[extropy-chat] T-Rex vs Bin-Laden

[Dan Clemmensen]

Al Brooks wrote:

>I would hope a T-Rex would chew bin Laden up and then
>spit him out.
>
>
>
>--- Gary Miller <aiguy at comcast.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>I vote we make T-Rex border patrol and station them
>>on the Al Qaeda
>>infested Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
>> 
>>It might give Osama BinLaden something new to think
>>about. 
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
This is truly ridiculous on so many levels that it actually becomes 
interesting.

The Mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border region is one of the most difficult
pieces of habitable terrain in the world. There might possibly be a 
worse place in the
world for a T-Rex, but I'm not sure where.

Has the list examined the hunt for Bin-Laden? I was not paying 
attention. There is
no obvious way to use  ordinary technology to good effect in this border 
region,
and I cannot think of a way to use more manpower. Perhaps if we had 
concentrated
on Bin-Laden instead of distracting ourselves in Iraq, we could have 
thought of
something. About the only approach I can think of would be to:
   1) offer a truly enormas monetary reward
and
   2) make make a convincing argument that the recipient of the reward 
and his
family will live to take advantage of it.

A cynic might conclude that it is not in the strategic political 
interest of the
leadership of the US to actually capture Bin-Laden.

Is there a way to use emerging technologies to find Bin-Laden in this 
hostile
environment? How about a automating a Bin-Laden-specific PCR sampler and
testing damn near every site that the searchers look at? Of course, any such
technology can subsequently be used everywhere else: welcome to the 
transparent
society.

What about coupling continuous infra-red satellite surveillance with
pattern-recognition software? For a mere $100 million, I suspect you 
could track
every inhabitant of the region: then, you only need a human searcher  to 
contact each
identified inhabitant (i.e., each track) once.

How about carpet-bombing the region with WIFI-enabled cameras? Unit cost 
of $1000,
camera, solar panel, WIFI system. The units establish a WIFI mesh. $1000 
per sq Km.
Especially useful in conjunction with the above-mentioned infrared 
tracker. I would
deploy the cameras in lines with a 500m spacing, but an operations 
researcher might
prefer something more random.

How about cheap UAVs? the problem here is that training and paying the 
pilots is expensive.
a super-cheap UAV might cost $5000, with a life expectancy of (say) ten 
flights when the
pilots are non-professionals. But you can probably recruit a million 
enthusiastic unpaid
volunteers  to pilot these UAVs from the comfort of their homes here in 
the US: the ultimate
video game. Build a decent sim trainer and let the millions of 
volunteers compete to become
pilots of REAL bin-laden seekers. The reward is to pilot the real thing. 
You cold probably
make the whole thing self-funding by actually charging the participants 
to join the challenge.
let's see: a million participants with a $10.00 fee. chance of piloting 
a real mission: one in
1000. $5000/UAV and an overhead of 100%, we can pay for 1000 real 
missions. Mission parameters:
100Km search path, photograph all suspicious persons along the path. 
This has tremendous
synergy with the above two approaches.

OK, that's it for me. any other approaches?