animal war.

(evil genius plan for world conquest)

I am perpetually annoying my readers with unrealistic science fiction. They want a realist, a cautious voice of reason… But I refuse.

how to conquer a country, with minimal infrastructure damage, and minimal human resources

Bashar al-Assad has lost control of Syria. He no longer has an army. He has four options to retake the country:

1. Mercenaries;

2. Nukes;

3. Breed a genetically engineered virus to remove the existing population;

4. Breed war-animals.

assad’s only option.

A.S.S.A.D. is actually an acronym:

• Affluent

• Simulated

• Synthetic

• Archvillain

• Dictator

In this thought experiment, I assume that the A.S.S.A.D. family has been fleecing Syria for generations and hoarding wealth in Bitcoin. The GDP of Syria was $67 billion in 2011, so if you skim off the top with extreme corruption for long enough, that should give you a few billion.

In option 1, Assad hires mercenaries. The problem with mercenaries is that they are fickle and often don’t listen to you. If Assad hires Wagner to take over Syria, what is to stop Wagner from killing Assad and ruling without him? This is sort of what happened during the first crusade: the Byzantines requested aid, and the Franks responded by pillaging Constantinople. Beware of mercenaries!

In option 2, Assad could attempt to steal or purchase ICBMs and nuke Syria. But this doesn’t really count as “retaking the country,” since it would destroy all the critical infrastructure and the population. There’s a difference between “taking” and “destroying.”

In option 3, Assad could unleash a genetically engineered virus on Syria. This would preserve critical infrastructure, but would also turn Syria into a ghost town, with no one to rule over. What’s the point of being a dictator if there is no one to boss around?

This leaves the fourth and final option as the most plausible: breed genetically engineered war animals. While a bombing campaign would destroy valuable infrastructure, an animal campaign eliminates hostile threats while leaving buildings largely intact.

The morality of war-animals.

It is possible that training animals for war is more immoral than training humans for war. You could be perverting the original purpose of the animal, whereas humans have already been bred over generations for such purposes. War-animals are a “sin against archetype,” defying God or nature, like Sauron making wargs and orcs out of elves. Dark stuff.

But this kind of Platonic reasoning got a lot of negative feedback on my article defending animal rights:

Maybe this crowd will get excited by the idea of replacing human soldiers with animal soldiers. If humans are more valuable than animals, then using animal soldiers instead of human soldiers would be morally good! We are going to do a 180 from “Platonic nonsense” to man-made horrors beyond comprehension.

If you get sad while reading about the idea of dogs rushing head-first into gunfire to attack Syrian troops, pretend I said “robot dogs,” and “engineer via evolutionary algorithms” instead of “breed.”

i warned… but you did not listen...

If Assad follows my plan, he will need to purchase millions of animals. This will cost billions of dollars. I strongly suggest he moves to Alabama, because the state government there apparently doesn’t care if you purchase bears and tigers.

He then needs to create an obstacle course that can measure various qualities: bite strength, speed, endurance, and trainability. You could design some kind of conveyor belt system where the animals are induced to attack a target with a force-measurement device attached.

Lions, tigers, cheetahs, wolves, and bears all have their own pros and cons. Ideally, the animal springs upon its target, extends its claws, digs in and latches on, and tears at the jugular to eliminate the target. Animals could be bred to have “lockjaw rigor mortis” where even after being shot to death, it continues to bite down and squeeze the target, immobilizing and creating a casualty.

A one-size-fits-all is economical, but not optimal. Here is a three wave model:

• First wave: fast cheetahs with explosive suicide vests to breach doors and windows.

• Second wave: attacks under cover of the loud noise and cloud of dust. With genetic engineering, could even use infrared or echolocation to locate targets. Reaches the enemy as soon as possible in an attempt to overcome the distance of gunfire.

• Third wave: bears covered in Kevlar, maximized for durability, as a “clean up crew” to take out stragglers.

I should clarify some points about animal warfare:

1. Animal breeds as they currently exist are unsuited for warfare. They are either too tame too, or not tame enough (would target women, children, elderly bystanders).

