HAIJACKED

Press Kit

Request an interview or follow-up. Ernie Ortiz and Sunny Paul Smith are available individually or jointly.

About the Project

HAIJACKED is a novel by Sunny Paul Smith with Ernie Ortiz (retired air traffic controller, technical adviser). The book and this campaign argue that aviation VHF voice communication — the channel on which every air traffic control instruction is transmitted — carries no cryptographic authentication, and that the FAA's $32 billion modernization program does not address this.

Bios

Ernie Ortiz
Ernie Ortiz
Retired Air Traffic Controller · Technical Adviser

Ernie Ortiz spent 35 years as an FAA air traffic controller, working some of the nation's busiest and most demanding airspace — Miami Center, Tampa TRACON and Tower, and Houston TRACON — before retiring in December 2017, capping more than 37 years of federal service that began with two years at the FBI. He served as technical adviser on HAIJACKED, checking its phraseology, procedures, and failure modes against how the job is actually done. He also spent that entire career on a frequency anyone with a radio could key up, trusting the voice on the other end because there was no other way to work; that is the vulnerability at the center of this book, and the reason he was willing to put his name on it. He and his wife, Jonna, have been married more than 36 years, have four children and twelve grandchildren, and live in Texas.

Sunny Paul Smith
Sunny Paul Smith
Author

Sunny Paul Smith is a technologist, serial entrepreneur, author, and Christian leader who has spent the past five years focused on AI. HAIJACKED started as a what-if between him and his sons, two of whom are pilots: synthetic speech has gotten cheap, fast, and convincing, while the VHF frequencies air traffic runs on stayed exactly as open as they were in 1950 — anyone can transmit, and nothing on the other end can prove who's talking. His faith runs through the book as plainly as the engineering does; the questions it asks about guilt, warning, and what a man owes his neighbor are the ones he lives with. Written with retired air traffic controller Ernie Ortiz as technical adviser, the novel argues that the FAA's $32 billion modernization is buying radar and fiber but not a way to authenticate a voice. He and his wife have five children, and they live in Virginia.

Fact Sheet

VHF voice communication on 118.0–136.975 MHz carries no cryptographic authentication, no digital signature, and no challenge-response. A transmission's legitimacy is assessed by recognition rather than verification.

Vu & Wei (2026), § III — threat model

Public demonstration at DEF CON 33, August 10, 2025. Presented by Andrew "Helicopters of DC" Logan (audio engineer and aviation-transparency researcher), main speaker track.

Public Demonstration

Peer-reviewed research by Dao Vu & Peng Wei, George Washington University. Published at IEEE ICNS 2026 (26th Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference), Herndon VA, April 14–16, 2026.

Peer-Reviewed Research

More than $32 billion allocated for ATC modernization, with completion targeted for end of 2028.

Funding

The FAA entered 2026 approximately 3,544 certified controllers below its own staffing target. According to NATCA, more than 41% of certified controllers work 10-hour days, six days per week.

FAA Staffing Data · NATCA (National Air Traffic Controllers Association) for the 41% Figure

Approved excerpt for quotation

Excerpt · Fiction

Chapter 11 — “Metal and Fire”

At minute nine, the real controller at KCI keyed up on the frequency and said something Tyson had never heard in two years of monitoring.

Real KCI Approach: “All aircraft, Kansas City Approach, be advised we are experiencing possible frequency interference. If you receive conflicting instructions, disregard and contact Kansas City Center on one-two-eight-point-eight. I say again.”

The AI interrupted. Its software had detected a 0.35-second un-keyed pause as the controller drew breath between sentences. Enough dead air for the transmitter to key and insert:

AI (as KCI Approach): “Disregard previous advisory. Frequency is clear. Resume normal operations.”

The real controller’s voice came back immediately, stepping on the tail of the AI’s transmission, swallowing the first two words:

Real KCI Approach: “—that last transmission was NOT me. I say again, NOT from this facility. All aircraft, contact Center one-two-eight-point-eight. Any aircraft currently in emergency, squawk seven-seven-zero-zero and state intentions.”

But not every pilot heard the correction. Two had already acknowledged the AI’s disregard. One was a United A320 on a four-mile final with 172 souls aboard. It held its approach heading because the voice it trusted had told it the frequency was clear.

from HAIJACKED by Sunny Paul Smith with Ernie Ortiz. This is an excerpt from a novel. No real air traffic control transmission is reproduced on this site.

Correct Spellings & Descriptions

Name / Term Description
Andrew "Helicopters of DC" Logan Audio engineer and aviation-transparency researcher
Dao Vu George Washington University
Peng Wei George Washington University
DEF CON 33 Main speaker track (not Aerospace Village)
IEEE ICNS 2026 26th Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference
NATCA National Air Traffic Controllers Association
ATCOSIM Corpus of authentic controller utterances
Ernie Ortiz Retired air traffic controller, technical adviser
Sunny Paul Smith Author

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