NewsOpen Source Warfare: Al Qaeda 2.0

Open Source Warfare: Al Qaeda 2.0

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At RSA 2010 last week, Dr. Peter Warren Singer from the Brookings Institute lectured about the future of modern warfare. It will be open source, cheap and there will be lots of robots.

According to SC Magazine’s Paul Fisher, Singer said warfare is already going open source.

“As an example he said that the editor of US Wired managed to build himself his own drone for less than $1,000 by sourcing code and instructions directly from the web.”

With mobile applications, suicide bombers now don’t have to commit suicide.

Singer said there is an “iPhone app that can control a drone carrying two pounds of payload. Two pounds of explosive can do a lot of damage. That’s not going to feature in any fashionable Apple ad any time soon,” Fisher reported.

Singer called this Al Qaeda 2.0. And even more alarming and more sci-fi, according to Fisher, the Brookings Institute doctor wondered “what happens when US cyber tanks are hacked and reprogrammed to attack their masters?”

Where’s John Connor when you need him?

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