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Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

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Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#101

Post by grugagag »

theptip wrote: post #82
grugagag wrote: post #72

Legalizing all drugs would kill these cartels almost instantly. People who do drugs do them anyway and find a way to even if they’re illegal. If drugs weren’t illegal all that money wouldnt end up in mexican cartels pockets.

Indeed. In the US the focus is typically on the drugs that come north, but it’s not just dollars that flow back south, it’s also weapons, which further destabilize the drug producing/transit countries.

I wouldnt be surprised if drug cartels and weapon manufacturers lobby to keep the situation unchanged.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#102

Post by vmception »

leppr wrote: post #52
vmception wrote: post #6

Interesting map, its crazy how often these groups fracture and splinter! Really wish one of these would go publicly traded and report revenue, leading to real price discovery of these operations and ability to manage risk. There are permissionless systems they can use now to list shares, and if they have a liquidity issue they just need to take over a dam and generate some electricity for themselves for their crypto…

Is this a roundabout way of trying to associate cryptocurrencies with criminal groups? In case this isn't obvious, no, there's no trustless way to make an entity distribute its real world profits to holders of a crypto token. We're talking about mafias here, groups which specialize in hiding money streams. Only enforcement from a real world judiciary system can enforce dividend distribution.

It doesn't need to be trustless.

Is this a roundabout way of trying to associate cryptocurrencies with a prerequisite of trustlessness for everything that uses them?

This is just corporations using permissionless architecture, there have been companies doing this on blockchains for almost 10 years. I used to own shares of SatoshiDice for the daily dividends it paid onchain from 2012-2013.

The market enforces the behavior. A cartel that pays nice dividends will have a better share price and deeper secondary market, allowing them and their employees to always sell shares for more money. A corporation that doesnt perform well for shareholders doesnt have the same market.

I think I’m the one specifically drawing no distinction between criminal groups and liquidity, because they are unrelated concepts.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#103

Post by jdhbbbhb »

grugagag wrote: post #72

Legalizing all drugs would kill these cartels almost instantly. People who do drugs do them anyway and find a way to even if they’re illegal. If drugs weren’t illegal all that money wouldnt end up in mexican cartels pockets.

This is the most naive comment I have seen. You do not understand the cartels integration in all parts of life. They control the government. They control business.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#104

Post by everdumb »

grugagag wrote: post #72

Legalizing all drugs would kill these cartels almost instantly. People who do drugs do them anyway and find a way to even if they’re illegal. If drugs weren’t illegal all that money wouldnt end up in mexican cartels pockets.

Is that really a proven fact? Ending Prohibition didn't end the Mafia.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#105

Post by iciac »

hindsightbias wrote: post #88
grugagag wrote: post #72

Legalizing all drugs would kill these cartels almost instantly. People who do drugs do them anyway and find a way to even if they’re illegal. If drugs weren’t illegal all that money wouldnt end up in mexican cartels pockets.

We legalized weed and it didnt make a dent. Theyre literally killing the competition for the avocado you bought yesterday. Narcos are entrenched and not going anywhere anymore than Russian oligarchs.

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/how-legali...

Cato report (2018) on the effects of marijuana legalization on border smuggling. It's had a large and direct impact on the market.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#106

Post by vmception »

jrumbut wrote: post #91
leppr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a roundabout way of trying to associate cryptocurrencies with criminal groups? In case this isn't obvious, no, there's no trustless way to make an entity distribute its real world profits to holders of a crypto token. We're talking about mafias here, groups which specialize in hiding money streams. Only enforcement from a real world judiciary system can enforce dividend distribution.

Unless, of course, the same tokens were used to conduct the drug transactions. Then all the token holders have an interest in preventing non-tokenized transactions. This is all ridiculous (and evil of course) but it has a certain internally consistent logic to it. Why would they adopt a new system given they've got such a good grip on current one?

Thats why they would mine virgin cryptocurrency.

I think people are conflating which crypto is used for what here lol, but thats predictable. There would be two cryptocurrencies involved: the share, and the cash-surrogate as profits.

