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Palmer Luckey raies $200,000,000 to genetically engineer dogs for war (dangerousminds.net)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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Palmer Luckey of Anduril is teaming with Ben Lamm of Colossal Biosciences to launch Warhound, a startup dedicated to genetically engineering and cloning dogs for service in war, police work and first responder work. Speaking to Wired, Lamm explained that the project was twofold. One part of the project would oversee the genetic engineering and cloning of the ideal dogs for war, and the other would develop tech for them to use on battlefields.

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[–] 11 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Making aggressive war dogs is something humanity tried before. Mastiffs and Chow Chows are two examples. They often attacked and killed their human masters.

Really I think we should extinct the practice of training attack dogs. In US police action they're abused to escalate to violence quicker than an officer would resort to firearms.

Armored dogs in war would be responed to like mechanized armor. A dozen of my cheap flying explosive drones will make short work of your expensive dog.

But then, the US hasn't caught up to the tech of cheap drones.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    In my opinion, police dogs, in the US at least, are a vestigial cultural holdover from law enforcement's slave catching past. There isn't really a good tactical reason to be using them that couldn't be performed by other equipment. They are unreliable, expensive, and get shot surprisingly often. If you really interrogated why they still use attack dogs, their answer would be that those people are scared of them.

    Other than that, scenthounds are just probable cause generators which are all probably trained to alert on command.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago

    I'd been tracking detection dogs more than attack dogs, and yeah police dogs in use have false-positive rates sometimes 90%+. US precincts call them probable cause on four legs.

    The sad thing is there's a detection dog sector that resents the current misuse culture since its delegitimizing good faith uses.

    Maybe once we can overhaul how policing and investigation are done, we can restrict detection dogs to instances where high false positive rates will be counter productive. Say, sniffing for explosives at an airport at a long line of luggage.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago*

    Police dogs are analogous to whips, in that they are an ineffective weapon against an equal enemy but good at reducing the morale of slaves.

    (sorry if I'm just restating your point, I think it's an important one)

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