The Drone That Was Certain

Every military in the world is now confronting a frightening new reality.

A weapon no longer needs to cost millions of dollars to cause enormous damage. A relatively inexpensive drone can fly hundreds of miles, carry an explosive payload, and strike a military base, power station, apartment building, or crowded city.

Even just one drone is dangerous. But hundreds of inexpensive drones arriving at once can overwhelm even the most sophisticated defense systems.

That is the brilliance of this new strategy. The attacker launches cheap drones in enormous numbers, while the defender is forced to fire expensive missiles to destroy them one by one. When the sky is filled with threats approaching simultaneously, there may simply be too many objects to shoot down in time.

Last week, Israel Aerospace Industries unveiled a revolutionary new defense system called Hypnosis.

It is described as a “soft-kill” weapon. Instead of physically destroying each drone with a missile, Hypnosis is designed to deal with large numbers of drones at once by disrupting or spoofing the satellite navigation signals guiding them. This is especially valuable when traditional kinetic interceptors would struggle against the sheer number of airborne objects.

The brilliance of Hypnosis is not just jamming the drones and causing them to lose their signal. Such systems already exist and so the drones are equipped with countermeasures to resist jamming.

This new technology can feed an entire swarm with counterfeit navigation signals. The drone does not explode. It does not fall from the sky. It does not even realize that anything has gone wrong.

It continues flying confidently. Its systems appear normal.

But it has been deceived. It is flying away from the very destination it believes it is approaching.

When I read about this new electronic warfare that does not physically interfere with the drone itself but rather targets its navigation system by transmitting spoofed satellite-navigation signals, I began thinking about how many people I know who have been similarly deceived.

We are not machines. We have souls, intelligence, moral responsibility, and most importantly, each of us has the gift of free choice.

Yet human beings can also be fed false information and given a spoofed sense of direction.

We are served so many lies so often that these fake statements begin to feel unquestionably true. We listen to podcasters and follow famous personalities, consuming an endless stream of carefully selected media, designed to shape what we believe and desire.

And slowly, almost invisibly, our internal map changes.

We still feel as though we are making our own decisions. No one is physically forcing us to move. We feel like we are choosing freely.

But the information guiding those choices may be false.

Depending on what we watch, whom we admire, and whose approval we seek, our entire sense of direction can be altered.

Things that once seemed wrong begin to look normal. Things that once felt sacred begin to appear outdated. What once embarrassed us becomes fashionable, while what once made us proud begins to make us uncomfortable.

What makes this so dangerous is that through it all, we remain completely confident in our path, oblivious to having been jammed, convinced we are still in control.

A person who knows he is lost will stop and ask for directions. It is the person who is certain that he knows exactly where he is going that will keep driving further and further from his true destination.

This week’s Torah portion, Eikev, contains the second paragraph of the Shema, which we recite every morning and evening.

In it, the Torah warns: “Beware, lest your heart be misled, and you turn away and worship strange gods.”

Notice the order.

First, the heart is misled.

It is only then that the person turns away. Only after allowing the heart to be led astray, does he find himself serving something foreign.

Very few people wake up one morning and decide to abandon everything sacred. The most dangerous spiritual disorientation is the one that happens quietly.

The heart is tempted. A counterfeit signal enters our navigation system. Something false begins to feel true.

The person is still moving forward, still functioning, still succeeding. But with false coordinates. Blissfully unaware that they are now heading to an entirely different destination.

We live in a culture that constantly tells us to follow our hearts.

Do what feels right. Trust your instincts. Be true to whatever desire feels strongest at this moment.

The heart is powerful and beautiful. It is the seat of love, compassion, passion, and devotion.

And yet, it is quite dangerous to follow the heart blindly. It can easily be misled.

Just because something feels right does not make it true.

Just because something feels deeply personal doesn’t mean its origin is from within our own internal reality. These feelings may have been planted within us by the culture we consume and the people we follow.

Not only does Judaism not advise us to follow our heart, the Shema clearly warns us to be careful, lest our heart be led astray by false signals.

One of the foundational ideas in Chassidic philosophy and the basic premise of the Tanya is that the mind has the ability – and the responsibility – to guide the heart.

The challenge is that our radar is already crowded with so many counterfeit signals and fake definitions of success, it has become harder to differentiate between our true location and all the fake spoofing.

Which is why we need to be more careful than ever to verify the source of our feelings.

Instead of just asking ourselves: “what do we feel like doing?” we must ask a more important question: “Where will this take me?”

Will this choice bring me closer to the person G-d created me to be? Will it strengthen my marriage, my family, my integrity, and my Jewish life?

Or am I simply following a signal because it entered my heart loudly and often enough?

However, as I thought about it more, I realized there is still a huge and essential difference between a drone and a human being.

A drone can be spoofed completely. Feed its navigation system false coordinates, and it has no deeper truth within itself to resist them.

A Jewish soul is different. The Neshama can never be spoofed.

It can be covered. It can be ignored. Its voice can be drowned out by distraction, temptation, habit, and the endless noise surrounding us.

But the soul can never be convinced that falsehood is truth.

Deep within every Jew remains an unshakable awareness of who we are, where we belong, and what we were sent into this world to accomplish.

Our conscious desires can be redirected and our priorities distorted. We can live for years according to foreign signals that confuse us. But at the deepest level, our soul knows the truth.

We may travel far. We may make choices that are completely inconsistent with who we truly are. We may even convince ourselves that this is simply the person we have become.

But the soul is never fooled.

Which is why a Jew can suddenly feel stirred by the lighting of a Shabbos candle, the sound of the shofar, the words of the Shema, or a moment of sincere prayer.

Not because a new identity has been created, but because our true identity has broken through.

This new Israeli technology may save lives by lying to drones and giving them false signals.

And the society in which we live may attempt to do the same to us. It may tell us that happiness lies somewhere else, or that our values are outdated.

But unlike the drone that will continue flying on to nowhere, oblivious to the fact that it has been deceived, a Jewish soul can always awaken.

So the next time you say the Shema and you hear its warning of the heart going astray, don’t ask only whether your life is moving smoothly.

Ask whose signal you are following.

And then listen closely, because beneath all the noise, your soul still knows the way home.

Good Shabbos!

Rabbi Yankie & Chana Denburg