According to a NATO security expert, the Islamic State is working on autonomous cars that could deliver explosives.
Dr. Jamie Shea, the Deputy Assistant Secretary General for the Emerging Security Challenges Division of NATO, said that the ISIS R&D department located in Raqqa, Syria, is using its technical expertise to create vehicles that would drive themselves to a target location. This leaves out the need for a suicide bomber to drive the car, and it would reduce the increasing decline in the numbers of ISIS fighters.
The report comes from Daily Express. Speaking at the Security & Counter Terror Expo 2016 in London, Dr. Shea morbidly compared the technology to Google's autonomous car development, saying "It is not just Google that is producing the autonomous car, ISIS is also trying to do the same." It's unclear how much is known about the project, as few details were mentioned. This isn't the first time an expert has sounded the alarm about terrorists developing self-driving cars, but it does specify where the development is taking place.
We don't expect ISIS will be approaching the problem the same way Google is, however. For starters, automaker and tech company attempts to safeguard passengers and pedestrians probably wouldn't be taken into consideration in an ISIS-backed autonomobile. We'd imagine this to be more like a remote-control vehicle, a sort of drone on wheels. And given the fact that the vehicles would be one-time use if successful, the investment in machinery is likely to be much lower.
Dr. Shea has been working with NATO since 1980. The Emerging Security Challenges Division was formed in 2010 to deal with a growing range of non-traditional risks and challenges including terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyber defense, and energy security.