July 11, 2014 • 38 mins
Will your future online purchases, delivery food and more be delivered by drones? Will law enforcement fly them continuously over your city, town or neighborhood? Tune in to learn more about the possible future of drones.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, and
I and Ben and today. Well, that makes this stuff
(00:21):
they don't want you to know. That's that's a given
you clicked on the thing. That's what it is. Uh.
Today we're talking about something that is highly controversial, as
most of our topics are in the United States especially,
but throughout the world. For this topic, it's something that
crosses the line between artificial intelligence, war, robotics. So many
(00:46):
different things are culminated in this one one topic. Yeah,
that's a really good way to put it. I hadn't
considered a lot of that. You're absolutely right, Matt, you
are spot on, yes, and especially one of the most
important things is should we really separate the humanity so
much from the act of killing? Separate, separate that close up, uh,
(01:11):
scary part about ending another human beings life and turning it,
turning it into a simulation. You know what. That's a
really good question, and it's something that I've had some
long debates about. If you'd like uh, can we talk
about that a little bit at the end, because this
is something I like to plant the seed for our listeners,
(01:32):
ladies and gentlemen. Today we're talking about drones. Not the
not sci fi drones I like cool alien drones. No,
we're talking about dot drones. So what what is a drone? Well,
it's any unmanned, remotely controlled machine. You could call anything
(01:52):
that does those meets that criteria a drone. Most commonly,
it's associated with the flying vehicles that we see in
warfare modern war fare nowadays, like Predator UA v s
and stuff. Oh yeah, but you can also have them
in the water. You can also have them in space
or even underground. Oh yeah, the was the Boeing X
thirty five or X thirty six is there's a yeah,
(02:13):
there are several. In the X thirty something thirty seven,
that's the one we talked about. It was up in space.
No one knows what he was doing. Were not allowed
to know, No one is allowed to talk. Drones have
surprisingly enough, been in use for a long long time.
But before we explore the history of that, let's look
So let's look at just a couple of the legal issues.
(02:35):
Now we're using what some people call a very very
biased source here, the American Civil Liberties Union. So according
to their report, UM, the drone game is blowing up.
So this a c l U report says that law
enforcement is this is a quote, law enforcement is greatly
expanding its use of domestic drones for surveillance. This is
(02:58):
interesting because in the Unity and in states, UM, although
privacy has clearly eroded as the decades have gone on, UH,
this expectation of privacy is always a hot button issue
from your local law enforcement and protest groups all the
way up to the supremes. And I don't mean Diana
Ross's gang. What what they're saying is that what the
(03:22):
a c l U was saying is that this sort
of widespread surveillance fundamentally changes, uh, the nature of public
life in America. UM. The a c l U is
also worried that police might arm remote controlled aircraft. Numerous states,
as at the time we record this in two thousand fourteen,
(03:44):
numerous states are working toward legislation about drones. And you
can really tell how those states feel about privacy based
on the kind of rulings they're making. The f a
A is a big thing. UM. A big deal the
Federal Aviation Administration. Who can fly what where? That's basically
(04:04):
what the f a A is for anyone who is
not familiar with that, And uh, they want to change
airspace rules or Congress wants the f A to change
airspace rules to make it easier for police to use
domestic drones. Uh, but not including privacy protection. So, Matt,
as as we know, the a c l U has
(04:25):
named several privacy safeguards they'd like to see in the
new laws. Yeah, there are a lot of those, but
before we get into them, I just want to say
how terrifying it is to think about police officers having
drones with rubber bullets and tasers attached to them, just
flying over a scene where maybe a protest is occurring,
and they're able to just remotely detach the weaponry essentially
(04:47):
from these things and shoot weaponry from a drone. That
to me is terrifying, and I'm certainly glad that someone
is looking into it. So there are certain usage limits,
So h drone would only be used by law enforcement
if there was a warrant, let's say, or an emergency
or something very specific where you could prove you have
(05:09):
grounds on which to prove that you needed to use
this drone. So just no drone joy rides for the
heck of it. Yeah, you don't. Every police officer doesn't
have a drone attached to their vehicle that can be
deployed at anytime to track their ex girlfriends or something. Yeah,
the same not yet searches. Yeah. Okay. There's also data retention,
(05:30):
which is you know, how much information is going to
be kept by these things that's collected, um, and only
when there's specific grounds again to collect and keep evidence
should that be done. And this is all again, guys,
this is all stuff that the a c l. You
thinks should be in the laws, which frighteningly enough means
(05:51):
that it is not in the laws now. So well,
you gotta keep it as wide as you can if
you're the creator of these drones and you need them
to be used, or the you are of these drones. Uh.
You're also looking at policy usage policy, which would say
that the public's representatives should be deciding when these things
(06:12):
are used or how they're used, not by police departments themselves. Okay,
so elected officials should make transparent decisions. Yeah, although although
that to me is also a terrifying thought. The people
subject to I don't know, bribery are the ones now
making the decisions. No offense representatives, but you know that
you are subject to bribery, not that you necessarily take it. Potentially, Well,
(06:38):
they're subject to it, whether or not they go through
with it attempts. Right. There's also abuse prevention and accountability,
so this is use of domestic drones would be subject
to some kind of audit or at least an oversight
program or committee. So they just can't go willing nearly
(06:59):
use their drones. And the last one is weapons, and
they're saying both lethal and non lethal those should both
not be on the drones. Yeah, and that's an interesting
point too. I think those are great ideas, great proposals. Um,
it's an interesting point about non lethal weapons because as
most people who have some real world experience with non
(07:21):
lethal weapons, No, they're not always non lethal. Something can
always go wrong. Yes, the human heart can give away,
for can give way for a lot of reasons, and
electricity is usually one of those things, or large amounts
of current like tasers. Right. Uh. So, there was an
interesting legal case that we found reported by Vice, which
(07:44):
said that a federal judge has ruled that the f
a A has not made any legally binding rules against
commercial drones. And this happened when the f A sued
a guy named Raphael Perker, the first person the agency
had tried to find for flying a drone commercially. Now,
some of uh, the listeners out there may be familiar
(08:07):
with a promotional video that Amazon put out, right, do
you remember this one that? Yes, the one where Amazon
just proposed to be using or they decided, hey, it
wouldn't be cool if we use drones to send you
all your stuff, so you know, maybe our drones won't
throw your packages the way some of our employees you, oh,
just kidding, sorry, uh, or they might be worse because
(08:28):
they would rebel at some point. Yeah, so okay, the
the idea though, the f a A has always said
that flying a drone for a commercial business is illegal,
but the judge didn't agree. A guy named Patrick Garritty
Garrit D judge with the National Transportation Safety Board, said
(08:51):
there are no laws against it. You know, go wild,
you guys. So the f A attempted to define raphaelp
ten thousand dollars after you used a drone to film
a commercial at the University of Virginia, and he fought
the case, and he said the f A never regulated
(09:12):
model aircraft, and uh that it's basis for making them
illegal was a two thousand seven policy notice and it
wasn't legally binding. So apparently his argument goes, the f
a A is not yet taken the required public notice
necessary to make it an official regulation. So at this point,
(09:32):
what that means, man, is it's the wild West for
commercial drones. We could do like that Oprah thing with
a car. You get a drone, You get a drone.
