![\"DIY\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/diy.jpg?w=620\")
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It started innocuously enough. The prime minister-for-life never missed the annual \u201cLiberation Day\u201d parade. With the drums and platoons thundering, nobody noticed as the quadcopter, barely larger than a sparrow, floated down toward the dais, its faint whirr drowned out by the industrial machinery rolling by in formation.<\/p>\n
It was at once a child\u2019s birthday present and the summation of millennia of military science. A flying machine postulated long ago by Michelangelo, now equipped with a vial of biological toxin, a GPS chip, microprocessors, and facial recognition software.<\/p>\n
The attackers had uploaded the prime minister\u2019s face to the quadcopter\u2019s onboard processor<\/a>, given it a rough search grid where they expected the target to be located, and then let it loose. The drone found its target, quickly zoomed within a few inches of the man\u2019s face, deployed its payload, and self-destructed. The prime minister and his coterie were dead within the hour.<\/p>\n His remaining lieutenants were at each other\u2019s throats by the end of the day. Their respective clans lobbed accusations at one another on social media, live-streamed protests, and employed smartphone-wielding teenagers as spotters.<\/p>\n By week\u2019s end the country was awash in blood, thrown into a full-scale civil war. Community centers equipped by aid organizations with 3D printers quickly turned into weapons-printing armories<\/a>. An enterprising college student, sent away to the University of London by her urban middle-class parents, translated a copy of the U.S. Army\u2019s Ranger Handbook<\/a> into the local dialect and uploaded it to a well-known file-sharing website clandestinely built by locals on top of Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n