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Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

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Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#341

Post by ndarwincorn »

prepend wrote: post #291
ndarwincorn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the border of France and Germany, for example, is very real and those countries have different cultures. You'd be hard-pressed to identify a more artificial border in Europe than that one (maybe the former Yugoslavia). Curious if you've ever been to Alsace-Lorraine, and if so why you think the culture there is distinctly French versus their German neighbors.

I have but only as a tourist. I called out that border because Alsace and Lorraine have gone back and forth quite a few times. I don’t think that’s a “natural” border but I think being exchanged by war and treaty is a pretty purposeful expression of local and national desires. So it’s not random. That wasn’t kind of what I was trying to express. Some borders are arbitrary (Kenya and Tanzania) and some are based on ri…

> a pretty purposeful expression of local and national desires

I don't think local desires have anything to do with that.

woah's explanation is much better than mine, and getting at the same thing.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#342

Post by aey »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #273
aey wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why aren’t they deploying this on the US/Canadian border? Or Alaska? I can see Russia from there. This whole thing smacks of corruption.

Because there is significantly less illegal immigration coming from those borders. Responsible resource allocation involves employing your assets where they will net the greatest utility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_maximization_problem Let's say 1 Anduril Widget would stop 10 border crossings/year on the southern border, but only 1/yr on the Canadian border. I…

Why does DoD care about illegal immigration? Mexico is not about to invade. This is useless to their mission.

If they are going to build it and hand it of to border patrol, then Congress should fund it with the border patrols budget. Which they won’t, because this is as useless as a physical wall. So funding it with the money taxpayers allocated for the DoD is the definition of corruption.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#343

Post by jart »

4bpp wrote: post #108
jobigoud wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite because I'm ambivalent about immigration laws. Why should people that just happen to be born in a third world country live a shitty life with no way out? You can't just say they have to do a revolution in their own country, not everyone is interested in activism, why should this be the fight of their life instead of stuff they actually want to do? You were born in a nice place by sheer luck. It's unfair. I…

The standard counterargument is that not allowing mobility is what enabled us to have any nice places to begin with, in an "ant and grasshopper" way. Building a "nice" and affluent country is generally a multigenerational project involving plenty of individual sacrifice for the sake of a future that the sacrificing individuals will rarely themselves experience. If Norwegians knew that they all could move to any count…

Come on Norway, cheer up. You're wonderful people. I don't believe you'd all go on blackjack-and-hooker downward spirals if your government gave you freedom. Throw off the yoke of state tyranny. Your countries are nice places due to the virtues of your people, not your governments. I had a Norwegian roommate for about a year, here in California. I have to admit I found it a little creepy how her government would do things like keep calling her on the phone every few weeks, to find out what she was doing, how much money she was making, etc. I also got the impression that some of the ideas she was exposed to, in her childhood environment, were going to make it much harder for her to thrive in an economic environment like California, versus an oil rich country like Norway. Very sad, almost like a limiting of potential.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#344

Post by manfredo »

aey wrote: post #340
manfredo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not corruption, it's basic resource allocation. Why would we want to dedicate equal amounts of manpower to both borders, when only one of them accounts for the overwhelming majority of unlawful crossings?

Since when are unlawful crossings a defense issue? Is Mexico sending an invasion force ready to storm the capital? Soviet Union used the army to police immigration as well.

It's not a defense issue, it's a law enforcement issue. Which is why law enforcement agencies (ICE, CBP) are the ones enforcing laws against illegal entry. The military is generally only mobilized at the border when large groups are poised to cross the border in numbers large enough that ICE and CBP don't have the manpower to stop it.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#345

Post by CapricornNoble »

tomhoward wrote: post #333
CapricornNoble wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because tourists move through very easily monitored access points. Not sure about the US, but most major airports in Asia have body-heat sensors to flag anyone who might be suffering from an infection-related fever. Similar controls should exist at all immigration points to the US. Implementing processes and technical systems to mitigate risk first requires acknowledging that the risk exists, and isn't just…

I've never knowingly been tested by any body heat sensor at an airport or other border crossing, and I've travelled plenty in Asia, USA, Europe, and in/out of my home country of Australia. It’s hard to imagine how much use it would be; an active fever is only one indicator of whether someone is carrying an infectious illness, so such a test will lead to many false positives and negatives. I'm fine with a sober discus…

>>>I've never knowingly been tested by any body heat sensor at an airport or other border crossing, and I've travelled plenty in Asia, USA, Europe, and in/out of my home country of Australia.

I guess they are easy to miss, they just look like camcorders on tripods, usually, but the checkpoints themselves and their purpose are usually clearly marked.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-27/a-thermal-camera-syst...

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30523865/ns/technology_and_science...

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#346

Post by lliamander »

tomhoward wrote: post #299
CapricornNoble wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>Trying to associate immigration with disease is some vile rhetoric. Cross-border population movements are a potential vector for disease transmission. Just look at the Google Scholar results from some similar searches, especially [1] and [2]. Casting objective physical science concerns as some sort of subjective expression of xenophobia is unhelpful to mitigating or solving real problems. [1] https://www.ingentaco…

Yet no serious commentator advocates shutting down tourism out of concern for spread of disease, and it's long been found that the key to preventing infection outbreaks is to have a well-functioning medical system.

