Anti-Porn Laws' Real Target Is Free Speech

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I'm your host, Joseph, who doesn't normally completely screw up the intro.

And with me, the 404 Media co-founders, Sam Cole.

Hey, you're doing good.

Doing great, Sam.

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Hanging on.

Hanging on.

Emmanuel Mayberg.

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That last voice you heard was Jason Kebler.

And then, joined by us is also our regular contributor, Matthew Golt.

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I feel like I'm throwing you off today.

I think it might be that.

And I don't mean to blame you, but I think it might actually be that.

Yes.

So we have a bunch of stories to get into.

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All right,

as a massive change and pivot into a different subject, here is a really, really good one from Sam.

The headline is: the egg yolk principle: human sexuality will always outsmart prudish algorithms and hateful politicians.

I guess I should put a content warning here just in case we talk about stuff that is sexual.

But almost part of the point of the story is that stuff is not being overtly.

I mean, we're going to get into it.

It's very, very complicated.

But content warning there if you want it.

Sam, can you describe this egg video at the top of...

the piece?

I think that's a really good introduction.

You could even read it if you want, or just what is this?

What is this video that you start the piece with?

Yeah, I mean, I will not read it because it is straight up erotica.

Um, that is the first paragraph of the story, so you should go read my egg erotica writing.

Um,

so there's this account on TikTok and Instagram, also, that um, is just

a guy or a girl or somebody making fried eggs.

I don't want to assume the gender of this fried egg pervert.

Um,

and

the fried egg is on a plate, and they have a fork, and it's not the yolk is like intact, and they're like dragging a fork across the egg very like

sensually.

There's no other way to put it.

It's just like, it's like a really

like,

I don't know, it's just, it's freaky.

I don't know how to really like put it into words better than what I did in the story, but like the the yolk like bulges and they like back off it and they're like teasing it almost.

And the comments tell it all because people are like, Why are you teasing the egg?

Why are you edging the egg?

I just, I just walked in on something.

Like, obviously, people are like, Oh, you're like, you're trying to allude to something with this weird egg strip tease

that is sexual, but there's nothing sexual about it.

And some of the videos, it's like RB tracks or like Cardi B or whatever, but like, other ones are just like goofy, like fun songs.

And then he's like

edging an egg.

So it's just a strange, strange account.

And obviously it's gotten a lot of engagement because people comment, people like it, people reply.

People are like, oh my God, why is this in my for you page?

What does this say about me?

What does this say about society?

Why is everything so

just like uncomfortably

sexual?

Yeah.

There is a tension there.

And

of course, you use that as the opener to talk about this very important issue.

And I think there are sort of two prongs of the piece.

And the first is about this law that we're going to talk about.

And then the other is sort of what you got at the end there, that everything is sexually suggestive now because platforms are awful for overtly sexual content.

But you write this really, really good, jarring paragraph in there.

You describe this video.

And then the next section says, if right-wing leadership in this country has its way, the person running this account, being that egg video one, could be put in prison for disseminating content that, quote, intended to arouse, end quote.

There's a nationwide effort happening right now to end pornography and call everything pornographic at the same time.

So I guess let's get into that.

What is this law that aims to criminalize spreading this content that's intended to arouse, apparently, even if that's a fried egg and somebody, you know, potentially popping the yoke of it?

Yeah, so we wrote about this a couple weeks ago, but Mike Lee, who's a Republican senator in Utah, introduced the

Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, which in my head I say it is IOTA.

That's the acronym.

So we'll just go with that.

You always have to have a good well.

You got to have it.

You got to have it.

Yeah.

You got to have an acronym.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he's been trying to pass IOTA for years.

It's like every couple of years he comes back with this and it's like, maybe this time.

But the foundation of this

bill is that porn would be effectively banned at a federal level in the US.

And it does that by

changing the current definitions of obscenity to remove standards for

community standards, which would be like someone in Maine does not have the same standards for obscenity as someone in New York City.

Not to say anything disparaging about the good people of Maine,

but

it changes that part of the law, which has been in place since the 70s.

And it also

removes the part of the law that mentions intent.

So the current law says that obscenity requires the intent for the purposes of amusing, threatening, or harassing a person.

And it's saying now that it's just anything that's intended to arouse

without that part of the current law, which would be a lot of things.

It would be sex scenes in movies.

