I'm challenging the supporting assumptions you described. Real time career knowledge, real time non visual person tracking, real time coordinated search across cities, real time IFF, lethal payloads on them all, real time localization. There's a lot of requirements there. An alien invasion would probably use clouds of drones in this way. The US could. Russia, China. After some testing. But not the next ISIS. And those states that can already have better options for targeting at range on a battlefield. And I'm challenging the use case. Are they within US borders? How? Flew in? Launched from within? How did they get close enough? A ship? Infiltration?

Pearl harbor was easy, required no new tech, just will. And Pearl Harbor was well known before the attack, had been demonstrated years before. This isn't that.

> Real time career knowledge, real time non visual person tracking, real time coordinated search across cities, real time IFF, lethal payloads on them all, real time localization. There's a lot of requirements there. ... Are they within US borders? How? Flew in? Launched from within? How did they get close enough? A ship? Infiltration?

Rather than go through and carefully solve the fascinating puzzle of how to destroy civilization step by step, I'm just going to point out that these things are not actually very difficult. Instead of hoping that the next Daesh can't recruit anyone who knows how to build an IMSI catcher, write a Facebook app, or use LinkedIn (or VKontakte if their adversary is Russia), think about what happens when there's a conflict between two adversaries that can.

> The US could. Russia, China. After some testing. But not the next ISIS.

Certainly the three states you mention could develop that capability, yes, although they don't currently have Slaughterbots fleets ready to launch. And Daesh certainly wasn't able to develop it, although they did drop a bunch of unguided hand grenades on people from remotely-piloted quadcopters. But what about Turkey? France? Rebels in the West Bank less incompetent than Hamas? The Zetas, who as I understand it have been running their own cellphone networks for 10 years? The Sinaloa cartel, which has thousands of drones carrying contraband across the US border? The Jalisco cartel, which is already targeting the families of police officers? The US-backed Guaidó faction in Venezuela? The US-backed military dictatorship currently running Egypt?

This isn't something that requires the budget of an aircraft carrier, and it's not something you can see from a satellite before it happens.

Sure. 'Think of the possibilities' is a fun exercise. I'm more in the 'will it scale' camp, that's all.

I've actually worked in this area before. There's more attention on this than you might imagine, and less than it deserves. There's also better ways to use drones to cause terror and disrupt operations that I obv won't get into. Maybe its not tech fantasy as I originally said, but it is much further out than you originally said as well, and it's a bit overkill. If you wanted to have the effect of causing fear in soldiers using drones, I think (but don't know) there are easier ways that don't require the same limiting assumptuons about technology, logistics and scaling.

So, what do you think we can do to prevent it?

Nice try, China.

Heh! Actually, although I'm in Argentina, I thoroughly endorse 墨子's defensive program: if every country is safe against attacks, then all the people will be safe, while if every country is vulnerable to attacks, then life will be bitter and filled with grief. So, just as 墨子's followers worked to improve the fortifications of the various states of China so that none could gain by attacking another, I think we should figure out how to reduce our collective vulnerability to this kind of drone-swarm attack.

Except that I think it's kind of impossible and we are basically doomed.

Minus the emotional wording, this has been the justification for large standing militaries in every nation state ever. I mean, it's the Dept of Defense here in the US.

Right, and the US isn't even a nation-state, despite the persistent efforts of certain reactionary groups to change that. But it's a backwards justification, because thousands of years of history show us that large standing militaries increase the risk of war, while fortifications diminish it.