Things are going to get crazy with drone tech. The stuff that’s been cooked up in the conflict in Ukraine will inevitably find its way into civilian hands. After all, a lot of it was designed specifically to be built off of easily available parts and built off of commonly available tools like 3D printers. Imagine a situation like Luigi’s except using drones. Maybe a whole swarm of them unleashed on a corporate gathering, each with facial recognition tech. Drones in Ukraine are already built with small explosives, designed to target single individuals; they just fly right up to their targets and explode.

And it goes beyond that. I’m particularly worried about incendiary drones. Assassination drones require good facial recognition tech, and they usually rely on having access to the target in an outdoor area. But destruction of property via incendiary drones? All such a drone has to do is to be able to fly to a fixed GPS position, land, and activate a thermite or other charge to start a huge fire.

My inner anti-corporatist smiles at the idea of such things being wielded against evil CEOs, but the knife cuts both ways. This tech can be use by a Luigi, but it can also be used by a McVeigh or Bin Ladin. Imagine someone or a group releasing thousands of cheap 3D printed incendiary drones on a city. Imagine a small fire starting on the roof of every building in a city simultaneously - and the fire stations are hit with dozens. A city could be burned to ashes for maybe a few hundred thousand dollars, or the cost of a single home in that city.

Technology is reaching the point where a single depraved individual may be able to recreate the firebombing of Dresden. While I smile at the idea of some evil corporate killer getting their just desserts, I’m a lot more worried about the negative potential of this technology. We are literally reaching a point where a single individual can cause an amount of destruction equivalent to a modest nuclear explosion, using tools they build in their basement.