You get a drone, Matt, I think we should buy
a drone. Good, you want to We could get some
cool aerial shots. You want to do some more roof shooting, Yeah,
like a little drone. Yeah, okay, al right, well I'll
(09:52):
do that. I'll do a mini drone, a mini drone
because somehow that will be less bad because it's smaller. Well,
and then used to get swarms of mini drones that
all interact with each other. It's so weird when we
think about this, unarmed, unmanned vehicles. So we've we've given
the most up to date information about the present of drones.
(10:14):
One thing that might surprise a lot of people, is
that the concept of drones. It's not recent. It's actually
very old, this whole unmanned attacking observation thing. Right. Oh yeah,
way back in eighteen forty nine, Austria attacked Venice with balloons.
There are balloons loaded with explosives. They're not necessarily drones,
(10:36):
but they're unmanned vehicles in the air or unmanned air contraptions, right. Yeah.
And then like just a few decades later, uh, the U. S.
Civil War had sorry, not the whole Civil War. During
the U. S. Civil War forces in in the States,
we're working on balloons in eighteen sixty two, they were
(10:58):
trying to use them for reconnaissance and bombing operations. And
that's a that's a very interesting story, Matt. Honestly, I'm
surprised there has not been a film made about the
Civil Wars balloon brigades. That's war films about everything else.
But I don't know they I guess you could make
it a catchy topic or a catchy title for that.
(11:20):
I'm not sure what it would be. A band of balloons,
I'm done. I thought of that earlier, Okay, but those
are just you know, those are just balloons, and granted
you can't really pilot a balloon very well. But there, uh,
there were aircraft that were older too, right, Yeah, there
were some of the first radio controlled planes were brought
(11:43):
about right after World War One, and that was a M.
Lows radio control techniques that were used for those, and
it's really cool. Actually it was supposed to be used
to fight against some of the Zeppelins um of World
War One. Right after that, they're like, oh, man, let's
find a way to take down these Zeppelins. Let's make
(12:04):
some radio control aircraft they can fly into them and
explode those suckers. And they never Actually, probably a lot
of that is because of the Hindenburg explosion and the
way technology turned away from Zeppelin's. Okay, that makes sense,
and figured out how easy it is to make one explode. Yeah,
it's a shame because wouldn't be fantastic to live in
(12:25):
a world that had Zeppelins. Why why some I have
to screw that up for everyone else? They're pretty energy efficient. Man, Yeah,
you gotta play BioShock Infinite, Man, I should I should
play BioShock Infinite or just rewatch Fringe the uh so
later we know that ultimately these flying bomb concepts or
(12:48):
these aerial torpedoes became the ancestors of cruise missiles, right,
And they learned to remotely or they learned to control
these using as you said, radio signals. Uh. The famous
automatic airplane was first foamed for representatives of the U.
S Army in nineteen seventeen. Uh. But if we fast forward,
(13:14):
we find some of the first uses of remote surveillance
by the US. All day was attached a camera to
a kite. Yeah. I guess it's a little dramatic. Well, yeah,
but that's honestly, that's how you I guess begin m. Well,
we've got this kite. Hey, we've got a lightweight camera.
Let's do it. And then in uh In and in
(13:37):
Vietnam between sixty five and seventy three, uh, the US
Army had been able to test some of these some
of these surveillance concepts, right. Because you know, it's really
there was a really dodgy position here where there were
areas of Southeast Asia where the US was not officially involved. However,
(14:03):
as it came to light earlier in some other episodes
we've done, this official involvement was not necessarily involvement in practice, right,
So we know that these monitoring aspects, right. This this
application of what they called an electronic battlefield to map
(14:24):
the entire theater with sensors, uh, probably changed the way
that we think about designating or guiding bombers today. So
a really interesting thing happened here is that after they
while they were doing these experiments, the Air Force started
(14:46):
populating the region, right, but not with regular planes. Yeah,
they were populating the skies with these remotely piloted vehicles
or RPVs. And it's kind of neat they've had this evolution. Okay,
So there there are these three overlapping phases that drones
have gone through. The first drone is the drone as
(15:08):
a target, which is kind of interesting. That's from nineteen ten,
the nineteen tens, let's say, until the nineteen fifties. Then
you've got the drone as a sensor, something that can
be in the air, that can detect something and send
it send that signal back to somebody else. That's around
the nineteen sixties to the nineteen nineties. Then you've got
the drone as the weapon, and that's the most recent
(15:30):
from the two thousands, the new modern warfare drones up
until today, and so it's gone over this large evolution,
and now my question has been, Yeah, what's the next evolution? Ah,
what's the future of drones? Like a self a completely
(15:52):
self running drone, A drone that can on its own
just monitor the skies. It can be the sensor and
the weapon and the controller. A solar powered drone maybe
uh high altitude that's able to somehow derive enough energy
from solar panels to uh continually adjust it's its flight
(16:17):
or its orbit depending on where it is relative to
the bug limit, and then also be able to continue
with its seem speed maybe adjust its flight. Right now,
so far as we know, there are no solar panels
that are efficient enough to give that sort of flight
in a reasonable way. The kind of solar panels we
(16:37):
have to build now are would take up so much
surface area that it's tough to imagine the thing actually
working in any realistic capacity. It would be one of
those like Rich Countries toys that we built just this
show that we could do it. Unless unless you could
use some other form of energy to get it. Maybe
(16:59):
let's say it's an space orbiting Yeah, can't use enough
energy with secondary propulsion system getting to get it up there.
Then just use a solar to run all of its systems.
Yeah or yeah, and maybe just powers enough power so
they can prevent orbit decay. A bad idea X thirty seven.
You guys, that stuff is crazy. Please check it out
(17:21):
if you haven't seen it before. I I routinely search
news for that and uh and trade journals just to
see if we ever figure out what it was doing.
Whether there are some great guesses but nothing confirmed. Now, Matt,
the idea of drones, especially with the threat of impinging
on privacy, has always been kind of a passionate issue
for you. So I want to ask you some questions
(17:43):
too before we move into I want to end it
on a little bit of maybe good news, um. But
before we do that, let's get through the really messy stuff. UM.
We talked earlier about drones and war, and you asked
about the are you mentioned rather the distancing effect of
(18:04):
of taking people's lives. I do know that there's been
some research on PTSD in drone operators drone pilots, and
they do suffer PTSD. UM. They are aware that these
are human lives, that it's not just a video game. However, um,
one of the things that I think a lot of
(18:25):
us as civilians uh don't know about with the with
piloting a drone is that the lag time is crazy.