It would be, I would imagine, like romance books, a lot of like what's on Netflix, and of course, like porn and adult content on the internet.

But I started writing about this egg thing a long time ago because I had just been noticing that everything is becoming weirdly uncomfortable in a way that's like roundabout alluding to sex without actually being sexual or without being pornographic.

At the same time, the walls are closing in on actual porn, and you can't actually put anything pornographic on a lot of the internet without getting age-gated or banned or downranked or whatever.

Of course, like meta is in its fucking era, so they're going the other direction, I think, with a lot of stuff.

But

on a lot of the internet, that's still the case where sex is straight up

not welcome.

And especially sex work and real sex workers, humans.

So, yeah, that was kind of

the original thought of this.

And then, as the year went on, it was like, okay, now there are more and more bills, more and more laws that are being passed, more age revocation laws, this IOTA law

that, or this IOTA bill, it's not a law yet, thank God,

that are reacting to a moment in American politics where leadership is openly supporting and saying that pornographers should be in jail.

Yeah, and I mean, on that, maybe to take a step back slide, you mentioned the romance novel authors, and I think we'll get to that, but almost to go to the much more like obvious impact, let's just say OnlyFans creators.

Like, just how simple, how would they be impacted by this if this came to law?

And I know that's almost like a stupid question, but just so people actually hear it, like,

how would this impact people who work on OnlyFans for example I mean it would be a federal crime to disseminate anything

obscene and the obscene definitions are now blown wide open so everything is obscene that is you know even mildly considered obscene by the greatest stretch of your imagination um

and yeah it would it would mean like it's that's a federal crime it would be people would go to prison um But in reality, if this

in a really wacky future where this actually passed, which is looking more and more not that wacky, I guess.

Crazy things have happened recently.

Crazier things are happening currently, but it wouldn't even take anyone going to prison or anything like that.

No one would need to be prosecuted for this to actually have an effect on how people

use the internet, consume the internet.

It would just be a total chilling effect on anything online that would be remotely considered sexual, pornographic, obscene, which now, like, a lot of legislators are trying to push the idea or have been trying to push the idea that like queer people and trans people are obscene, drag queens are obscene.

Just in virtue of them existing.

Yeah, like that's yeah, like these are like pornographic

lifestyles or people.

So you can kind of see where this goes.

It's catching more and more in its net

and

more and more people, more and more types of content, more and more types of speech are not allowed on the internet.

If this even came near

becoming law or any version of it became law, even without anybody going to jail.

So yeah, the idea that like the guy is going to jail is obviously like, it's an overstatement of a point

that it doesn't even need to get that far.

You know, it's.

it's

but the point is, like, the laws are super over broad and like poorly written, and like it's hard to put this stuff into a box.

Yep.

Um,

Sam, I think you've talked about the egg a little bit, and I like the egg is very important, the egg yolk principle.

But

can you give like more examples of the types of things that people are sexualizing on Instagram?

Like, I feel like that would probably be helpful.

Yeah, we uh I went back and forth with Emmanuel and Jason because they have the most fucked up algorithms

trying to figure out or having them send me things that were in their feeds on social media that were pornographic, that were not pornographic, that were not explicit, but were still obviously like quote-unquote intended to arouse.

And it actually became kind of hard to draw a line between what

is and isn't

that.

But some of the examples that

I ended up on were: there was a,

this is basically an ad for a lactose pill.

But this woman was like, I'm going to chug a bunch of milk knowing that I'm lactose intolerant and then

see what happens.

And what happens is obviously she's just like spends like hours farting and like burping and being uncomfortable, like super close to the camera.

It's like, that's a fetish.

That's a kink.

Yeah, there were, let's see, there was an AI

like bodybuilding women account, like these like crazy proportioned women's bodies that were all AI generated.

It's all AI slop,

but like in like dominant like positions over men or just very obviously, this is a kink.

But nothing is actually being shown as like explicit.

There was, there were two girls making foot foot pottery.

I don't know, I feel like that's pretty self-explanatory.

They're using their feet to make pottery, like on a wheel.

Um,

that's a collab, by the way.

Just to clarify something, just I don't know, I don't know if you're deep into these accounts as I am, but it's a foot, what is clearly like a foot fetish account that I believe links out to platforms where she can monetize.

Yeah, uh, but the clay uh

you know, pottery account

is

also does that.

It's like a very sensual

video of a lady making pottery.

