “modified”.
[I can’t claim credit for this rather bleak analysis. It comes from notes I took in a security environment lecture I attended in 2011 by a man who has now passed away, I understand. He worked for a Western secret service. His colleagues laughed at him. The audience did not.]