Forget about the problems, think solutions and it will be easier to iterate towards and perceive a system that works.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#107

Post by meowface »

stephentmcm wrote: post #86
grugagag wrote: post #72

Legalizing all drugs would kill these cartels almost instantly. People who do drugs do them anyway and find a way to even if they’re illegal. If drugs weren’t illegal all that money wouldnt end up in mexican cartels pockets.

This is absolutely not going to be the case. Assuming both the US and Mexico simultaneous legalized all drugs, what happens to all the illegal jobs the cartels currently have? Their people, money and weapons don't vanish and what we see when cartels take a hit income is violence increases and the cartels look to other methods of making income using they're existing tools. Protection rackets and kidnappings are alread…

It definitely would not magically get rid of cartels overnight, but it'd cut off a huge source of money for them. If they start multiplying the number of violence-related revenue streams (kidnapping, protection rackets/extortion, murder-for-hire, arms snuggling), their image among people who were neutral towards them may decline, and maybe they'll start to be seen as much closer to nothing but pure terrorist/paramilitary organizations.

I don't know if that would start the process of gradual downsizing and elimination by security forces or if it'd instead first lead to a huge uptick in violence and perhaps civil war, but I feel like in the long-term it'd be much harder for most of them to hold onto as much money and power as they used to.

I'm absolutely not an expert in this area and could be horribly wrong, but I think this idea should at least be considered more seriously.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#108

Post by stjohnswarts »

grugagag wrote: post #94
stephentmcm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not going to be the case. Assuming both the US and Mexico simultaneous legalized all drugs, what happens to all the illegal jobs the cartels currently have? Their people, money and weapons don't vanish and what we see when cartels take a hit income is violence increases and the cartels look to other methods of making income using they're existing tools. Protection rackets and kidnappings are alread…

If their main source of income is cut off they will have to immediately downsize or it would all eat into the boss’s accumulated wealth. Reestablishing the cartel on kidnapping and other violent crime is not as lucrative as selling sniffy gold. If they start kidnapping in America is a different thing all together but doing it in Mexico would not yield enough money to keep the current operations - unless they kidnap e…

Or they get into the "protection" and kidnapping racket even more than they are currently. Sure their size would probably decrease but the amount of violence would skyrocket. At least for several years. The basically control whole swathes of that. They wouldn't give that up without a fight.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#109

Post by aaron695 »

duck2 wrote: post #68
Animats wrote: post #58

Small armed drones could be the game-changer the AK-47 was. Before the AK-47, revolt against an army with machine guns was almost impossible. "Whatever happens, we have got ... The Maxim gun - and they have not." Post AK-47, the guerillas usually win, or at least can keep the struggle going on indefinitely. The combination of drones for assassination and Bitcoin for payment could force everyone with money or power in…

Drones are easy to jam. The communication link and GPS are most obvious targets.

There no reason it can't use Google maps to travel and be autonomous with facial recognition.

Star-Tracker Algorithm for Smartphones and Commercial Micro-Drones -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7070887/

The short distance drones can travel is a big problem, you can backtrack to the launch location.

Committing murder for money is mostly unheard of outside of Hollywood.

It happens but it's generally somewhat crazy people or people copying Hollywood. This is more the real reason it wont happen. Society doesn't like murder and will pull out all stops to discontinue it.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#110

Post by jdhbbbhb »

Nextgrid wrote: post #71
CapricornNoble wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we can repurpose mm-wave 60GHz panel antennas and SDRs for cheap short-range radars. Then combine with a commercial infrared camera for multi-mode target acquisition. Put those on a mount with servos to control a PKM or M240 machinegun, and mount the whole setup on the roofs of buildings. Critical infrastructure anti-drone air defense guns at fairly low cost.

> Put those on a mount with servos to control a PKM or M240 machinegun Leaving weapons unattended like that is a recipe for disaster. Even worse if they're network-connected (look at the tons of insecure IoT devices already out there).

What????? What he is describing already exists and is extensively used. CRAM - it shoots down rockets and artillery. Go watch a video of it
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