The current funding requirement for the New Zealand Defence Force has come in at $20 billion over the next 15 years.

A shade over $1 billion a year from the semper fidelis taxpayer would go towards the cost of upgrading the nation’s ability to defend itself – according to reports this will include ‘American built, subsonic drones’ (as if this reporter forgot that ‘subsonic’ in fact refers to anything travelling at less than the speed of sound and to the learned ear adding this term does nothing but take away from the greatness of these impressive and highly sophisticated aircraft) – which, aside from the aforementioned unmanned craft, will be focused on ‘cyber’ upgrades…

I never thought I’d see the day where satirical comedies such as The Simpsons, who long ago poked fun at the notion that one day wars would be fought by robots or via computers, could be considered prophetical.

…Asinine as it sounds, it seems our military stalwarts will now be boning up on their knowledge of all things tech so they can ‘hack New Zealand’s enemies’ to keep our nation safe…

I guess nobody anymore actually needs to fear an outbreak of world war, or dig themselves a bomb shelter in preparation for that impending nuclear attack – all people really need to do is change their passwords and upgrade their antivirus software.

…The biggest threat to New Zealand’s safety now it seems – now that Al Qaeda has gone out of fashion and ISIS appear to have fallen dormant around the first world – is online, where instead of killing millions in a genocide, a declaration of war will likely now comprise some zit-faced piss-ant threatening to hack your hard drive, steal your postcode, then infect your computer with some insidious strain of malware…

I shouldn’t mock, it’s great that little ol’ N-Z is keeping up with the rest of the world with its tremendously fast subsonic drones, but I really didn’t think that the integrity of my life would be reduced to a few stupid passwords.

…Computer hacking is the new weapon of the future and New Zealand are getting onboard.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Sit Fayced

Photography by P S Antz