That our "leaders" will finally get the brains they need so desperately?

If you're worried about too much mercury, just do what our forefathers did: Hang 'em up on a clothes line with their heads down, and when it gets below freezing, cut their heads off.

Make them fully autonomous and able to perform together (like swarm robots), and you'd REALLY have something! Don't forget the fail-safes like self-destructing so the enemy can't get the technology, and remote pilot over-ride. An air attack from that kind of *swarm* would be Awesome! Don't forget to have a plane just for filming the whole thing.

the ones that need spying on come from foreign sources? Seriously.

Banks have been looking for ways to make money since there was such a thing as a bank. Who's to say that the banks didn't engineer this little event so that they could keep the money they stole from themselves (clients) and get reimbursed by the insurance companies to fill the coffers back up again?
If the switches are that difficult to hack, then just maybe it was an inside job.