AI-Powered Assassination Drones Can Now Hunt Specific Individuals Using Facial Recognition
"There's a very real threat where a small drone can fly around this room looking for the face it's after and drive itself into your forehead with even a few milligrams of powder," reveals Erik Prince, describing a paradigm shift in targeted assassination technology that has already moved beyond theoretical possibilities.
This precision killing capability using commonplace technology and artificial intelligence is happening now, not in some distant future, writes End of Miles. The revelation comes from the founder of the controversial private military company Blackwater, who outlined the democratization of AI-powered targeted killing systems during a recent seminar.
Facial recognition hunting capabilities
The former Navy SEAL detailed how facial recognition technology has been integrated with small, autonomous drones to create systems that can identify and eliminate specific individuals in a crowd—all without human guidance after launch.
"There's a company called ClearView for example which scrapes billions of images off the web. So if you've ever posted any picture in any social media, if you've ever tagged in a picture, any kind of online driver's license, roles, anything like that—your image is there." Erik Prince
The military contractor explained that these systems use the massive databases of facial images scraped from public sources combined with small, agile drones that require minimal explosive payload to be lethal. Once programmed with a target, these weapons can autonomously search an area for a specific individual.
The democratization of precision killing
This technology represents a dramatic leveling of the battlefield, according to Prince. While elite military snipers once required years of training to execute targeted strikes, these capabilities are now becoming widely accessible.
"A great military sniper can take a cold bore shot at a thousand meters and probably hit his target. But now any one of you—I can take and give you 30 minutes of FPV drone instruction, and now you can fly a drone out to 15 kilometers and hit a target." Prince
The Blackwater founder emphasized that even this drone piloting expertise will soon be unnecessary. "That's with a human in the loop," he noted, explaining that AI drone pilots are already in early development phases and will eliminate the need for human operators entirely.
Beyond human limitations
The military entrepreneur highlighted how the removal of human physical limitations creates substantial advantages for autonomous systems. He cited the example of Shield AI, a company developing artificial intelligence for fighter aircraft.
"They make an AI for a fighter pilot which has fought manned aircraft versus unmanned aircraft. The unmanned aircraft can vastly exceed normal G limits because it doesn't have a pilot that has to keep blood in their head." The former SEAL
While artificial intelligence has received significant public attention for its applications in consumer technology and information processing, these battlefield applications represent a less visible but potentially more consequential development. Military experts have long warned about the proliferation of lethal autonomous weapons systems, but Prince's comments suggest these capabilities have advanced faster than many public discussions acknowledge.
According to the security consultant, the implications extend far beyond traditional military conflicts, potentially enabling targeted assassinations with minimal resources, expertise, or attribution—a capability once limited to nation-states now potentially available to a much wider range of actors.