It's if it's a video game, it's a horrible video game. Also,
you know you're potentially killing innocent people, right, So I
agree with you that the distancing is very dangerous because
(18:47):
although people do experience PTSD, the I don't know if
experiencing it that remotely is um is as uh as
much of a what's a good word deterrent maybe to
(19:07):
killing in the future. I don't know, man, I have
no answers, but it just seems like an issue that
we should at least talk about. So what what draws
you to? What? What makes this idea is so um
so close to you? You're very passionate about this. Well,
I've been playing video games on my whole life, and
in most of those video games you are killing something
(19:29):
or eliminating something. In many of the ones that I've
played for let's say my college years and video gaming,
were killing human beings. And there is there's an extreme
detachment because you know, obviously it's not real. You know
that it's not real. Then I can just imagine children
(19:50):
who have grown up with the technology with that playing
Call of Duty when you were seven or eight years old,
even though you're not supposed to having that simulation, and
and transferring it to now you're eighteen nineteen, fresh out
of high school, going into the military, and now you're
playing a flight simulator game where you're killing people. Um,
(20:11):
I just wonder how that's going to affect this, like
the psyche of the effect psychologically these younger people. Do
you think that people growing up around video games have
a lack of empathy unless Yeah, I can't speak to that.
I have no idea. I believe that I have lots
(20:32):
of empathy, and I don't do much else besides play
video games. So I don't know. All right, I'm not
gonna blow up your spot, but you are. You are
full of fascinating hobbies, and I don't know, I think
you're beating yourself up. Well, most of them include an
Xbox controller. But no, I hear it, I hear you.
What what about drones and privacy? Oh, that's that's a
(20:54):
whole another can of worms there. Yeah, drones and privacy, man,
Come on that, Uh, there's an expectation privacy that is
always debated, right and then and past court rulings, at
least in the United States have said that you cannot
have an expectation of privacy in certain areas like you're
(21:15):
on the street. You're walking on a public street. You know,
I'm sorry, No matter how much of a diva or
celebrity you may be, you cannot tell people not to
take your picture or look at you, because, um, until
somebody totally iron Rand's the entire country. Anyone can walk
on the sidewalk if I mean, if you have to
(21:37):
be completely anonymous that they make those tinted windows for
you and enjoy it while you're in the car, then sorry, right,
And then there's Uh. It's interesting because when we talk
about the idea of privacy, what I think is regardless
of um, someone's political leanings, right or personal ideologies. The
(22:00):
you know, I made I made a bad iron Rand
joke just a second ago. But if we look at
it on the other side, then the idea of a
collectivist socialist society, right, which would be the opposite of objectivism, uh,
would still have these huge threats to privacy. You know,
we have read a lot of you guys listening out there.
(22:21):
I've read it too, and one of the big things
is that Winston has uh no privacy. He has um
I guess uh spoiler alert, but a minor spoiler. He
thinks he has privacy, but he doesn't really right. And
and this this idea for anyone who is for anyone
(22:42):
who is wants to or inclined to say, oh, your
political beliefs differ from mine, or on this issue we disagree.
I don't think that we should let people be as
easily divided because there's one thing that I have noticed
about the the fight for personal privacy, at least in
(23:05):
the United States, and that's the it's getting people from
all bents of polit politics, religion, uh, any other ideology.
I don't know. Pepsi drinkers, coat drinkers coming together. Privacy.
It's one of those things that it's going it will be.
We're going to fight for it as long as we
can until it's just completely gone. And at some point
(23:26):
it's just going to be gone. Yeah, I also believe
the erosion privacy is inevitable. When that's you know, we've
talked about this before. It's it's if you think about it,
the the existence of privacy has been sort of short
lived for a long time too. But now that we've
talked about some of the darker issues there, we'd also
(23:47):
like to hear from you guys um when you think
the future of drones is. But before we go out,
we wanted to end it on a little bit of
an up note and talk about some non military uses
of drones, because it's not all, you know, accidentally killing civilians.
It's not all targeting people with no due process or
(24:08):
UH police surveillance state stuff. There's also the possibility that
UH agriculture could benefit from drones. For instance, the you know,
the idea that it could help farmers do better land management,
increase overall yields, um most large farms in the United
States and rural areas. So as long as the drones
(24:32):
are less than foreigner feet high, they're legal for the
f a A. So yeah, police officers will be using those.
So put your paranoia hats on and enjoy the idea
of police officers flying drones over your house at all
times of night. Yes, they're probably there right now, can
you hear them? Right? And if you saw our earlier
(24:53):
episodes on militarization, of police. Then you know that maybe
that's not the best example of non military use. I'm sorry, Matt, Well,
it's okay. Here's here's the counterpoint. There are surveillance cameras
all over the place where you live. I don't care
where you live. There are probably surveillance cameras, even if
they're just in the small stores. Yeah, even if it's
(25:16):
just those, they are. They're all over the place. But
here in Atlanta, there on the streets, they're on traffic, Yeah,
they're everywhere. There in our building, there are a couple
that can probably see us right now from outside the studio.
It's it's one of those things again that we're going
to have to live with for the rest of our lives.
(25:37):
And now there are these things that will just be
flying over us. And you know, they might be the
security from your mall, some drones hanging around the mall.
That might be police officers looking for drugs. Who knows.
I'm so glad you brought up drugs, my friend, because
another thing that drones can do is be operated by villains.
(25:59):
Criminal is by nair do wells and wrap scallions according
to call of duty. Was it black too? I think?
And the entire idea. Sorry for all the video game talking,
and it just reminds you video against so much, the
idea that hackers would take over the military drones and
start a war. Okay, I can see that. So because
(26:22):
drones are hard for people to spot, especially given the size.
So what if you start go taking your drone over
the border to drop off drugs or something like that?
They there To my knowledge at this point, there's not
an unmanned vehicle that somebody could buy and then used
(26:43):
to fly over people as in human trafficking with humans
as cargo. But a couple of keys wouldn't be unmanned, then,
would it. No, it wouldn't. It would be unsteered p
i P. Piloted in person. There you go. I don't
know what the well, you know, they make these the
massive I think they're one fourth scale airplanes, the remote
(27:05):
control airplanes. I wonder if that's being used right now
as drug trafficking, because that's essentially a drone slightly different,
but it's it's happened before. That's that I think probably
in some border areas it's probably really good work around,
But there's there's got to be a sweet spot because
(27:27):
the US Mexico border is monitored pretty closely, so I
think they have an eye on the airspace. I don't
know how you would get around that. But in other
borders that are a bit more porous, like the um
like the opium trade in Central Asia, right, Uh, those
borders are so porous that it might not be necessary
(27:51):
to fly a drone. You might just need to know
the right guy and just want Isn't that how it
always is? And Uh, the idea of how hard certain
agencies or countries are working to actually stop the drug
trade is another episode that we could do. Um. But yeah,
so so this could be this could be something for criminals. UM.
(28:13):
One one potential thing here for national security walks may
recognize that in two thousand eleven, a terrorist named Rezwan
Firdaus Uh excuse me, f E r d a u
s Uh plotted to bomb US targets by putting explosives
on a drone UM emphasis there on planned. Uh. And
(28:35):
then there's another example right in Brazil. Yeah, in a
Brazilian prison in two thousand twelve caught a drone helicopter
that had cell phones just it was full of cell
phones that were meant for inmates. In the prison and
they stopped it by I think one of the one
of the police grabbed onto the helicopter legs and I
pulled it down to the ground triumphantly. Um. And then
(28:58):
the rest of the the officers they're just jumped on
and beat it up pretty hard. I'm pretty sure that's alright. Well,
take our word for it. I haven't seen the made
for TV movie yet, but I'll take your word for
it for now. Uh. There's also the idea of weather investigation,
and this is pretty cool, uh that you could you know,
there's there's always a huge difficulty for people who want
(29:21):
to investigate natural disasters and catastrophic weather phenomenon meteorological phenomenon,
and that is of course that you could die driving
into a tornado, that you could die standing at the
edge of the ocean with some sensors waiting for the tsunami. Yea.