That's that's her, like, that's her lane, that's her hook, you know, and that also links out to her like accounts where she monetizes.

And I think it just speaks to the thing you said, where I'm not aware of a pottery fetish.

I'm sure it exists because, like, that's how Rule 34 works.

Because we've theorized it exists, probably it does exist.

Um, but whether or not it does, it is designed to arouse, therefore it could fall under this law

that would categorize it as pornography and therefore illegal.

There's also like women who are fully clothed, but are just like spitting into a cup.

And then the last woman in the line drinks it.

I'm also watching.

That should be fans, to be clear.

I'm watching a woman who cracks an egg on a counter and then she like sucks the egg into her mouth and then spits it into a frying pan for example and it's like

some of these are

again like they their profiles link to you know an only fans page or somewhere that they can uh monetize and so it's sort of clear what they're going for but at the same time it's like they're fully clothed you're allowed to like eat a raw egg you're allowed to stay in the cup is it a crime

in this country yeah exactly it's like i guess we allow that.

We allow you to post things like that on the internet.

And it's like drawing a line for like what the rule is is like.

And you have to post like that to get people to come to your OnlyFans is very, it's very specific problem that I didn't get into in the story, but like OnlyFans does not have a discoverability function.

So if you want to search for, if you're into foot pottery, you can't search for that on OnlyFans.

You have to find them through their socials.

But the socials ban sex.

So they can't just say, here I am making pottery naked on Instagram.

They have to kind of tease you into it.

It's the same way that a lot of the trad wife fetish stuff that we talked about a couple months ago works.

It's like, that's not clearly a kink when you come across it online.

It's just a woman in the kitchen, you know, in like a lacy apron, but she's advertising for her platform where she makes money, and that platform is like porn hop only fans, whatever it is.

Um,

so yeah, it's it's kind of this self-perpetuating cycle that's getting weirder and worse because of a lot of the restrictions that are coming down on porn in general.

Um, yeah, that makes sense.

Um, I feel like Jason said something really smart that was going to lead into the next thing, but I would just take it as it is.

What are, I mean, we're touching on it, but what are the First Amendment experts saying?

Uh, Because we've spoken very much about the sensual part, the over or the subtle sexual parts, but obviously, as we're getting to this, is a much, much broader speech issue.

What are some of the First Amendment lawyers you spoke to saying about this?

Yeah, so I talked to quite a few folks.

I talked to someone from the CDT, from EFF, from Woodhall Foundation, and I think you should go read everything that they have to say in the story.

It'll be more than I can put down into this podcast.

But um, I thought um

they all had really similar points about the chilling effect that this could have on the internet in general and on free speech.

That it wouldn't take um a prosecutor deciding that someone needs to go to trial over this or me indicted over this to actually

have an effect on the way people behave.

It's like if um I talked to uh

it was Becca

Branham from

the CDT told me that she made a really good point about like, am I going to, as someone who's just like a normal person on the internet, if this law passed, am I going to share a video from like my bachelorette party, which like

are notoriously full of like, you know, like dick-shaped lollipops and like lots of like sexual innovation.

Am I going to share a video or recording from my bachelorette party if I know that something like this is in place and could be considered federally

illegal?

I'm going to curtail my speech.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to change my behavior to avoid attracting the government's ire,

even

if it would be an extreme overreach for them to actually prosecute that,

which I think is

increasingly the world that we're living in.

I mean, I know I've changed the way that I post in a lot of ways because I don't want to get downranked or downvoted, or not downvoted, but like

banned from Instagram.

Like I've been dinged on Instagram plenty of times and I know the rules.

And it's just there are more rules that I don't even know about that the algorithm will catch.

But yeah, it's just, it's

this fever dream of like the Project 2025 leadership that people increasingly feel scared in general.

People feel afraid to speak up, which we see happening all over the country with protests and with much more

immediate problems with ICE deporting people for just speaking out.

I think the overarching

message

that they want to send with this type of legislation is be afraid to step out of line.

And the the line is,

you know, heteronormative, cisgender, white, married.

I don't know.

It's like I'm describing it and it sounds like handmaid's tale shit, and it kind of is

without being so

good for mentioning handmade stale.

Yeah, it's like it's handmade tail or black mirror.

Like take your pick at this point.

But it really is, that is the world that they want to go back to with this type of legislation to control people.

And what you can, if you can control people's speech, you can can control people's actions online, and then you can control what they're doing in person.