2. A high casualty rate is assumed. These aren’t intended to be reusable units, but disposable units.

3. Stalingrad proved that, even when soldiers have access to guns, urban warfare re-introduces the possibility of hand-to-hand combat.

Urban combat is close quarters, which makes guns less effective in hand-to-hand combat.

Hand-to-hand combat also occurred in the Battle of Okinawa. It’s more common than you think given the supposed supremacy of a “gun in a knife fight.”

Usain Bolt holds the record for fastest sprint at 23 mph. A cheetah can run at 75 mph. This means that the 21 foot rule would increase to more like a 60 foot rule, which in urban warfare makes projectile weapons much less effective.

Animals vs Drones

The drones in Ukraine are human-guided bombs which explode on impact. These are useful in an open battlefield against tanks, but less useful in urban warfare. Trying to use precision drones in urban warfare instead of big bombs is like telling cops to “just shoot at the legs!”

Drones are useful against large tanks in an open battlefield where there are no corners, alleys, or places to hide. The drone just drives straight to the tank and explodes on impact.

Yahya Sinwar had time to throw a stick at a drone because the drone was a surveillance tool with no rapid offensive capacity. It did not immediately fly into Sinwar and explode; it did not shoot at Sinwar. It is just there to gather intelligence so Israeli soldiers could see inside.

Drones can be used in urban warfare to gather intelligence or to set off booby-traps. But thus far they have not proven their offensive capacity within an urban environment. They are best employed in wide, open spaces against large targets.

Maybe Assad could invest in some reconnaissance drones to blow up the doors on all the buildings and to blow up barricades or obstacles put in the way of his animal army. But there is no economic reason (besides morality) why bombs couldn’t be strapped to animals on suicide missions to achieve the same goal.

It’s hard to think of a way in which a drone would outperform a sufficiently trained animal soldier. The only job that a drone would do better is filming the battle for propaganda purposes, since the camera would be stabilized and less shaky.

EMPs make animal-war more likely.

Using animals in trench warfare, or tank warfare, is generally a bad idea. But there is a possibility, in the case of tank warfare, of attaching bombs to cheetahs and making them into exploding biological drones.

“Biological drone” sounds more PC than “exploding animal.”

The problem with mechanical drones is that they require operators. If Assad already had an army of operators, then he wouldn’t need all these animals. I am assuming that Assad has no human operators, and this is why he needs an animal army.

Furthermore, even if Assad did have a robot army, the role of EMPs is unknown at this time. No one has fought with robot infantry before, so no one has tried to disable a robot army with EMPs yet. A large army of robots would be sensitive to EMP disruption. Animals exist, whereas robot infantry does not (yet) exist.

Everyone has seen a Boston dynamics robot run around a controlled obstacle course for 30 seconds. No one has ever deployed one on the battlefield. Robots are costly to manufacture. In comparison with animals, robots are slow, clunky, clumsy, and uncoordinated, with poor depth perception.

If I had a billion dollars, I would rather spend it training an army of attack animals than on experimental robots which:

1. probably don’t work

2. if they do work, an EMP might just destroy all of them instantly.

In open-field warfare, on the plains of Eastern Europe, video gamers in bunkers can accurately pilot and fight with remote controlled vehicles. But how would an EMP attack affect remotely controlled drones? Can a remote connection survive EMPs?

The possibility of EMP warfare renders drones and remote-controlled vehicles useless. These machines must be operated by humans, and if humans are piloting these vehicles, why not animals?

Even guided missiles might be rendered useless due to EMP technology. In that case, it might be necessary to breed and train birds to carry payloads to a target.

Battlefield EMPs are an unexplored technology. Compare the use of EMPs to the development of firearms. In 1500, Europeans had been developing metal armor for hundreds of years. But bullets penetrated armor easily, and made it useless. By 1776, armies stopped fighting with armor, and just wore clothing.

Similarly, militaries around the world have devoted significant resources to developing remote-controlled drones, guided missiles, and means of electronic warfare. But EMPs deployed at scale would disrupt this development. Guided missiles and remote-controlled drones would be tossed aside, just as metal armor was discarded.

