When you think of groups who have always had a political angle or motive behind their music, AC/DC frankly aren’t the first that springs to mind. They’re probably not even in the top thousand acts that anyone would think of as being remotely political in their music. Rarely did the band have anything of note to say about the state of affairs in society; they just wanted to write feel-good rock songs about buxom women, sexually transmitted diseases and Satan.
Of course, this isn’t a problem. Sure, you can use your platform for good and discuss political issues within your lyrics, but not everyone is blessed with the ability to write socially conscious prose that makes you think about how you can get organised and rally against the wrongs in the world in the same way as the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young have managed to do throughout their careers.
However, the sheer brutality and loudness of AC/DC’s music was certainly something that could be used to instil fear, and if you’re not a fan of the Aussie rockers, then being forced to listen to them at maximum volume is probably either going to terrify or irritate the life out of you. Hard rock, understandably, isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, so if you’re looking to exact revenge on someone, then perhaps their music is a great candidate to be weaponised in this fashion.
Many people have realised just how well this works, and in 2012, their song, ‘Thunderstruck’, was notably used as part of a cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear program, where the payload of the computer virus used to hijack their systems would play the song at the highest volume possible. It seems like a comical way to cause mayhem and destruction, but you can kind of imagine the band being proud of someone using it in this way, purely because of how it aligns with their sense of humour.
However, the hackers behind this attack weren’t the first to do this, and may well have got their inspiration from a previous attack conducted by the US government. In the 1980s, they’d been in constant pursuit of Manuel Noriega, a military dictator who had seized control of Panama and unleashed a reign of terror upon the Central American nation.
As part of their plan to capture him, the US military came up with the idea of ‘Operation Nifty Package’, which was devised as a means of getting Noriega to surrender and remove himself from his hiding place in the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See, which was an embassy for the Vatican. Just how would they go about getting him out of here without launching a full-scale attack on a land overseen by the head of the Catholic Church? By playing AC/DC, of course.
The military allegedly mounted industrial speakers outside his reported hiding place, and dialled the volume up to 11, repeatedly playing a number of songs, including the rock group’s notable hit, ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’. Evidently, Noriega wasn’t able to tolerate the sound of sleazy hard rock being blasted outside his safehouse, and eventually, he would surrender to the US military and accept his arrest.
