dlatch
It's incredible how they can say nothing while speaking for 30 minutes. Gotta appreciate the very critical press though, refreshing to see. Where I live the press will ask what they had for lunch and then leave it at that.
I was going to say: "no way they'd be that stupid again", but then again the US just elected Trump for a second time so who knows
No no no, they don't say it's genocide. I'm pretty sure they are fully aware it's genocide, as that's the purpose.
Russian decisions over the past few years haven't exactly shown much long-term strategic choices or forethought, so I doubt this is an argument for them
The US will attach an angry letter to the next shipment of bombs, I'm sure.
They have just fucking stopped halfway covering what they are doing haven't they? They realised that daddy US will protect them no matter what, so now they just go full steam ahead.
It is fairly well known that hackers backed by the Chinese government have targeted and infiltrated critical infrastructure in the West, for example https://theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/fbi-china-hack-infrastructure and https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-disrupts-chinese-botnet-targeting-critical-infrastructure-fbi-says-2024-01-31/ . The assumption is that this will be exploited in case of a future conflict.
It is not unthinkable that starting a bunch of fires in houses all across the country to overload emergency services and cause general unrest and chaos, is part of this strategy.
It still possibly going to send your designs to China (and you could even question having a device easily capable of starting a fire that is actively connecting to China). The only way I'd use a Bambu is if it's disconnected from the internet all together, but if I'm not mistaken they need a cloud connection to work in the first place.
It was cancelled after about a year. They said the technological developments of drones went faster than they could adjust the training of the birds, there were concerns about the well being of the birds but also the risks of using large predators in areas with big crowds, and there wasn't enough control over where the drone would end up - the bird might knock it out of the sky over a crowd.
All in all it seems like the whole idea was just a bit too uncontrollable to work as a counter-terrorism measure at events, which was the goal. The eagles just added a level of uncertainty that was not worth the gains. It might work in a situation like Ukraine though, where it is a more traditional battlefield with few civilians around. On the other hand, the drones used are offen a bit bigger and more advanced than your standard DJI, and that could definitely end up hurting the birds.
To show they can. It's a signal to Europe that they know where our infrastructure is and that they can get to it.