Drones ‘R’ Us

Mike Lindell Has A ‘Plan’ To Stop ‘The Evil,’ Fix Elections, And Help You Save On Bedding https://t.co/R0TV9zXAIW via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 18, 2023

 Harris County has 550-750 polling locations. So Lindell is going to put up 750 drones in Houston, alone?

Sure, buddy. And it’s going to distinguish between cellphones and computers on a network and election machines without modems? And he knows these “WMD’s” are computers, right?

As he discussed the laundry list of election grievances and aired questionable material including a video that he admittedly simply scoured from the internet, Lindell suggested that he had “extrapolated” data showing malfeasance and malevolent technology were the only things that prevented Trump and the Republicans from dominating the government to this day. 

“Our country is 68 percent red if you take the right computers out,” Lindell said.

So, computers are fine when they say what you want? Sounds sort of familiar, right? Like “Lock ‘em up!” means, “but that doesn’t apply to me!!”

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself:

Then, after some brief technical difficulties, Lindell began playing a video from outside the Expo Center as a small drone buzzed into view. This was it. The doors to the auditorium burst open as the drone floated into the building and towards Lindell. He was ecstatic. 

“Special delivery everybody!” he bellowed. “Special delivery!”

But the drone alone was not the main attraction. The real focus of Lindell’s event was a small device it carried. Lindell — who, at one point, became “so excited” he abandoned his microphone — described the device as unprecedented. A video with a British-accented narrator explained that the device was, in a perhaps unintentional nod to an earlier generation of right-wing paranoia, called the “the W.M.D., or wireless monitoring device.” The clip described it as “a sophisticated network-connection monitoring system.” 

Lindell had his own way of describing the “W.M.D.” He suggested it was capable of identifying “all the internets in the room” and explained that this would, finally, prove that all election systems were connected to the internet. 

“There is a device that has been made for the first time in history that could tell you that that machine was online,” Lindell said. 

There are myriad problems with that statement. Wi-Fi sniffers and other tools to display network connectivity are nothing new. And merely showing the presence of networks and online devices in an area would not necessarily prove any one of them was improperly tied to an election system. Of course, the biggest problem of all with Lindell’s scheme is the fact that experts far more credible than he have confirmed, despite his insistence, that many election systems are not online. 

"All the internets in the room."  Is the internets in the room with you right now?  And this is where I got the question I started with:

“We’re going to have these devices. … For this fall’s election we want to get every single parish in Louisiana covered. We’re doing this right now; Mississippi, Kentucky … everyone that has an election,” Lindell said.  

And then we fall over into actual election interference:

Lindell proudly declared that viewers would be able to watch his data pour in from their “easy chair” or “backyard.” While he said the app would allow them to “comment” on the team’s findings, Lindell wants his audience to do more than serve as an online conspiracy theory peanut gallery. He stressed that this information would allow users of his social network to take action.

“We are now the police of our own elections,” Lindell declared.  

He went on to paint a picture of citizens presenting the data from his W.M.D.-armed amateur election detectives to local election officials. Lindell also suggested people should take it to neighbors who dared to disagree with their fears about the trustworthiness of elections.  

What could go wrong?  Lindell's plan, mostly:

The ambitions of Lindell and other election conspiracy theorists are unquestionably ominous and authoritarian. However, like his past cyber symposium and the legions of lawyers whose vote challenge cases floundered in court, Lindell’s plan seems to be falling well short of feasibility. Rather than thousands of vote vigilantes displaying irrefutable evidence of corruption, as of this writing, the “Elections” tab on Lindell’s FrankSocial site features just 32 pages, many of which have not been updated for months. The active accounts, including one dedicated to Alaska that is headlined by a whimsical portrait of a dachshund in a Hawaiian shirt, largely seem to be promoting pictures and videos from Lindell’s events in a self-reinforcing ride down the rabbit hole. 

Lindell needs legions of people with drones and WMD's to do what he wants to do; and even then, he can't do it.  He may well fun afoul of FCC regulations, for all I know (not to mention state and FAA regulations on drone operations). And the people described are the hordes waiting to do his bidding; or Trump’s; or whoever it is we’re supposed to be afraid of next.

Somehow, I’m not worried.