The full deployment of EMP technology will require biological solutions to the problem of war. Since populations in the first and second world are shrinking, militaries may look to non-human sources of lethality.

Specialization of Forces

Having an all-animal force has disadvantages, in that animals cannot shoot guns. It is possible that guns could be mounted on the backs of animals, and fired with neural link systems, but without arms to quickly maneuver the firearm, these wouldn't be very accurate. Quadrupedal animals, pound for pound, are less capable of carrying loads than bipedal animals.

Humans are bipedal with opposable thumbs, and this allows us to carry weapons in a way that most animals cannot without sacrificing mobility and speed. The mechanical advantage cannot be understated.

An all-human force would be superior to a mixed force of animals and humans. Humans are smarter and they can hold and aim guns. But we are assuming that Assad does not have many loyal soldiers.

Assad might have to hire some human mercenaries to accompany his animal army, but these humans would need to be clearly differentiated (smelly?) so as not to cause friendly fire. Animal soldiers working in coordination with human soldiers would combine the speed and numbers of animals with the firepower of humans.

Low fertility encourages animal warfare.

My argument explores the possibilities for the use of animals in urban warfare when human troops are scarce. As genetic engineering advances, and human resources become more scarce, these scenarios exit the realm of science fiction and enter into reality.

In China, India, and NATO, fertility has dropped below 2.0. All of these populations will age, reducing the percentage of working-age or fighting-age men. Forcing women to give birth in order to generate more soldiers would take 18 years, and be a violation of gender equality and human rights. So long as animal rights are not protected (factory farming), animal soldiers would be a lesser violation.

How many soldiers are equal to a human soldier? Would you rather face down a single human with a gun, or 1,000 cheetahs? It is not clear what the ratio is, but it depends on context. In trench warfare, the speed of an animal is less helpful for closing the distance. In urban warfare, where corners are narrow and tight, hand-to-hand combat becomes more relevant.

It is a question of cost-to-effectiveness ratio. If a single tank costs $1.2 million, but it costs $10k to feed a bear and cover him in Kevlar, then you can produce 120 armored bears for every tank. Individually, the tank might be more efficacious than the bear, but less efficacious than 120 bears, especially in urban warfare.

Animal Intelligence

Ideally, animal soldiers will be trained to distinguish between hostile targets (young men with guns) and non-targets (women, children, elderly). This process would become more coordinated with increased animal intelligence.

As we discover the specific genes related to intelligence, we will be able to use selective measures to increase human intelligence. There will likely be ethical regulations against human experimentation. The results of this research would take 12 years to be verified, since the development of the human brain is rather slow.

Animals with quicker gestation periods would allow for a more rapid process of experimentation and verification of higher intelligence, with less regulatory barriers.

Animals are already quite deadly. Increasing the physical capacities of animals for war will have diminishing returns. But increasing the mental capacities of animals could provide exponential benefits.

Imagine:

Assad air-drops 100,000 animal soldiers on Damascus with self-detaching parachutes. Cheetah suicide bombers rush toward doors and windows.

The second wave enters the building. Cheetahs rush through the cloud of dust giving you little time to aim. You spray and pray through the cloud, but cheetahs rush through gunfire toward you. Some of your bullets are stopped by stylish Kevlar vests.

An attack-bear, unlike a regular bear, has 5% bodyfat, and no hair at all. Instead of hair and fat, it is covered in Kevlar. Such an animal would be like a small mobile tank. You could injure it with small arms fire, but in between injury and death, it will still close the distance and maul you to death.

Coming up behind this force of armored bears would be a small but elite group of human special forces to provide covering fire. Assad emerges from the dust, witnessing the victory of his animal army.

I’m back, baby.

this was all a joke.

I do not fantasize about armored bears charging into battle. I do not imagine myself as a genetically modified bear while working out at a gym. This is a very serious Substack. I pledge to only promulgate the cold realism from here on out. I forbid you from leaving comments calling me silly, unrealistic, or impractical. Forbidden!

John is watching.