alt Hacker NewsWhen everyone started working on 3D-printed guns, I was sitting here thinking that if it comes to actual revolution, one is going to need anti-tank/anti-air a whole lot more than (relatively easy to acquire) small arms... Nice to see movement on this front
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It’s not about combatting the state and more of supplanting the state. Where the state has abandoned the streets to crime a local neighborhood watch can pick up the slack. People can then pay their neighborhood watch and vote to cut their local government taxes. The state is strangely ok with a high degree of street level violence in that it mostly affects those without power and provides a continuing justification for increased state powers - actually fixing the problem would undermine the justification. An example of this would be in South Africa where private security is playing an ever increasing role in policing. Once private security becomes large enough they become a real threat to the government as they are usually better organized and suffer less corruption.
"Nice to see movement on this front…"
Good luck. Hoping to fight off tyranny, instead some nutters will probably down a commercial flight.
I read a paper that was published by the US military about twenty years ago and a line that I'm going to paraphrase struck out at me: "The home made cruise missile will be the AK-47 of the 21st century.
I found this paper when I was reading about that guy in NZ who was trying to build a missile at home for $20k in around 2003-2004.
The cost for what he was trying to achieve is likely below $5k now, if you don't include access to machines like 3d printers that are pretty ubiquitous now.
In the American context, hopefully it never comes to an actual revolution, because life for everyone will be much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better afterward. We should do what we can to avoid one, especially because while it's fun to fantasize about your side being the one to start a revolution, there's no reason to think that the other side won't also think the same way and maybe they'll beat your side and make your life really, really awful.
Secondarily, there's a lot to say about anti-tank and anti-air power in the context of a "revolution". Most of it is pure fantasy including the idea that 3D printed missiles are going to start striking US strike aircraft at 40k feet in the equally absurd fantasy that those aircraft are going to just be bombing American cities and towns and countrysides. It's really just pure Internet-driven fantasy to think that these scenarios are plausible or the least bit desirable in any fashion.