The NSA actually developed a program called 'Skynet'

[THSF2015] Droits et libertés sur Internet - @jerezim

The American National Security Agency, or NSA, has a secret surveillance program called Skynet. Skynet – a reference to the self-aware computer system that attempts to wipe out humanity in the Terminator film franchise – was used by the NSA to identify terrorist connections.

SKYNET: Courier Detection via Machine Learning

SKYNET: Applying Advanced Cloud-based Behavior Analytics

RT @jerezim: After my talk abt the Terminator @the_intercept shows Skynet Big UP @term…

RT @e3i5: Disclosure of NSA SKYNET just one day after @jerezim talk on Fighting that Terminator in our Crap!

We’ve suspected it all along—that Skynet, the massive program that brings about world destruction in the Terminator movies, was just a fictionalization of a real program in the hands of the US government. And now it’s confirmed—at least in name.

In the Terminator franchise, Skynet is an evil military computer system that launches war on humanity. And at some point, someone in the National Security Agency sat down and thought, “Damn, that’s a sick thing to name a secret system!” Malevolent undertones of aspirations to unchecked aggression be damned, I guess, because Skynet is real.

The document cites Zaidan as an example to demonstrate the powers of SKYNET, a program that analyzes location and communication data (or “metadata”) from bulk call records in order to detect suspicious patterns. In the Terminator movies, SKYNET is a self-aware military computer system that launches a nuclear war to exterminate the human race, and then systematically kills the survivors. According to the presentation, the NSA uses its version of SKYNET to identify people that it believes move like couriers used by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership. The program assessed Zaidan as a likely match, which raises troubling questions about the U.S. government’s method of identifying terrorist targets based on metadata.