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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

#161

Post by DethNinja »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #148
DethNinja wrote: post #113

As humanity gets access to higher and higher technology, more and more smaller scale, non-governmental actors will get access to weapons that can cause asymmetrical damage. We will definitely get to a point where a single determined person can destroy an entire city. I strongly believe this is basically the great filter faced by all intelligent species in the universe. Only way to overcome this great filter is by ado…

Only way to overcome this great filter is by adopting policies that provide equal opportunities to each member of the species and create a non-divisive/united society where everyone practically helps each other How does this utopian ideal address the lone nutcase who would actually do something like destroy an entire city if he could? The Unabomber wasn't standing up for BLM or fighting income inequality, you know.

This is why I said we would need to colonise other planets. It is all about statistics, such crises must be occurring regularly even on highly advanced societies. So long as these events occur rarely, and doesn’t affect other planets, civilisation will continue and thrive.

Universe is a large place, statistically speaking there must be criminal empires, psychotic species, and all kinds of other madness that exist but I believe these types of societies would be a considerable rarity as it is hard to pass great filter with such social structures.

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

#162

Post by grugagag »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #108
grugagag wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wouldn't be nice for sure, but it would drastically slow down and change the magnitude. The thing is.. crime exists in most countries. What makes a big difference here is the amount of drug money coming into the cartels pockets, that type of money changes everything. We're talking of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, that's no pocket change. If money stops flowing in the cartels would have to switch to other types of operations, sadly still vicious and violent, but nothing like what they currently make.

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

#163

Post by nradov »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #35
nradov wrote: post #2

Short-range air defense (SHORAD) is going to be a huge growth area for defense contractors over the next several years.

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.

Those cheap antennas don't have sufficient power output or precision for that application. Going to be expensive.

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

#164

Post by phobosanomaly »

vmception wrote: post #158
phobosanomaly wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue is that the cartels have always provided a sort of summer camp for psychopaths. Charles Bowden wrote a bit about how absolutely terrifying it was to be anywhere in the proximity of these organizations. By formalizing it, you would be essentially giving a formal role to guys who cut people's limbs off with chainsaws and post videos of it on LiveLeak. Fighting the cartels leads to unimaginable violenc…

There are countries that routinely chop peoples heads off in a form of due process that we would not recognize or respect for seemingly minor actions. Even the most developed nations have laws to chop off the hands of thieves. We vilify and drone people with the same belief systems merely because they are not associated with an existing state, non-state combatants. There is simply no distinction I can lean on that wo…

If I understand correctly what you are saying, you are arguing that we take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. I very much respect that position.

However, I would argue that there is definitely not a consensus. The Mexican people are fighting with their lives against these organizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupos_de_Autodefensa_Comunita...

Mexico has a central government that is weak in some respects. Their judicial system is not what it needs to be. Certain transnational criminal organizations have taken advantage of this to establish enclaves of power.

That does not mean that they are recognized as legitimate political entities by the Mexican people and should be given some formal recognition of authority by the Mexican government or the country's neighbors.

Say my neighbor is in my front yard waving an AR-15 and screaming at me that trash day was yesterday and I need to bring my garbage cans in. I'm sure as hell not going out there to talk to him, but that doesn't mean I recognize him as the new de-facto mayor of my front yard. He's just the lunatic in my front yard screaming at me who I'm going to do my best to avoid, and hopefully at some point the cops will show up and get him out of my yard.

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

#165

Post by sudosysgen »

kortex wrote: post #116
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.

Then you just get stealth drones (fixed wing). Bondo, styrofoam, electric ducted fans, frequency hopping radio links, all easily doable. Only hard part really is range. For that, I could see hybrid electrics that power down the gas/nitro engine for stealth.

Or even just a gas turbine, as RC people already use. 10:1 TWR, relatively cheap. Quite loud, but works at high altitudes.

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

#166

Post by sudosysgen »

chongli wrote: post #159
searchableguy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the bright side, you don't need to bomb everyone. Future wars could be more efficient.

But that lowers the deterrence factor. If you’ve got lethal drones that can target any individual you want then who needs war when you can establish a totalitarian state? Just eliminate all of your enemies with drones and use them to keep the population firmly under your heel.

But then your enemies also drones you, and so does the popualtion. They're pretty easy to make and import.

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

#167

Post by phobosanomaly »

ev1 wrote: post #154
meowface wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/paramili…

I'm curious about one thing: I keep hearing weird stories about small police forces and ultra-militarised police forces in the US for example, like tiny towns having surplus tanks and assault rifles. Why/how are the cartels not just "put down" immediately with some assistance? Is there something deeper, like people being born into it or politicians much rather having drug money than a living population? I don't under…

There are a lot of desperately poor young men in Mexico, and there are billions of dollars being thrown around in the drug industry. It's cheap to hire an army, and if you can get kids young enough you can turn them into psychopaths.

Take a cop in rural Mexico making like $15k/year, and he'd be absolutely insane to flush his and his family's life down the toilet to go up against these guys.

Cop in the US in one of those militarized police forces is making upwards of $70k, and isn't up against organized groups of psychopaths with armored vehicles and automatic weapons. Those cops are going after guys growing pot in the closet, and the occasional small, low-level drug org that isn't too dangerous.

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

#168

Post by sudosysgen »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #90
narrator wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cartels have a feudalists political structure. I don't think feudalism is really a thing in the modern world.

Your two sentences directly contradict each other. What do you mean to say?

I think they meant the first descriptively and the second prescriptively.

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

#169

Post by michaelbarton »

Waterluvian wrote: post #152
generalizations wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a single determined person can destroy an entire city That's already true, and has been for a while, if you count medical doctors with a reasonable degree of connectedness.

What exactly do you mean by that? Is there some famous story I’m not aware of? ...I can’t help but sense some crazy coming my way.

Not the parent commentator but I assume this is a reference to a medical doctor having access to a significant contagion. For example the CDC keeps stocks of eradicated but virulent diseases.

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

#170

Post by CamperBob2 »

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…

Why didn't all of these things happen when Prohibition was repealed?
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