Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/30/iranian-nuclear-scientist-killed-with-drone-gun.html
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Sounds like he got Breaking Bad-ed
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Hm. The assassins profiled his reaction exactly, but I wonder what their Plan B was if he didn’t get out of the car?
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Drones can also carry missiles…
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It was a Nissan, but they could have added more than just the RC machine gun. All conveniently destroyed by explosion and fire.
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I was more thinking The Jackal (90s remake).
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And tunnels. Boring future for Elon? I think not.
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Yeah, I was thinking a drone flying about as a backup, but yeah, a car can be a good platform for any number of offensive weapons.
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As an engineer I can confirm that the phenomenon exists, and events might have unfolded exactly as the article described. However I would also caution not to put too much faith in the accuracy of a single news account for such a chaotic event, especially when it’s from an authoritarian country with a history of not always reporting the details of attacks exactly as they occurred.
Even assuming that everyone involved, including the guards tasked with protecting the guy, is trying to report honestly and accurately, any situation involving machine gun bullets and explosions is bound to cause some amount of confusion.
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As long as Elon cooperates with Israel he’s probably safe from Mossad.
It’s the other guys he should be concerned about.
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Engineer’s Disease refers to the tendency among nerds to think great expertise in a specific technical area applies to everything, leading to arrogance and know-it-all behaviors that ultimately have serious negative consequences for the nerd.
For example, say you’re in armored vehicle, surrounded by armored vehicles full of soldiers protecting you, but something’s going on. It would be a classic Engineer’s Disease symptom to step out of the car to see what’s going on .
This is…a super weird and uncharitable take.
The actual story is is that a civilian – a man with no military training and therefore has absolutely no expectation of being shot at by a sentient flying machine gun – was assassinated as part of the decades-long war against the Middle East which has resulted in literally millions of deaths. This is the actual socio-political and historical context of this totally unjust, brutal, extrajudicial murder of a scientist from the Global South, not his error in judgement while literally under fire that somehow justifies his death as the result of his own “arrogance and know-it-all behaviors.”
You literally have no idea how you’ll react in a time of fear and crisis. Bodies are weird, especially when flooded with adrenaline. Even a totally non-arrogant person can react in an apparently “stupid” way when they’re being shot at by a sentient flying machine gun.
The idea that he should have sat there and ““rationally”” thought through his options in this completely insane, unexpected scenario, and that he’s to blame for his own death for failing to do so is super gross, and erasing the political context for his murder and that of literally millions of other Brown people in the period since the Gulf Wars is incredibly misleading.
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Now the big question is if Iran is going to strike back. If I were a prominent Israeli scientist I’d be a bit nervous right now.
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The big question is what the Trump administration has planned for the next 51 days.
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Eh, yeah, he was a scientist, but he wasn’t trying to cure cancer, he was a scientist for the MILITARY. Under ARMED ESCORT, that means he knew full well he was a target. Otherwise he would have been riding the bus home. I don’t feel bad for him. He should have stayed in his car, and his guards should have whisked him out of there at the first “plink” of the bullets hitting his armored car’s glass.
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Very succinct take of a complicated situation.
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Israel has been doing this to Iran since Bush the Lesser was president. Frankly I think Iran is a bit overextended right now to do much in retaliation other than use it as a diplomatic hissyfit (to damage Israel’s relationship with incoming President Biden)
*I stand corrected after seeing fazalmajid’s post.
Historically they have retaliated by terror attacks against Jewish civilian soft targets (usually non-Israeli):
and of course the Lockerbie Pan-Am bombing (Libya agreed to take the fall in exchange for normalization of relations, but it seems it was done by the FPLP-GC in retaliation for the US shooting down Iran Air flight 655).
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I was going to say “Gerald Bulled.”
Well since he got out of his car that means the car was stopped. Maybe, considering that this ambush was apparently well-planned and conducted by professionals, there was a blockage in the road or something that physically prevented the convoy from “whisking him away” at the first sign of trouble? Also, I’m sure you’re aware that even the best bullet-resistant glass is of limited effectiveness to repeated hits. Maybe the guy was making an actual rational decision to exit the vehicle to save his wife? Who knows. Probably none of us on this comment thread do.
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