Topic: Todd Humphreys

The hosts discuss the high rate of gun ownership in Switzerland as a counterpoint to American gun control debates. The conversation shifts to a Congressional hearing on domestic drones featuring Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas. Humphreys is criticized for his ties to the military-industrial complex and his advocacy for encrypted GPS signals.

During a Congressional hearing, Professor Todd Humphreys suggests that drones could eventually be used for commercial tasks like delivering burritos to doorsteps. The hosts mock this trivialization of surveillance technology. The discussion also covers the FAA's plan to accelerate the adoption of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into national airspace by 2015.

The Department of Homeland Security recently invited researchers from the University of Texas at Austin to demonstrate GPS spoofing on a drone. The hosts argue this public demonstration is part of a psychological operation to justify the development of unhijackable, autonomous drones.

Researcher Todd Humphreys is linked to Cornell University's unmanned systems programs, which are sponsored by major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. The goal of this research is to create autonomous aircraft capable of making their own "kill decisions" using advanced vision-based navigation and facial recognition.