China & Russia will use drones ‘size of insects' to spy on West & commit untraceable murders, ex-Google futurist warns

The Sun

26-05-2025

KILLER camouflage drones the size of insects could be used by Russia and China to commit untraceable murders, an ex-Google futurist warns.
Tracey Follows, who has also worked with Amazon and Meta, warned they could even carry deadly pathogens and be used to spy on the UK.
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And it is a prediction which is a chilling echo of the Black Mirror episode "Hated in the Nation".
The near future sci-fi show envisioned of world where robot bees designed to pollinate flowers could be hijacked to commit murder.
The Future of You author told The Sun: 'In time, one expects a drone to have the situational awareness to carry out an attack autonomously without a human in the loop.
'The big question is what's the payload on these drones, what are you actually attaching to the drone?
'Increasingly, over the last four or five years, I've been reading about viruses and how you can potentially attach a pathogen to these sorts of weapons.
'So not only can you identify somebody personally, you can then attack them with a virus, for example.'
Terrifyingly, she warned it could open the door for rogue nations like Russia to assassinate targets on UK soil without leaving a trace.
Moscow was infamously accused of poisoning ex-Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury in 2018.
Skirpal and his daughter, Yulia, survived but local woman Dawn Sturgess was inadvertently killed when she sprayed what she thought was perfume on her wrists. Russia denies any involvement.
Before that, Skripal was convicted of spying for Britain in 2006 and jailed for 13 years.
Watch terrifying vision of secret Chinese drone mothership that can launch vast AI killer swarms - as it's set to take to skies in days
But in future, drone attacks could make it impossible to identify a culprit.
Follows, who founded consultancy service Futuremade, said: 'If you can camouflage these micro weapons, and if you've got technology that's so advanced that the enemy country doesn't know what's happened, you can't really trace exactly what's happened.
'If you're adding a virus as a payload onto a drone, it could be a completely new virus.
'You may not know what that virus is in your country and it's attacked somebody individually because it's autonomously targeted and activated against that person."
Follows, ranked in the world's Top 30 Futurists by Global Gurus, added: 'I don't think it's just Russia and China that one has to worry about.
'I think it's anybody, in any country, in any region who is starting to integrate AI into the military and into these lethal weapons.'
Drone technology continues to advance at an alarming rate as the AI explosion shows no signs of slowing down.
This month, chilling images emerged of a new Chinese 'mothership' drone carrier that can launch swarms of mini-drones.
The small drones would then work together to 'swarm' enemies. State broadcaster CCTV said its inaugural mission will launch on Monday.
Chinese drone carrier that can launch deadly swarms
by James Moules, Foreign News Reporter
A NEW Chinese drone carrier that can launch deadly swarms against enemy targets could take to the skies within days.
This unmanned "drone mother ship" is expected to take off for its first mission as part of a terrifying drive to boost the Chinese air force's combat capabilities.
Named Jiu Tian - meaning "nine heavens" - this unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) would add to China's ability to "swarm" enemies.
This tactic involves releasing vast swarms of drones that work together to overwhelm enemy air defence systems.
A video widely circulated on X shows a visualisation of the aircraft's capabilities - demonstrating its ability to release vast swarms of deadly drones.
China's state broadcaster CCTV confirmed its inaugural mission on Monday.
The jet-powered drone will start by undergoing a series of tests before it is fully deployed by the Chinese air force.
Boasting a carrying capacity of up to six tonnes of ammunition and small-sized drones, the UAV has a maximum range of 4,350 miles and altitude of 50,000 feet.
Swarms of drones, including kamikaze UAVs, can be released from both sides of the aircraft's belly.
Terrifyingly, it is reportedly able to fly above many medium-range defence systems currently deployed around the world.
Follows warned that not only are drones becoming better at identifying targets, but people are simply becoming easier to track down.
She said: 'I spoke to Erik Prince. He's the biggest kind of private military contractor in the world, and the founder of Blackwater.
'Among other things, he co-founded a company called Unplugged, which brings privacy to your mobile phone. So it doesn't collect any data.'
She added: 'So he's very aware of communications technologies and how they can be used for surveillance.
'He talked to me about the way in which drones can do precision targeting now if the data is available on your AI, a sort of advertising ID, if you like.
'So if you've got stuff on your phone and you've got an identification on your phone, if you're carrying that with you, the drone can identify that and that can be set to attack.'
As technology continues to advance rapidly, so too do security and privacy concerns.
Follows warns that drones may also pave the way to record personal conversations without consent.
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What happened to Sergei Skripal?
FORMER Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in his adopted hometown of Salisbury in March 2018.
The nerve attack, which also poisoned his daughter Yulia, sparked a diplomatic row between the UK and Russia.
Sergei was a Russian military intelligence officer who was convicted in 2006 of spying for the United Kingdom.
Skripal was accused by Russian prosecutors of working for MI6 in the late 1990s and passing secrets to the British using a James Bond-style spy rock.
At the time, he was serving in the Russian Ground Forces and was nicknamed "the Spy with the Louis Vuitton bag" because of his taste for luxury goods.
In 2006 he was released in a spy swap and moved to the UK where he settled in Salisbury.
Sergei's wife Liudmila died from cancer in 2012 and in 2017 he lost his older brother and his 43-year-old son Alexandr.
The ex-KGB spy and his daughter Yulia, 36, were exposed to a nerve agent and fell gravely ill after having a pizza lunch in Salisbury on Sunday, March 4, 2018.
They were found slumped on a bench in a "catatonic state" and spent weeks critically ill in hospital.
Anti-terror police investigated the poisoning and discovered the agent used was military-grade Novichok, made in Russia.
Russia denied that their special services were involved in the attack, which sparked a diplomatic spat and the expulsion of embassy staff.
Police believe the pair were exposed to the nerve agent after it was left on the front door of his home.
Worse, they could even film us without us being aware we're being filmed at all.
That would therefore spark a race with the technology used to detect them.
Asked if drones the size of flies will one day be able to film us, she added: 'They probably will be able to, yes.
'DARPA (a US military research agency) used to have a program called SHRIMP and they put it out as a competition for researchers, engineers and computer scientists to come back and say, how could you do these tiny micro drones?
'The problem was with the energy as they're so small. You can't get the energy in them for them to be transported for a long enough distance or carry out the actions you want them to.
'So they had this short range micro micro robotics program. And that was in 2019, and it's all gone very quiet since then.
'I'm always suspicious when things go quiet because I know that it's going into sort of patent territory.
'People are working on things in the research process, and then something will come out. There is absolutely no reason why they can't be doing short range conversation recording."