> Not sure if I would call it clever

What do you mean it's not clever? Sure, they applied a known weakness of non-constant data rate encoded messages to drone monitoring, but that's never been done before. What have you done that's so impressive that gives you the confidence to scoff at the accomplishment of the talented engineers and developers who created something brand new?

Perhaps, how I said that was a bit ambiguous/unclear. However, the article is calling it clever. The research demonstrates a weakness with the communication layer. Just because it applies to drones(insert buzz word) does not make it a novel idea. I just find it funny that Wired is writing about it since it deals with drones, but I have read multiple other papers on the mis-application of compression and cryptography. Finding, flaws is important, I just feel like the article was kinda over selling the concept.

Perhaps we could at least say it's not novel/new?

What grabs the attention is isn't so much the procedure or technology itself, but the narrative that we're in a future where this kind of thing might be genuinely useful to somebody someday.