The drone/isaac stuff started in the summer and was dead as far as the mainstream media was concerned by august/september. That's way before the writers strike occurred and it's taken close to a year and a half from when the drones first appeared to when the ufo stuff started on The Sarah Conner Chronicles. The timing just doesn't fit even if you take out the 4-6 months the strike cost them. As Emp says the point of viral marketing is to build buzz to a crescendo and then reveal ...the crescendo was last summer. Without the strike we'd have been hitting these episodes earlier (say late spring/early summer 2008) but that's still close to a year after the drones hit.

On the other hand the timing for this being tscc trying to take advantage of the existing drone hoax mythos fits quite well. TV production can take place at an insane pace sometimes (especially when trying to compensate for a strike) so it's entirely possible the scripts were written late last year or rushed together early this year (to catch up from the strike). However, when the script was written doesn't really matter as I don't think anything in the script is specific to the drone/Isaac stuff. Terminator has had flying drones in it since terminator 2 and vague references to ships with "three dots" on them or even arcane symbols aren't exactly specific. What matters is when the props were created and when the cgi was done and that would have been late last year or early this year long after the drones had appeared and disappeared from the public consciousness. Remember TV cgi is must lower detail than the movie stuff so doesn't have a 2 year lead time or anything ridiculous like that.

Secondly there is no way the Isaac/caret stuff can be made to fit directly into the terminator mythos. The technology discussed was a half a step away from magic remember. Simply writing those symbols on objects gave them special properties. Sure they can steal the basic aesthetic of the symbols but not any of the stuff Isaac wrote. Kinda silly the make a viral ad that doesn't make any sense for your storyline.

People (such as Greg at dailygrail) have argued no one but the original creator would ever dare to use the images in a commercial product because of fear of lawsuits but I think thats a flawed view. Hollywood and various companies have been ripping off elements of ufo lore for comercial products for as long as ufo's have been a part of pop culture. I don't think anyones ever been sued for creating a spaceship based on an actual ufo sighting for their comicbook/movie/model/toy/whatever have they? Even by hoaxers? Lawyers would probably sign off on using images inspired by the drone/Isaac stuff (they aren't copying it directly you note just creating stuff that looks similar) using the idea that it was "believed to be in the public domain". Since the original creator has been presenting these images as if they were "real" not created, they'd have a pretty good defense. A lawsuit would have about as much chance as the authors of Holyblood/Holygrail had suing Dan Brown over the Da Vinci code (they tried and failed). There is a long well established tradition of these rip offs with no legal consequences so I don't think any corp would worry.

This is like the 80 billionth "it's a viral ad" theory for crapsake and they all have turned out to be untrue. I'd hoped we'd moved past that kneejerk assumption but I'm starting to wonder if people will ever give up that theory. It's not viral it's just a old fashion "con the rubes" hoax. Some prat is sitting in his basement giggling his butt off at everyone.

Oh and someone claiming to be the producer posted on io9 saying it was used just because he was constantly talking about the drones in the writers room. See here: http://io9.com/5117028/your-ufos-are-just-viral-marketing?t=9651953#viewcomments
We will have to wait for confirmation but I expect it to be forthcoming.