So are you arguing that disease isn't a risk, or just that there is never a need to have border control to deal with it?

It is a risk, one that we can and do take into consideration. Anyone seeking to be a permanent resident in the U.S. is required to have certain vaccinations. That requires a certain level of border and immigration control to enforce.

Having a well-functioning medical system is good, but won't help much if your dealing with the spread of disease that isn't easily treatable. Or rather, quarantine is part of a well-functioning medical system. And yes, shutting down travel to/from certain countries experiencing a serious epidemic has been a real consideration in the past.

Look, I'm not saying "shut down the borders". All I'm saying is that completely open borders are impractical and ignores real risks.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#347

Post by elbasti »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #324
elbasti wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, nothing. In practice, current policy at the southern US border is directly responsible for acts which are unconscionably cruel and inhumane. Separating children, babies and toddlers from their parents. Keeping children in bed-less, 24/7 lit rooms. Not giving sanitary pads to menstruating girls, etc. The list of atrocities is growing, depressing and unforgivable. Apprehended migrants are treated in ways…

By that logic, doesn't someone also support "unhumane practices" if they do any kind of work or subcontract to US government? If you group everything together, then anyone supporting US is "directly responsible for an increase in human suffering". Does that really look like sound logic to you?

Of course not. I don't think there's anything in my comment that would suggest that.

My comment was explicitly about: inhumane acts done to apprehended migrants and building technology to apprehend more migrants. Those seem very connected.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#348

Post by remarkEon »

auslander wrote: post #294
JDulin wrote: post #208

Awesome! Anduril is one of the few startups today I believe is solving a core problem in the United States' institutions - Defense industry dysfunction. It costs American taxpayers billions of dollars on weapons that under-perform at best and endanger American lives at worst. Palmer correctly identifies some of the incentive issues with current defense contracts. Rather than working on contracts pre-defined by the Do…

> core problem in the United States' institutions - Defense industry dysfunction. Not Super PACs? "they can raise funds from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups without any legal limit on donation size." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

There’s a lot of conflicting incentives here, and PACs are definitely part of the problem. Luckey is, in my view, helping with just one of those issues (stagnation of innovation in the defense industry). Unfortunately I don’t see how he avoids employing, you guessed it, PACs to break the mold.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#349

Post by kevingadd »

hart_russell wrote: post #250
kevingadd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of the iron curtain, then? The way borders between North Korea and China/SK are secured too? Protesters being shot to death at the Gaza Strip borders? That's fine? There have to be reasonable limits to how you secure your border and whether you violate international and local laws to do it. The US border is currently being "secured" by ignoring lots of laws and treaties we agreed to re: asylum seekers and peo…

The United States allows all asylum seeker's safe entrance at ports of entry, so... Dunno what you're arguing here

Does stealing children from asylum seekers when they apply at ports of entry and then losing them count as safe entrance? Because we've been doing that.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#350

Post by chipotle_coyote »

mistermann wrote: post #292
mistermann wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smugglers aren't driving trucks full of contraband over the open desert through areas where Trump's (or Palmer's) "wall," whether real or virtual, would stop them. They're smuggling them through established checkpoints. I'm not saying you're wrong, but how do you know the specific means by which fentanyl is getting into the US? > The intense fight in the Trump era over this stems from the uncomfortable fact that th…

The amount of downvoting on legitimate questions is starting to get a bit out of hand around here. If people can't answer a mild challenge to their claim, should they be making it in the first place?

I didn't downvote you (you can't, AFAICT, downvote a reply to your own message). Having said that: I did start to compose a reply to you last night, but decided against it for two reasons:

1. The process by which drugs are generally smuggled into the US from Mexico has been covered by a multitude of news sources for decades. The vast majority are smuggled through border checkpoints; a small minority are smuggled around border walls using tunnels, speedboats, aircraft, etc. It's hard to believe that you've had no exposure to any of this news in the past yourself if you're concerned about border security at all, but even if you hadn't, you could literally have looked this up by typing "HOW ARE DRUGS SMUGGLED INTO THE US" into the search engine of your choice.

2. The more I thought about "how do you know people's motivations for border concerns" question the more I was at a loss to answer it. I didn't say anything about people's motivations; I pointed out that to the extent there is a real migrant crisis on the US-Mexico border, it is a crisis caused by refugees seeking legal asylum, a problem which is entirely orthogonal to any problems that could be solved by a border all, real or virtual. The belief that the United States is treating those refugees inhumanely is also entirely orthogonal to any beliefs about border security, immigration quotas, etc. The "Trump era fight" that I refer to is the fight over the ethics not only of treating refugees this way, but over the honesty -- or, bluntly, lack thereof -- in the way the Trump administration and its supporters have been framing the debate in a way that conflates a refugee crisis with illegal immigration.

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