To me 'intellectual' conjures an image of highfalutin college academics - that sort of rigor has not been linked to offensive security, historically. If a rag-tag group like Anon or curious but intelligent teenagers can exploit systems, so can a North Korean cyber-division. If you are suggesting that intelligence has been purged out of the North Korean gene pool, I have a bell-curve to show you.

What make you think you need intellectuals to develop technical exploits?

Because it requires a brain. A drone can't do it.

Do you really think that technical proficiency requires "intellectualism" as it's normally understood? Because I sure don't. How many developers have you known who were extremely fascinated by the narrow details of a technical problem, and utterly uninterested in the wider application and impact of their work? I've worked with more than a few who fit that description.

Intellectual just mean people that use their intellect a lot. It's not limited to debating and philosophy. And mathematician is an intellectual.

And yes, somebody who has the skill to craft a very low level yet highly flexible malware requires skill that goes beyong copy/paste from stackoverflow.