[ExI] keynes vs hayek again, was: RE: 3d printers for sale

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
...

>...The US is profoundly vulnerable in a near-endless number of ways.  The
car drone might be one of the biggies, but its just one of many.  I'm
actually surprised it hasn't happened yet, and I hope it's because my
thinking is somehow flawed...Best, Jeff Davis

It isn't flawed Jeff.  The people that ponder this kind of thing have been
thinking about possible defenses against car drones for years.  Robo-cars
are newish, but didn't just happen last week.  When I attended the DARPA
Grand Challenge in 2004, none of the racers finished in the required time,
but from a controls perspective, a race through the desert is far harder
than driving on paved roads.  

As a controls engineer, it occurred to me, and others, that this technology
could easily be adapted to the relatively easy task of making a supercruise
on the freeway.  Then Sebastian Thune came along and won the next DARPA
challenge, then gave us streetable robo-cars.  Within minutes, it was clear
that these things could easily be made into guided weapons of enormous
destructive capacity, and if the 1000 kg or so which can be packed into a
Prius isn't bad enough, one could hitch on a trailer with five times that
much.

This horrifying attack was done with five tons of ammonium nitrate and
nitromethane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

Car-drones are a big threat.  It might be hard to combat such a weapon.

spike