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DARPA Wants Ideas On Weaponizing Off-the-Shelf Tech (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes: The good news is that some of today's most advanced technologies are cheap and easy to find, both online and on the shelves of major chain stores. That's also the bad news, according to DARPA. The defense agency is nervous that criminals and terrorists will turn off-the-shelf products into tools and devices to harm citizens or disrupt American military operations. On Friday, DARPA announced a new project called 'Improv' that invites technologists to propose designs for military applications or weaponry built exclusively from commercial software, open source code, and readily available materials. The program's goal is to demonstrate how easy it is to transform everyday technology into a system or device that threatens national security.
See also this story about transforming into weapons items commonly found in the purportedly secure area of U.S. airports.
Any engineer worth their salt could disrupt a city for under $500;
- A hammer and nails can disable emergency response vehicles.
Self lighting charcoal and a road flare can set a house on fire.
Combine the two, and you can burn down a city.
- Most cities have a small number of major traffic arteries that could be shut down with a similar number of people armed with rocks.
- Drop a bag of flour on the freeway and call in a chemical spill.
And there are far, far more effective things I can think of that I'm not willing to post on a public forum.
Once you start to think about how vulnerable we are, you realize that terrorists must be extremely rare.