Which it's not just like, oh, I can't post Instagram anymore.

It changes the way that you think and act in the real world too.

Yeah, it sounds like,

and again, I'm not a free speech or First Amendment lawyer here, but it sounds like the free speech concerns here are different to that of the Take It Down Act, which is much more concerned with that law could be weaponized to take down any content, which again would happen here but this one

is almost more worrying in another way because it's going to as you say introduce this chilling effect where people are not even going to want to upload stuff in the first place and be policing their own speech um i guess just the last question is

as we mentioned a little bit earlier you know it's almost like a moonshot bill for these people But we've seen age verification stuff spread very, very quickly across the country.

And that was seen as like a crazy idea, you know, like not that long ago.

Do you think people

like even ordinary listeners who are just concerned about this?

Like, do you think they need to take this law seriously?

Like, this could actually manifest somehow?

I mean, I think at this point,

all bets are off as far as what we can and should and can't take seriously.

I don't think these bills get introduced without being serious,

especially now that the environment is pretty ripe for something like this to be entertained to begin with.

I think we have a much more sex negative society in general.

Someone on Blue Sky made a good point earlier when I posted this story.

They were like, oh, this kind of makes it make more sense to me why like the Puritans

feel like teenagers who are like anti-sex and don't want to see it anywhere.

in the movies or TV or anything,

why they feel like they're being bombarded all the time by sex, even though like our experience of the internet is like sex is nowhere.

It's not in this egg shit, it's not like in the foot pottery.

Um, but they are seeing it everywhere because that is the

um, that's the implication, that's what's between the lines, um, and they feel like it's like constant in their faces.

Um,

so I think there's that generation is definitely grappling with something pretty serious

as far as their relationships with sex and the internet.

Um, so yeah, I mean, I think it's

definitely worth paying attention to and paying attention to who says what about it and what their feelings are about it.

I was pretty surprised when we wrote about the Sweden, the Swedish law that was going to make it illegal to live stream, do like camming or custom content.

People were like, oh, that makes sense.

It's like, what the fuck?

No, it doesn't.

Like, that's bad.

It's really bad.

But people are just kind of getting acclimated

to this type of rhetoric in a really scary and quick way.

You know, people are like, oh, yeah, it makes sense.

Porn is bad.

So we should make it federally legal.

It's like, neither of those things are true.

Think critically for a moment.

So yeah, I don't know.

It's that's a long way of saying I think it is.

it's worth taking seriously.

It's worth examining

because

weirder things are happening.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, we will leave that there.

And when we come back, we're going to talk about one of Matthew's stories about the

crazy Ukraine drone attack and the software underpinning it all.

We'll be right back after this.

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All right, and the headline is: Ukraine's massive drone attack was powered by open source software.

Matthew, you are our military guy.

You know all about this world on multiple levels.

What is the top level overview of this drone attack carried up by Ukraine?

Then we'll get into the software, but like, when did it happen?

What happened?

What were the targets?

So Sunday, midday, which is kind of brazen.

It's around like noon to two local time across multiple time zones.

Ukraine pushed a button and they had over the past 18 months, they say, secreted in a bunch of quadcopter drones, about 177 quadcopter drones, into Russia and positioned them near air bases spread across the country.

These things take flight and they strike strategic bombing targets, like the strategic bombers that are just kind of out in the open at these Russian air bases.

And I just got confirmation literally, like, while during that previous segment, that they also hit

two A-50 radar planes and destroyed them.

And Russia only had six of them.

And now they have four.

And it's kind of a thing where you've got to fly multiple of those

to kind of get a lay of the land.

That's like the whole point of the radar plane is like you make, like, you do a triangulation.

And now they have two less, apparently.

Uh, somebody just found a video of them being destroyed by the by the drones.

Sure.

So, why is it significant?

Is it because this is so deep inside Russia?

Is it because those planes and those capabilities are really important to Russia?

Is it a combination of all of it?

It's a combination of both things.

Uh, the targets are pretty, are pretty wild because these are some of the weapons that

would be able to

it's it's like a third of their strategic bombing fleet, uh, Russia's, and these are the weapons that they've been using to launch some of the nastiest missiles into Kiev and into the rest of Ukraine, and also

some it's a part of their nuclear triad.

These are the bombers that would be equipped with uh nukes if they were to drop, like do bombing runs with nukes.

