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Is Chris Anderson Aiding the Terrorists?

uav planeChris Anderson, The Long Tail author, blogger, and Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine has found himself in an interesting situation. When he's not busy running a magazine or blogging, Chris builds Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for a hobby. He also runs a UAV social network on Ning called DIYDrones.com. Last week Amir Aalipour, a 17-year-old Iranian UAV enthusiast, proudly posted pictures of his UAV in a RCGroup chat room draped in the Iranian flag. In his latest blog post, Chris writes, "Part of me says 'Bravo Amir! Excellent work on the airframe, and thanks for posting.' And part of me says 'Yikes. We're helping Iranians make UAVs draped in nationalistic colors. This isn't going to help us in our efforts to destigmitize drones.'" Quite a discussion has ensued in The Long Tail blog comments regarding whether the UAV open source movement, or Chris's site in particular, is giving comfort to the terr'ists. Amir himself joined the discussion to give his side of the story.

Perhaps we shouldn't call Homeland Security just yet. Amir says he's not a terrorist and he loves friendly!

Hi Too all.
Im Amir from iran and i Designed that airplan and created it.
First:Iam not a terorist.
second:I love my country , persian languege , our flag and dont get it to ant body
second: Im 17 years old and i now am going to Kharazmi fastival in tehran. for get a knolege race !
third: i love friendly.
thank for all.
Amir Aalipour
best regard

Posted by: Amir | August 24, 2007 at 07:27 AM

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Comments (2)

Amir:

Hi to you.
im amir. i dont know how i can say im not terorist and am a person that love knowlege or say better Aviation or Flyig Aviation.
i designed it from my knowlege.
terrorist is who that say it to another.
Best regards for Frieds John and lizard.
Amir Aalipour

There are quite a few Iranians at several programs at my graduate school. Nobody (openly, at least) worries that we're teaching physics to future developers of an atomic bomb, or molecular biology to future bioterrorists.

Actually, come to think of it, I bet they have a file with Homeland Security. But leave all of that to the feds. We should just worry about advancing knowledge.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on August 28, 2007.

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