Even the tank I forget the name of the show,
(29:42):
but the guy who has the tank that drops to
the ground, it's still extremely dangerous. So these drones offer
away potentially to investigate tropical storms, and NASA began experimenting
with this in two thousand thirteen. Officially, Uh, this is
a little bit different from a tempts to see if
cloud seating could alter hurricanes, which was, as far as
(30:05):
we know, unsuccessful. But they used uh these big, big
drones called Global Hawk drones. Uh. Naval wingspan is wide
is a seven thirty seven. Uh, they're huge. They're extremely
cool too. I highly recommend you do a YouTube search
for those Global Hawk So they fly them through hurricanes
(30:26):
with a bunch of sensors on and I hope they
make it. Yeah. Uh, that's something. The only thing they
track though, right, Yes, you can also track wildlife. Uh.
There are uvs that are set up with cameras and
GPS and they're able to track wildlife. So let's say
you've got maybe a group of giraffe or elephants or
(30:48):
something you want to track and see how if there
are any poachers that are endangering them or something, or
maybe you just want to look at their eating habits.
Just get these drones follow these things and uh, man,
you're set up. It's pretty great because you don't have
to be on the ground looking for them at all times. Um.
And they can wear tracking colors to make it easier,
but they don't have to with this technology, which is
(31:09):
pretty cool. I think that's just a fantastic point because
the well, one of the things that often haunts me
about the age in which we live is that it
is possible that one day, you know, Matt, you could
have grandchildren and they won't believe you when you tell
them that animals used to just run a while, run
(31:32):
around in the wild. You know, that's to me, that's frightening. Uh.
The so the anything that could save that, it would
would be amazing. I mean, not to not to be
preachy again, it's just, uh, it's fascinating when you read
the theories from various various researchers, paleontologists and so on
(31:55):
who say that we are in the middle of a
mass extinction. It's interesting wonder which animals are gonna make
it out and humans are could be on the topic
blot too, h Yeah, masters of disasters, other huge storms
they could look at right of course we're talking um,
we we're talking sand storms, We're talking so nami's, we're
(32:16):
talking uh tornadoes. Oh I just learned this yesterday. This
is a weird wind man. There's a word that it's
it's a weird word. H a b oo b huboob
I think it's pronounced Arabic word that describes these gigantic
sandstorms that can happen in desert areas. I was watching
(32:37):
this video of this guy driving into one and it
starts he's driving as daytime. As he's driving, you see
people driving away from this massive storm, the headlights out,
and then when he gets in there, it's pitch black
because there's just so much crazy stuff happening. Good to
have a drone there. Um other things we mentioned forest
rangers tracking fires. Wildfires huge problem in California, right, Yeah,
(33:01):
well a huge problem all over the place, and it's
a huge It would be a great advantage to have
a drone. They wouldn't have to worry about a lot
of smoking inhalation or any of the other things. Yeah,
it's huge. Oh and another point, you know their convicts
who were on the fire, the wildfire teams out west.
Really Yeah? Interesting? Yep? Is that that seems rather mad?
(33:27):
MAXI in to me. They're volunteers. I don't know what
the circumstances of volunteer service are. Maybe they get time off,
but how much of that you know? Uh, that's a
cool that's an interesting idea. We'll have to dig in.
Another thing we said, uh, this is another future thing
that we mentioned earlier was that this makes some fantastic
(33:49):
filming way more affordable. Oh yeah, Chandler, one of the
guys that works here, a how stuff works, made a
music video that featured a drone and it was a
cool experience, excellent footage. It looks like you spent several
million dollars, but it was just the day with a
guy who can run a drone and maybe you're done. Wow,
(34:14):
all right, let's get four hundred dollars. Well, yeah, we
can get one here. They're not that expensive. I bet
an ol. Can you can pilot a drone? Can't you?
Oh yeah, you can totally pilot drones. That's right. Our
super producer, Noel is always no we uh we try
to give you a shout out every show, and we
didn't mention it in the beginning. All right, okay, all right,
well thank you. Know you're too you're far too kind.
(34:37):
Another thing is the oil and gas monitoring. So offshore
oil rigs are incredibly risky and cartoonishly expensive endeavors. First,
you have to explore to find the oil, and increasingly
you have to do some wild science, some mad science
to get the oil out of the ground in a
(34:57):
way that is safe and use a deep drilling. When
one of these goes up, or when something goes wrong
with these anywhere in the pipeline, it's very bad business,
very very bad business. And so having the drone to
monitor that, which you know, I'm surprised that hasn't happened
yet because so many not just on oil platforms, but
(35:18):
so many pipelines run through politically dangerous areas, right, yeah,
it's huge advantage. You've probably seen some videos or at
least clips of drones, underwater drones that are used by
the oil industry to check out their rigging, check out
the pipelines, and sometimes even catching glimpses of scary looking creatures.
(35:42):
Have you ever seen those which ones? It's just it's
they're unmanned submarines that are used to patrol the areas.
And there are a couple awesome clips that you know,
I go on lively all the time right right, as
you should too if you're eighteen or older. They're not
paying us to say that, but yeah, there's some really
interesting cliffs there of just underwater sea creatures that are
(36:05):
usually later identified, but sometimes they're horrifyingly ambiguous. Nice. Uh yeah,
and that's that goes to one of our last points,
which was one of our first points, was that drones
are not just restricted to the air around us in
the immediate environment. They can go into space. Uh, they
(36:26):
can be remotely operated underwater. There'll be digger drones. There
was this movie, and I'd love for one of our
listeners to to help me figure out which one this
was where. I think it was called Screamers, but I'm
not sure it was about. It was a sci fi
for little robots that were in the ground. Yeah, do
you remember that one? Uh? The that film kind of
(36:49):
made me think of underground drones was. I don't know
if it'll bear rewatch. Somebody warned me, because it's kind
of sad when you see a movie that hasn't aged well,
you know what I mean. I don't remember if I
liked it because of the coolness of the technology or
because actually like the story. But I remember liking it,
so I might have to at least watch the first
(37:10):
thirty minutes. Yeah, or sometimes you can just watch the
trailer on YouTube and that I'll tell you if you're
in all right doing it? Uh, so while we head
off to do that, Thank you guys so much for
checking out our episodes on drones. We have some new
videos coming up as well. Uh. We don't want to
ruin this surprise too much, but we've been doing a
(37:32):
lot of government stuff lately, and our show covers everything
that someone may or may not want you to know.
So we're gonna be throwing some curve balls in the
next few weeks. Uh, be ready, I don't know it.
Should we drop a hint? We can drop a hint
real the power of becoming race. Do with that what
(37:53):
you will enjoy yourselves, and we'll see you next time
here on Stuff they Don't want you to Know. In
the meantime, you would write to us on Facebook we
are conspiracy Stuff. There. You can write to us on
Twitter at conspiracy Stuff is our handle. If you don't
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(38:14):
is write us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at how Stuff Works dot com. From more on
this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com
slash Conspiracy Stuff You can also get in touch on
Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, and
I and Ben and today. Well, that makes this stuff
(00:21):
they don't want you to know. That's that's a given
you clicked on the thing. That's what it is. Uh.
