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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

EMPs are generally much harder to make than one would expect unless you plan on setting off nukes, which generally pisses everyone off.

The particular problem with organized resistance movements is the ever present monitoring of everything everywhere. This is where AI has a one up on us meat bags. When everything you do is logged and correlated the leaders of the resistance may find it hard to hide.

Simply put Ukraine is but a slight taste of the future horrors of war. Once you start mass producing things like smart mines (think something like a drone with a camera and a bomb) and just tell it to 'kill humans' your EM noise doesn't even matter, it's a stand alone unit. Things like this will just sit around a few day and catch you moving and then blow up on you.

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I mean explosively pumped generators aren't new and were invented in the 50s. The hardest part is getting a fast enough explosive, however it doesn't take that much effort or chemistry knowledge to make supersonic explosives if someone needed it. And neodynium magnets are pretty common consumer products these day.

It is harder that just blowing stuff up, but when one side is using killer robots and other advanced electronics tech it doesn't seem like much effort in comparison. We already see criminal elements making guns and drugs and narco submarines, a fast explosive and magnets doesn't seem beyond reach to me.

it's much cheaper to defend against EMP (Faraday shield) than to make EMPs

the fact that EMP blasts are not used in Ukraine, by both sides, to defend against drones also shows its not such a good idea

I think the main reason we don't see the use of EMP weapons is because of collateral damage. Ukraine isn't fighting from a position of little to no electronics, they still rely on radios for communication, radar for enemy detection, their own drone supplies, they are near civilian infrastructure, and they have neighboring countries that would not be happy to get random strong EM noise even if its far enough away to not cause any real damage.

Maybe smaller scale DIY EMPs wouldn't be as effective as I think, they would have to be pretty close to their target to do real damage to non-radio devices, however I think collateral damage is the biggest reason we don't see them.

Drones are weak and fragile enough already that it just easier to shoot or blow them up rather than try to lob a grenade sized EMP up near them, a regular grenade explosive would be similarly or more effective without the extra complexity. But something like a mobile turret platform or multiple smaller ground bots I can see it being the best option.

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