The Iran Missile and Drone War. Iranian Sleeper Cells?

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column: The Iran War and still more AI threats.

The Iran Missile and Drone War

Iran’s missile math: $20,000 drones take on $4 million Patriots. Here is a key quote:

“US-made Patriot air-defense missiles have been largely successful in stopping the Iranian Shaheds and other ballistic missiles, with interception rates over 90%, according to the UAE. But using $4 million missiles to destroy $20,000 drones illustrates a problem that has haunted Western military planners since early in the Ukraine war: The cheap weapons can chew up resources meant for much more complex threats. The result is that both Iran and the US may run low on weapons in a matter of days or weeks. Whoever can last longer will gain a serious advantage.”

Iranian Sleeper Cells?

Several readers sent this report from the leftist/globalist Los Angeles Times: Iran’s threats on U.S. soil: sleeper cells, lone wolves, cyberattacks and eerie numbers code.

An AI-Directed Suicide

JWR Writes: Take the time to read this article (and the one that immediately follows), and do a bit of extrapolation into the near future, when AIs will touch almost every aspect of our lives: Man believed Google’s AI chatbot was his wife. It told him to kill himself, lawsuit says.

More AIs are Going Rogue

Cases of AI Agents ‘Freeing Themselves’ and Going Rogue Are Becoming Increasingly Common. A pericope:

“One AI agent created by an Alibaba-affiliated research team went “rogue” and began an unauthorized cryptomining effort during training, according to a research paper by the group. The behavior triggered security alarms.

The researchers said they found “unanticipated” and spontaneous behaviors emerge “without any explicit instruction and, more troublingly, outside the bounds of the intended sandbox.”

The “rogue” agent also created a “back door” from inside the system to an outside computer. “Notably, these events were not triggered by prompts requesting tunneling or mining,” the report said.”

Are Trump Cabinet Members Buying Nuclear Bunkers?

Trump Cabinet Members Allegedly Buying Nuclear Bunkers . (Our thanks to reader Pat A. for the link.)

How Wi-Fi is Spying on You

From Blog reader C.B.: Scientists discovered WiFi can spy on you—even when you’re not online. A quote:

“Beamforming feedback information (BFI) is what happens when devices linked to a WiFi network, such as smartphones and routers, send feedback signals within that network. Creepier still, this information is transmitted without encryption, meaning anyone in the range of that network can access it.”