Today we're talking about something that is highly controversial, as
most of our topics are in the United States especially,
but throughout the world. For this topic, it's something that
crosses the line between artificial intelligence, war, robotics. So many
(00:46):
different things are culminated in this one one topic. Yeah,
that's a really good way to put it. I hadn't
considered a lot of that. You're absolutely right, Matt, you
are spot on, yes, and especially one of the most
important things is should we really separate the humanity so
much from the act of killing? Separate, separate that close up, uh,
(01:11):
scary part about ending another human beings life and turning it,
turning it into a simulation. You know what. That's a
really good question, and it's something that I've had some
long debates about. If you'd like uh, can we talk
about that a little bit at the end, because this
is something I like to plant the seed for our listeners,
(01:32):
ladies and gentlemen. Today we're talking about drones. Not the
not sci fi drones I like cool alien drones. No,
we're talking about dot drones. So what what is a drone? Well,
it's any unmanned, remotely controlled machine. You could call anything
(01:52):
that does those meets that criteria a drone. Most commonly,
it's associated with the flying vehicles that we see in
warfare modern war fare nowadays, like Predator UA v s
and stuff. Oh yeah, but you can also have them
in the water. You can also have them in space
or even underground. Oh yeah, the was the Boeing X
thirty five or X thirty six is there's a yeah,
(02:13):
there are several. In the X thirty something thirty seven,
that's the one we talked about. It was up in space.
No one knows what he was doing. Were not allowed
to know, No one is allowed to talk. Drones have
surprisingly enough, been in use for a long long time.
But before we explore the history of that, let's look
So let's look at just a couple of the legal issues.
(02:35):
Now we're using what some people call a very very
biased source here, the American Civil Liberties Union. So according
to their report, UM, the drone game is blowing up.
So this a c l U report says that law
enforcement is this is a quote, law enforcement is greatly
expanding its use of domestic drones for surveillance. This is
(02:58):
interesting because in the Unity and in states, UM, although
privacy has clearly eroded as the decades have gone on, UH,
this expectation of privacy is always a hot button issue
from your local law enforcement and protest groups all the
way up to the supremes. And I don't mean Diana
Ross's gang. What what they're saying is that what the
(03:22):
a c l U was saying is that this sort
of widespread surveillance fundamentally changes, uh, the nature of public
life in America. UM. The a c l U is
also worried that police might arm remote controlled aircraft. Numerous states,
as at the time we record this in two thousand fourteen,
(03:44):
numerous states are working toward legislation about drones. And you
can really tell how those states feel about privacy based
on the kind of rulings they're making. The f a
A is a big thing. UM. A big deal the
Federal Aviation Administration. Who can fly what where? That's basically
(04:04):
what the f a A is for anyone who is
not familiar with that, And uh, they want to change
airspace rules or Congress wants the f A to change
airspace rules to make it easier for police to use
domestic drones. Uh, but not including privacy protection. So, Matt,
as as we know, the a c l U has
(04:25):
named several privacy safeguards they'd like to see in the
new laws. Yeah, there are a lot of those, but
before we get into them, I just want to say
how terrifying it is to think about police officers having
drones with rubber bullets and tasers attached to them, just
flying over a scene where maybe a protest is occurring,
and they're able to just remotely detach the weaponry essentially
(04:47):
from these things and shoot weaponry from a drone. That
to me is terrifying, and I'm certainly glad that someone
is looking into it. So there are certain usage limits,
So h drone would only be used by law enforcement
if there was a warrant, let's say, or an emergency
or something very specific where you could prove you have
(05:09):
grounds on which to prove that you needed to use
this drone. So just no drone joy rides for the
heck of it. Yeah, you don't. Every police officer doesn't
have a drone attached to their vehicle that can be
deployed at anytime to track their ex girlfriends or something. Yeah,
the same not yet searches. Yeah. Okay. There's also data retention,
(05:30):
which is you know, how much information is going to
be kept by these things that's collected, um, and only
when there's specific grounds again to collect and keep evidence
should that be done. And this is all again, guys,
this is all stuff that the a c l. You
thinks should be in the laws, which frighteningly enough means
(05:51):
that it is not in the laws now. So well,
you gotta keep it as wide as you can if
you're the creator of these drones and you need them
to be used, or the you are of these drones. Uh.
You're also looking at policy usage policy, which would say
that the public's representatives should be deciding when these things
(06:12):
are used or how they're used, not by police departments themselves. Okay,
so elected officials should make transparent decisions. Yeah, although although
that to me is also a terrifying thought. The people
subject to I don't know, bribery are the ones now
making the decisions. No offense representatives, but you know that
you are subject to bribery, not that you necessarily take it. Potentially, Well,
(06:38):
they're subject to it, whether or not they go through
with it attempts. Right. There's also abuse prevention and accountability,
so this is use of domestic drones would be subject
to some kind of audit or at least an oversight
program or committee. So they just can't go willing nearly
(06:59):
use their drones. And the last one is weapons, and
they're saying both lethal and non lethal those should both
not be on the drones. Yeah, and that's an interesting
point too. I think those are great ideas, great proposals. Um,
it's an interesting point about non lethal weapons because as
most people who have some real world experience with non
(07:21):
lethal weapons, No, they're not always non lethal. Something can
always go wrong. Yes, the human heart can give away,
for can give way for a lot of reasons, and
electricity is usually one of those things, or large amounts
of current like tasers. Right. Uh. So, there was an
interesting legal case that we found reported by Vice, which
(07:44):
said that a federal judge has ruled that the f
a A has not made any legally binding rules against
commercial drones. And this happened when the f A sued
a guy named Raphael Perker, the first person the agency
had tried to find for flying a drone commercially. Now,
some of uh, the listeners out there may be familiar
(08:07):
with a promotional video that Amazon put out, right, do
you remember this one that? Yes, the one where Amazon
just proposed to be using or they decided, hey, it
wouldn't be cool if we use drones to send you
all your stuff, so you know, maybe our drones won't
throw your packages the way some of our employees you, oh,
just kidding, sorry, uh, or they might be worse because
(08:28):
they would rebel at some point. Yeah, so okay, the
the idea though, the f a A has always said
that flying a drone for a commercial business is illegal,
but the judge didn't agree. A guy named Patrick Garritty
Garrit D judge with the National Transportation Safety Board, said
(08:51):
there are no laws against it. You know, go wild,
you guys. So the f A attempted to define raphaelp
ten thousand dollars after you used a drone to film
a commercial at the University of Virginia, and he fought
the case, and he said the f A never regulated
(09:12):
model aircraft, and uh that it's basis for making them
illegal was a two thousand seven policy notice and it
wasn't legally binding. So apparently his argument goes, the f
a A is not yet taken the required public notice
necessary to make it an official regulation. So at this point,
(09:32):
what that means, man, is it's the wild West for
commercial drones. We could do like that Oprah thing with
a car. You get a drone, You get a drone.