Um,

and it's a lit, like, war is won with logistics.

Technology is important, but logistics is a big deal.

And Ukraine, like, spent 18 months building quadcopters, getting trucks positioned, shipping these things into Russia and

doing it secretly, not getting caught, not getting anyone to look in these sheds that they had built.

So they launched them from trucks, and they launched them from sheds that had dummy roofs, and the roofs were full of these quadcopters.

So they push a button somewhere, and the sheds' roofs open up, and then quadcopters come out.

Which is like the, which is strange because it's like an image from a Call of Duty game 10 years ago.

And now

it is.

Literally,

Advanced Warfare had this bit, and I saw a ghost on Twitter.

Oh, is it

ghosts, I think.

There's like a bus on the Golden Gate Bridge or something.

It opens up and then all these drones fly out.

And yeah, it's basically what happened, which is nuts, obviously.

Yeah.

And it's also that we live in this era where

I've seen a lot of commentary where it's like, oh, you know, this changes things.

This proves the power of quadcopter drones.

And it's like, that's been going on for 10 years.

Like,

this is just a really good use.

of drones, a really smart use of drones from people that have been using them to fight Russia for 10 years now.

And the other thing I would compare this to, which I really haven't seen anyone do, and I haven't seen anyone talk about in the piece, is

this reminds me of like last year's big brazen military attack, which was Israel sneaking explosive pagers into the hands of Hezbollah.

It is, you know, it was a logistical challenge with a lot of moving parts that was kept secret for a long time and then pulled off like expertly in the moment.

Well, but the only key difference I would flag there is that the room for collateral in the pager attack was wider.

Absolutely.

Absolutely true.

Yes.

Whereas this was just against military targets.

Okay.

Military section of the show over.

Let's talk more about the actual software and which is our way into the story.

So what is ArduPilot, if I'm pronouncing that correctly?

What is that and like, what is it?

for so it is a it's a piece of open source software that is used to autopilot drones, drones of all kinds.

And I say drone, I mean like a quadcopter,

little fixed-wing aircraft,

like single-rotor helicopter style drones.

It can kind of do a little bit of everything because it's open source software.

And it's been around a long time.

Kind of started around 2007.

And there's three gentlemen that are

kind of the fathers of ArduSoft or Autopilot.

I don't know why I keep

messing with that.

Why are you going to that?

It was bad.

Well, like the first draft, I had called it ArduFlight the whole way through, and I had to do like a find and replace.

Call it ArduPilot anyway.

Um,

these three gentlemen kind of

were big in the hobbyist drone scene in the late 2000s and started building this software package to help them autopilot

drones.

And

so, what it can do now is pretty impressive.

You can, like, if you've got access to GPS, you can, like, pull up a map of an area, say, I want it to take off here, put down a bunch of waypoints, and your quadcopter or fixed-wing aircraft or whatever it is, will go through those waypoints, and then it can land.

It may not do it like super well, but it has all that stuff kind of integrated.

But I would say, like, the main thing that people use it for and the main thing people

the main thing I think they used it for in Ukraine when they attacked Russia is more pilot assistance

so

it is a

like flying a quadcopter or an FPV

there's a lot going on right it needs to be stabilized it needs to move in the correct direction so our pilot will like it may not do autopilot on every little piece of the flight.

It will like keep things stable And it has like a program, an algorithm that'll run that'll like keep it stable in the moment.

And the way that they

did this, as best as anyone can tell,

is they had these quadcopters that had like an LTE modem on top of it that like hooked into Russian cellular communications networks, and that's how they that's what they used to communicate back home to the Ukrainian operators.

So it's not like a great cellular network, there's latency between the operator and the drone itself.

And so, like, when you would lose connection or there would be

a break in the connection,

our pilot would take over and keep things stable

until the pilot could come back in and like get it where it needed to go.

Yeah.

And like GPS wasn't used here because GPS is notoriously really bad in

Russia.

And they have jamming.

There's a lot of jamming and they have have their own proprietary system that not everyone has access to.

So

this is not a situation where the Ukrainians pulled up a map and said, we want to blow up this bomber, this bomber, this bomber, and just hit a button and

ArduPilot took over and

ran the things to their targets.

ArduPilot was used to assist them as they

navigated

this military action.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So you mentioned these people who created the software, who, if I'm understanding you correctly, they're not developing it right now.

