Drones hacked
 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

We knew that it would happen.

We know that this one will be fixed.

And we can take it for granted that other vulnerabilities of the cybernet will be exploited sooner or later.

One day they will tackle communication satellites, and datalink relais stations.

One day they will use Western drones against the West.

Well, Asimov's robotic laws are dead anyway, sooo...

I think Asimov's Laws of Robotics only apply to machines w/actual A.I., not dumb hardware.

Typical Upper Echelon arrogance and ignorance at it's best in the military. :nope:

Under-estimation of one's adversary is a deadly mistake.

Economicly: 12 million USD vs 26 USD speaks volumes.

Hacked is rather misleading, IMHO. They were able to access the unencrypted video feed with freely available tools.
Also, the problem is known for some years, but it was dismissed since nobody in the big wig department believed anyone could use it. Well, they were wrong, and my guess would be that they going to encrypt the feeds rather quickly, now that it had found its way to the news.

Still - makes you think what China would be capable of. Their investements into cyber-warfare are said to be immense. That they are aiming at the ability to disrupt civilian infrastructure and energy-systems nation-wide, and probably are capable of that, is known since years. By that they would have a weapon as powerful as a nuclear bomb - and much more usable.

The dependency on communication networks and satellites I see as a major all-win-or-all-loss strategy since longer. If I were an evil rogue nation with finacial and scientific ressources, I would invest into EMP-capable and anti-satellite weapons as well.

what makes it even more riskier, that forces tend to reduce in size the ore dependent on high technology they are, due to financial arguments. So every major score by the enemy in the high tech field is the more devastating the more high tech your own forces are - because you have fewer material reserves and options to compensate damages.

Just imagining somebody manages to switch of the GPS satellite system. Whole platform categories, whole weapon and ordnance categories become useless from one second to the next.

Why did the Battlestar Galactica survive in the new TV series? :DL Because Commander Adama refused to let the system link up with external networks, and demanded all flight operations to be run in analoge mode - the rest of the fleet was taken out by computer virusses. :D