You get a drone, Matt, I think we should buy
a drone. Good, you want to We could get some
cool aerial shots. You want to do some more roof shooting, Yeah,
like a little drone. Yeah, okay, al right, well I'll
(09:52):
do that. I'll do a mini drone, a mini drone
because somehow that will be less bad because it's smaller. Well,
and then used to get swarms of mini drones that
all interact with each other. It's so weird when we
think about this, unarmed, unmanned vehicles. So we've we've given
the most up to date information about the present of drones.
(10:14):
One thing that might surprise a lot of people, is
that the concept of drones. It's not recent. It's actually
very old, this whole unmanned attacking observation thing. Right. Oh yeah,
way back in eighteen forty nine, Austria attacked Venice with balloons.
There are balloons loaded with explosives. They're not necessarily drones,
(10:36):
but they're unmanned vehicles in the air or unmanned air contraptions, right. Yeah.
And then like just a few decades later, uh, the U. S.
Civil War had sorry, not the whole Civil War. During
the U. S. Civil War forces in in the States,
we're working on balloons in eighteen sixty two, they were
(10:58):
trying to use them for reconnaissance and bombing operations. And
that's a that's a very interesting story, Matt. Honestly, I'm
surprised there has not been a film made about the
Civil Wars balloon brigades. That's war films about everything else.
But I don't know they I guess you could make
it a catchy topic or a catchy title for that.
(11:20):
I'm not sure what it would be. A band of balloons,
I'm done. I thought of that earlier, Okay, but those
are just you know, those are just balloons, and granted
you can't really pilot a balloon very well. But there, uh,
there were aircraft that were older too, right, Yeah, there
were some of the first radio controlled planes were brought
(11:43):
about right after World War One, and that was a M.
Lows radio control techniques that were used for those, and
it's really cool. Actually it was supposed to be used
to fight against some of the Zeppelins um of World
War One. Right after that, they're like, oh, man, let's
find a way to take down these Zeppelins. Let's make
(12:04):
some radio control aircraft they can fly into them and
explode those suckers. And they never Actually, probably a lot
of that is because of the Hindenburg explosion and the
way technology turned away from Zeppelin's. Okay, that makes sense,
and figured out how easy it is to make one explode. Yeah,
it's a shame because wouldn't be fantastic to live in
(12:25):
a world that had Zeppelins. Why why some I have
to screw that up for everyone else? They're pretty energy efficient. Man, Yeah,
you gotta play BioShock Infinite, Man, I should I should
play BioShock Infinite or just rewatch Fringe the uh so
later we know that ultimately these flying bomb concepts or
(12:48):
these aerial torpedoes became the ancestors of cruise missiles, right,
And they learned to remotely or they learned to control
these using as you said, radio signals. Uh. The famous
automatic airplane was first foamed for representatives of the U.
S Army in nineteen seventeen. Uh. But if we fast forward,
(13:14):
we find some of the first uses of remote surveillance
by the US. All day was attached a camera to
a kite. Yeah. I guess it's a little dramatic. Well, yeah,
but that's honestly, that's how you I guess begin m. Well,
we've got this kite. Hey, we've got a lightweight camera.
Let's do it. And then in uh In and in
(13:37):
Vietnam between sixty five and seventy three, uh, the US
Army had been able to test some of these some
of these surveillance concepts, right. Because you know, it's really
there was a really dodgy position here where there were
areas of Southeast Asia where the US was not officially involved. However,
(14:03):
as it came to light earlier in some other episodes
we've done, this official involvement was not necessarily involvement in practice, right,
So we know that these monitoring aspects, right. This this
application of what they called an electronic battlefield to map
(14:24):
the entire theater with sensors, uh, probably changed the way
that we think about designating or guiding bombers today. So
a really interesting thing happened here is that after they
while they were doing these experiments, the Air Force started
(14:46):
populating the region, right, but not with regular planes. Yeah,
they were populating the skies with these remotely piloted vehicles
or RPVs. And it's kind of neat they've had this evolution. Okay,
So there there are these three overlapping phases that drones
have gone through. The first drone is the drone as
(15:08):
a target, which is kind of interesting. That's from nineteen ten,
the nineteen tens, let's say, until the nineteen fifties. Then
you've got the drone as a sensor, something that can
be in the air, that can detect something and send
it send that signal back to somebody else. That's around
the nineteen sixties to the nineteen nineties. Then you've got
the drone as the weapon, and that's the most recent
(15:30):
from the two thousands, the new modern warfare drones up
until today, and so it's gone over this large evolution,
and now my question has been, Yeah, what's the next evolution? Ah,
what's the future of drones? Like a self a completely
(15:52):
self running drone, A drone that can on its own
just monitor the skies. It can be the sensor and
the weapon and the controller. A solar powered drone maybe
uh high altitude that's able to somehow derive enough energy
from solar panels to uh continually adjust it's its flight
(16:17):
or its orbit depending on where it is relative to
the bug limit, and then also be able to continue
with its seem speed maybe adjust its flight. Right now,
so far as we know, there are no solar panels
that are efficient enough to give that sort of flight
in a reasonable way. The kind of solar panels we
(16:37):
have to build now are would take up so much
surface area that it's tough to imagine the thing actually
working in any realistic capacity. It would be one of
those like Rich Countries toys that we built just this
show that we could do it. Unless unless you could
use some other form of energy to get it. Maybe
(16:59):
let's say it's an space orbiting Yeah, can't use enough
energy with secondary propulsion system getting to get it up there.
Then just use a solar to run all of its systems.
Yeah or yeah, and maybe just powers enough power so
they can prevent orbit decay. A bad idea X thirty seven.
You guys, that stuff is crazy. Please check it out
(17:21):
if you haven't seen it before. I I routinely search
news for that and uh and trade journals just to
see if we ever figure out what it was doing.
Whether there are some great guesses but nothing confirmed. Now, Matt,
the idea of drones, especially with the threat of impinging
on privacy, has always been kind of a passionate issue
for you. So I want to ask you some questions
(17:43):
too before we move into I want to end it
on a little bit of maybe good news, um. But
before we do that, let's get through the really messy stuff. UM.
We talked earlier about drones and war, and you asked
about the are you mentioned rather the distancing effect of
(18:04):
of taking people's lives. I do know that there's been
some research on PTSD in drone operators drone pilots, and
they do suffer PTSD. UM. They are aware that these
are human lives, that it's not just a video game. However, um,
one of the things that I think a lot of
(18:25):
us as civilians uh don't know about with the with
piloting a drone is that the lag time is crazy.
It's if it's a video game, it's a horrible video game. Also,
you know you're potentially killing innocent people, right, So I
agree with you that the distancing is very dangerous because
(18:47):
although people do experience PTSD, the I don't know if
experiencing it that remotely is um is as uh as
much of a what's a good word deterrent maybe to
(19:07):
killing in the future. I don't know, man, I have
no answers, but it just seems like an issue that
we should at least talk about. So what what draws
you to? What? What makes this idea is so um
so close to you? You're very passionate about this. Well,
I've been playing video games on my whole life, and
in most of those video games you are killing something
(19:29):
or eliminating something. In many of the ones that I've
played for let's say my college years and video gaming,
were killing human beings. And there is there's an extreme
detachment because you know, obviously it's not real. You know
that it's not real. Then I can just imagine children
(19:50):
who have grown up with the technology with that playing
Call of Duty when you were seven or eight years old,
even though you're not supposed to having that simulation, and
and transferring it to now you're eighteen nineteen, fresh out
of high school, going into the military, and now you're
playing a flight simulator game where you're killing people. Um,
(20:11):
I just wonder how that's going to affect this, like
the psyche of the effect psychologically these younger people. Do
you think that people growing up around video games have
a lack of empathy unless Yeah, I can't speak to that.
