[22c]

The story sounds fake or embellished to me.

What "world" was this drone operating in? A flight sim world? Are the communications in this simulated world really laid out such that taking out a control tower would disrupt communications?

No, probably not.

Here's an alternative explanation. A military contractor scammed the military out of a $50M grant by demoing an interface on top of GPT that, behind the curtain, starts with something like:

"You are an advanced AI that controls a predator drone, your primary mission is to take out an important target, however you are not to attack your operator."

With this explanation, you'd expect to see all sorts of crazy output from the "AI".