They created it back in the day, but they did see that their tool was using this attack.

What was their reaction to that?

I mean,

it's hard to read tone on the internet,

right?

But I would say impressed,

fascinated.

Chris Anderson, Chris Anderson, Jason Short, and

I think I'm saying it right, Jordy Munoz.

And Munoz, I couldn't find any, him making any comments.

I reached out to everybody.

Nobody got back to me.

But Anderson and Short

were like reposting the footage on X and saying like, wow, we made this in our basement 20 years ago.

This is really wild to see it being used for this.

Short said, like, I can't believe, you know, like they wipe, like some software I made helped them wipe out.

helped Ukraine wipe out a third of the strategic bomber fleet.

And on LinkedIn, Anderson has been on quite the tear,

commenting on a lot of different threads and kind of

talking about how

implying that this was a thing that he saw coming

and like the rise of drone warfare generally, not this specific attack.

And that he knew that our pilot might one day be like integrated in something like this and kind of posting links to people who he thinks thinks had been talking about this no one was paying attention to basically acting the cassandra you know

yeah i think a few interesting things uh chris anderson was the former editor-in-chief of wired magazine like a long time ago and then he founded this company called 3d robotics um and ardu pilot was i guess presumably part of that in some way

And all three of them actually worked at 3D Robotics.

And it was supposed to be this big competitor to DJI, which is this massive Chinese drone company that has dominated the market for quadcopters.

And like a lot of the drones used in the United States by cops are DJI drones.

And 3D Robotics was a consumer drone that was competing with the Phantom, which DJI no longer makes, but is like this really popular.

was the most popular drone of all time.

DJI has since moved on to making other things.

But interestingly, like 3D Robotics failed.

It went out of business.

And very recently, it has been like reborn as a company called 3DR.

And I believe the same people are involved to some extent.

It's like not that clear to me.

But this has all happened during a time where the Trump administration has tried to make it illegal to sell DJI drones in the United States.

And one of 3D robotics or 3DR's things is like, like, oh, we're an American company.

We, we're a California-based company.

And I was on their website yesterday when I was editing this story.

And they are

selling like autopilot type software.

And so it feels like they're sort of

continuing this like legacy of ArduPilot and trying to integrate it and trying to use it to make a comeback.

And I just thought that that was like pretty interesting because this all grew out of this, like, really like the DIY drones website, but also this like open source software that has been around for a really long time and is now being used like on the battlefield, too.

Yeah, totally.

So, what about the current developers of RG Pilot?

What did they say?

Uh, I pinged them too, they did not respond, but they are active on the RGPilot Reddit.

And someone obviously posted, like, because all this footage was going around social media, somebody posted it in there, and one of the developers responds: like, hey,

you know, this is our code of conduct.

It's not an end-user license agreement.

The gist of which is, we won't knowingly help someone develop a weapon.

But then they also say, like, it's not up to us to

decide these things.

It is up to the UN or some other

governing body body to judge the ethics of this kind of thing, kind of wash our hands.

And again, it's like, you know, they aren't selling a product.

It's open source software.

It is not as if there's no mechanism, as far as I can see, for them to stop anyone from

using

this software.

It's out there, right?

There's no customer to cut off.

There's no customer to cut off.

It is not like a Starlink satellite

on top of a drone, which is also being used.

Right.

Right.

And I guess just my last question is on the open source software, I mean, what does the use of that

show us here

about this war or conflict in general?

You know, is it that there's obviously asymmetry in some conflicts and some people are going to return to open source software?

It's available.

What's your takeaway there?

There's a symmetry in every conflict, and people are going to use the tools that are available to them.

And if they can do it for free or as cheap as possible, I think it behooves them to do that.

Because I see in the West, especially because of Ukraine and Russia,

quadcopters and drones in general have become very popular, and suicide drones have become very, very popular.

And there's a lot of companies in America

selling kind of bespoke and expensive drones that are meant to explode, that run on proprietary software.

And if you sign up,

the DOD signs a contract with them, that software package is part of the deal, and you're paying a license fee like every month to use this stuff.

Well, Ukraine has proven you can make your own quadcopters

and

run a piece of open source software and wipe out a third of the strategic fleet of one of the most powerful militaries on the planet.

And you don't have to pay a guy a monthly fee for a software license to do it.

You don't have to pay a guy who wears Hawaiian shirts and is now teaming up with Meta specifically, I would say.

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