I have no idea. I believe that I have lots
(20:32):
of empathy, and I don't do much else besides play
video games. So I don't know. All right, I'm not
gonna blow up your spot, but you are. You are
full of fascinating hobbies, and I don't know, I think
you're beating yourself up. Well, most of them include an
Xbox controller. But no, I hear it, I hear you.
What what about drones and privacy? Oh, that's that's a
(20:54):
whole another can of worms there. Yeah, drones and privacy, man,
Come on that, Uh, there's an expectation privacy that is
always debated, right and then and past court rulings, at
least in the United States have said that you cannot
have an expectation of privacy in certain areas like you're
(21:15):
on the street. You're walking on a public street. You know,
I'm sorry, No matter how much of a diva or
celebrity you may be, you cannot tell people not to
take your picture or look at you, because, um, until
somebody totally iron Rand's the entire country. Anyone can walk
on the sidewalk if I mean, if you have to
(21:37):
be completely anonymous that they make those tinted windows for
you and enjoy it while you're in the car, then sorry, right,
And then there's Uh. It's interesting because when we talk
about the idea of privacy, what I think is regardless
of um, someone's political leanings, right or personal ideologies. The
(22:00):
you know, I made I made a bad iron Rand
joke just a second ago. But if we look at
it on the other side, then the idea of a
collectivist socialist society, right, which would be the opposite of objectivism, uh,
would still have these huge threats to privacy. You know,
we have read a lot of you guys listening out there.
(22:21):
I've read it too, and one of the big things
is that Winston has uh no privacy. He has um
I guess uh spoiler alert, but a minor spoiler. He
thinks he has privacy, but he doesn't really right. And
and this this idea for anyone who is for anyone
(22:42):
who is wants to or inclined to say, oh, your
political beliefs differ from mine, or on this issue we disagree.
I don't think that we should let people be as
easily divided because there's one thing that I have noticed
about the the fight for personal privacy, at least in
(23:05):
the United States, and that's the it's getting people from
all bents of polit politics, religion, uh, any other ideology.
I don't know. Pepsi drinkers, coat drinkers coming together. Privacy.
It's one of those things that it's going it will be.
We're going to fight for it as long as we
can until it's just completely gone. And at some point
(23:26):
it's just going to be gone. Yeah, I also believe
the erosion privacy is inevitable. When that's you know, we've
talked about this before. It's it's if you think about it,
the the existence of privacy has been sort of short
lived for a long time too. But now that we've
talked about some of the darker issues there, we'd also
(23:47):
like to hear from you guys um when you think
the future of drones is. But before we go out,
we wanted to end it on a little bit of
an up note and talk about some non military uses
of drones, because it's not all, you know, accidentally killing civilians.
It's not all targeting people with no due process or
(24:08):
UH police surveillance state stuff. There's also the possibility that
UH agriculture could benefit from drones. For instance, the you know,
the idea that it could help farmers do better land management,
increase overall yields, um most large farms in the United
States and rural areas. So as long as the drones
(24:32):
are less than foreigner feet high, they're legal for the
f a A. So yeah, police officers will be using those.
So put your paranoia hats on and enjoy the idea
of police officers flying drones over your house at all
times of night. Yes, they're probably there right now, can
you hear them? Right? And if you saw our earlier
(24:53):
episodes on militarization, of police. Then you know that maybe
that's not the best example of non military use. I'm sorry, Matt, Well,
it's okay. Here's here's the counterpoint. There are surveillance cameras
all over the place where you live. I don't care
where you live. There are probably surveillance cameras, even if
they're just in the small stores. Yeah, even if it's
(25:16):
just those, they are. They're all over the place. But
here in Atlanta, there on the streets, they're on traffic, Yeah,
they're everywhere. There in our building, there are a couple
that can probably see us right now from outside the studio.
It's it's one of those things again that we're going
to have to live with for the rest of our lives.
(25:37):
And now there are these things that will just be
flying over us. And you know, they might be the
security from your mall, some drones hanging around the mall.
That might be police officers looking for drugs. Who knows.
I'm so glad you brought up drugs, my friend, because
another thing that drones can do is be operated by villains.
(25:59):
Criminal is by nair do wells and wrap scallions according
to call of duty. Was it black too? I think?
And the entire idea. Sorry for all the video game talking,
and it just reminds you video against so much, the
idea that hackers would take over the military drones and
start a war. Okay, I can see that. So because
(26:22):
drones are hard for people to spot, especially given the size.
So what if you start go taking your drone over
the border to drop off drugs or something like that?
They there To my knowledge at this point, there's not
an unmanned vehicle that somebody could buy and then used
(26:43):
to fly over people as in human trafficking with humans
as cargo. But a couple of keys wouldn't be unmanned, then,
would it. No, it wouldn't. It would be unsteered p
i P. Piloted in person. There you go. I don't
know what the well, you know, they make these the
massive I think they're one fourth scale airplanes, the remote
(27:05):
control airplanes. I wonder if that's being used right now
as drug trafficking, because that's essentially a drone slightly different,
but it's it's happened before. That's that I think probably
in some border areas it's probably really good work around,
But there's there's got to be a sweet spot because
(27:27):
the US Mexico border is monitored pretty closely, so I
think they have an eye on the airspace. I don't
know how you would get around that. But in other
borders that are a bit more porous, like the um
like the opium trade in Central Asia, right, Uh, those
borders are so porous that it might not be necessary
(27:51):
to fly a drone. You might just need to know
the right guy and just want Isn't that how it
always is? And Uh, the idea of how hard certain
agencies or countries are working to actually stop the drug
trade is another episode that we could do. Um. But yeah,
so so this could be this could be something for criminals. UM.
(28:13):
One one potential thing here for national security walks may
recognize that in two thousand eleven, a terrorist named Rezwan
Firdaus Uh excuse me, f E r d a u
s Uh plotted to bomb US targets by putting explosives
on a drone UM emphasis there on planned. Uh. And
(28:35):
then there's another example right in Brazil. Yeah, in a
Brazilian prison in two thousand twelve caught a drone helicopter
that had cell phones just it was full of cell
phones that were meant for inmates. In the prison and
they stopped it by I think one of the one
of the police grabbed onto the helicopter legs and I
pulled it down to the ground triumphantly. Um. And then
(28:58):
the rest of the the officers they're just jumped on
and beat it up pretty hard. I'm pretty sure that's alright. Well,
take our word for it. I haven't seen the made
for TV movie yet, but I'll take your word for
it for now. Uh. There's also the idea of weather investigation,
and this is pretty cool, uh that you could you know,
there's there's always a huge difficulty for people who want
(29:21):
to investigate natural disasters and catastrophic weather phenomenon meteorological phenomenon,
and that is of course that you could die driving
into a tornado, that you could die standing at the
edge of the ocean with some sensors waiting for the tsunami. Yea.
