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.
This is puzzling. Robot dogs have more potential, and German sheppards and Dobermans have good mix of agility speed and strength as it is. Would take about 10 years to get 5 generations of supremacy. An army takes an army of trainers.
I get that the goal is genetic engineering rather than breeding. But getting dogs to make 8 babies per year is orders of magnitude cheaper than test tubes and incubators at volume.
This is the founder of andruil. He has suggested roofying women with oxytocin to make them better wives. He is exactly the kind of person to believe that having war dogs is “cool” and “awesome!”.
Which frankly speaking is baffling since even the fucking Romans considered their war dogs as something of a necessity and not as a prestige thing. Like they gave those hounds and their masters a tonne of respect which was often times worth more than gold in Roman society.
Baffling is the new normal. I didn’t believe that the world would spiral into a cyberpunk dystopia.
Life used to be so optimistic. I know there were issues in the aughties and nineties, but God damn, we were so hopeful of the future.
Robot dogs already exist–with guns.