Even the tank I forget the name of the show,
(29:42):
but the guy who has the tank that drops to
the ground, it's still extremely dangerous. So these drones offer
away potentially to investigate tropical storms, and NASA began experimenting
with this in two thousand thirteen. Officially, Uh, this is
a little bit different from a tempts to see if
cloud seating could alter hurricanes, which was, as far as
(30:05):
we know, unsuccessful. But they used uh these big, big
drones called Global Hawk drones. Uh. Naval wingspan is wide
is a seven thirty seven. Uh, they're huge. They're extremely
cool too. I highly recommend you do a YouTube search
for those Global Hawk So they fly them through hurricanes
(30:26):
with a bunch of sensors on and I hope they
make it. Yeah. Uh, that's something. The only thing they
track though, right, Yes, you can also track wildlife. Uh.
There are uvs that are set up with cameras and
GPS and they're able to track wildlife. So let's say
you've got maybe a group of giraffe or elephants or
(30:48):
something you want to track and see how if there
are any poachers that are endangering them or something, or
maybe you just want to look at their eating habits.
Just get these drones follow these things and uh, man,
you're set up. It's pretty great because you don't have
to be on the ground looking for them at all times. Um.
And they can wear tracking colors to make it easier,
but they don't have to with this technology, which is
(31:09):
pretty cool. I think that's just a fantastic point because
the well, one of the things that often haunts me
about the age in which we live is that it
is possible that one day, you know, Matt, you could
have grandchildren and they won't believe you when you tell
them that animals used to just run a while, run
(31:32):
around in the wild. You know, that's to me, that's frightening. Uh.
The so the anything that could save that, it would
would be amazing. I mean, not to not to be
preachy again, it's just, uh, it's fascinating when you read
the theories from various various researchers, paleontologists and so on
(31:55):
who say that we are in the middle of a
mass extinction. It's interesting wonder which animals are gonna make
it out and humans are could be on the topic
blot too, h Yeah, masters of disasters, other huge storms
they could look at right of course we're talking um,
we we're talking sand storms, We're talking so nami's, we're
(32:16):
talking uh tornadoes. Oh I just learned this yesterday. This
is a weird wind man. There's a word that it's
it's a weird word. H a b oo b huboob
I think it's pronounced Arabic word that describes these gigantic
sandstorms that can happen in desert areas. I was watching
(32:37):
this video of this guy driving into one and it
starts he's driving as daytime. As he's driving, you see
people driving away from this massive storm, the headlights out,
and then when he gets in there, it's pitch black
because there's just so much crazy stuff happening. Good to
have a drone there. Um other things we mentioned forest
rangers tracking fires. Wildfires huge problem in California, right, Yeah,
(33:01):
well a huge problem all over the place, and it's
a huge It would be a great advantage to have
a drone. They wouldn't have to worry about a lot
of smoking inhalation or any of the other things. Yeah,
it's huge. Oh and another point, you know their convicts
who were on the fire, the wildfire teams out west.
Really Yeah? Interesting? Yep? Is that that seems rather mad?
(33:27):
MAXI in to me. They're volunteers. I don't know what
the circumstances of volunteer service are. Maybe they get time off,
but how much of that you know? Uh, that's a
cool that's an interesting idea. We'll have to dig in.
Another thing we said, uh, this is another future thing
that we mentioned earlier was that this makes some fantastic
(33:49):
filming way more affordable. Oh yeah, Chandler, one of the
guys that works here, a how stuff works, made a
music video that featured a drone and it was a
cool experience, excellent footage. It looks like you spent several
million dollars, but it was just the day with a
guy who can run a drone and maybe you're done. Wow,
(34:14):
all right, let's get four hundred dollars. Well, yeah, we
can get one here. They're not that expensive. I bet
an ol. Can you can pilot a drone? Can't you?
Oh yeah, you can totally pilot drones. That's right. Our
super producer, Noel is always no we uh we try
to give you a shout out every show, and we
didn't mention it in the beginning. All right, okay, all right,
well thank you. Know you're too you're far too kind.
(34:37):
Another thing is the oil and gas monitoring. So offshore
oil rigs are incredibly risky and cartoonishly expensive endeavors. First,
you have to explore to find the oil, and increasingly
you have to do some wild science, some mad science
to get the oil out of the ground in a
(34:57):
way that is safe and use a deep drilling. When
one of these goes up, or when something goes wrong
with these anywhere in the pipeline, it's very bad business,
very very bad business. And so having the drone to
monitor that, which you know, I'm surprised that hasn't happened
yet because so many not just on oil platforms, but
(35:18):
so many pipelines run through politically dangerous areas, right, yeah,
it's huge advantage. You've probably seen some videos or at
least clips of drones, underwater drones that are used by
the oil industry to check out their rigging, check out
the pipelines, and sometimes even catching glimpses of scary looking creatures.
(35:42):
Have you ever seen those which ones? It's just it's
they're unmanned submarines that are used to patrol the areas.
And there are a couple awesome clips that you know,
I go on lively all the time right right, as
you should too if you're eighteen or older. They're not
paying us to say that, but yeah, there's some really
interesting cliffs there of just underwater sea creatures that are
(36:05):
usually later identified, but sometimes they're horrifyingly ambiguous. Nice. Uh yeah,
and that's that goes to one of our last points,
which was one of our first points, was that drones
are not just restricted to the air around us in
the immediate environment. They can go into space. Uh, they
(36:26):
can be remotely operated underwater. There'll be digger drones. There
was this movie, and I'd love for one of our
listeners to to help me figure out which one this
was where. I think it was called Screamers, but I'm
not sure it was about. It was a sci fi
for little robots that were in the ground. Yeah, do
you remember that one? Uh? The that film kind of
(36:49):
made me think of underground drones was. I don't know
if it'll bear rewatch. Somebody warned me, because it's kind
of sad when you see a movie that hasn't aged well,
you know what I mean. I don't remember if I
liked it because of the coolness of the technology or
because actually like the story. But I remember liking it,
so I might have to at least watch the first
(37:10):
thirty minutes. Yeah, or sometimes you can just watch the
trailer on YouTube and that I'll tell you if you're
in all right doing it? Uh, so while we head
off to do that, Thank you guys so much for
checking out our episodes on drones. We have some new
videos coming up as well. Uh. We don't want to
ruin this surprise too much, but we've been doing a
(37:32):
lot of government stuff lately, and our show covers everything
that someone may or may not want you to know.
So we're gonna be throwing some curve balls in the
next few weeks. Uh, be ready, I don't know it.
Should we drop a hint? We can drop a hint
real the power of becoming race. Do with that what
(37:53):
you will enjoy yourselves, and we'll see you next time
here on Stuff they Don't want you to Know. In
the meantime, you would write to us on Facebook we
are conspiracy Stuff. There. You can write to us on
Twitter at conspiracy Stuff is our handle. If you don't
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go to our website Stuff they Don't want you to
Know dot com And the last thing you can do
(38:14):
is write us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at how Stuff Works dot com. From more on
this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com
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Noel Brown
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