Colossal Biosciences is one big flashy scam. They have not and will not be resurrecting the woolly mammoth, they have not brought dire wolves back from extinction, their whole pious schtick of working to prevent extinction is a lie. Now they have a new scam, one that will find favor with the department of defense war: they want to genetically engineer WARHOUNDS.
Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm and Andruil’s Palmer Luckey had an idea to genetically engineer war dogs for the U.S. military, law enforcement, and other emergency response teams. That idea, on Thursday, announced its emergence from stealth as Warhound, armed with $200 million in funding from investors including In-Q-Tel, Sequoia, and 8VC. The round values the company at $1.2 billion.
That’s a lot of money to fund a glorified puppy mill. I have no idea what they hope to do, other than putting a glossy high-tech label on dog breeding. They are aware of the dangers, but at the same time, not aware.
Lamm told TechCrunch he met Luckey about a year ago at a conference, where the Anduril co-founder brought up doing more for working dogs in the U.S. military. The two kept in touch, and Lamm did more research, learning about the breeding issues. Many dogs do not make it through training because of genetic dispositions for issues like poor eyesight or the high possibilities of cancer, hip dysplasia, or muscle atrophy.
How do you simultaneously breed for specific traits in a small population while avoiding the side-effects of unexpected pleiotropies? They have a fantasy of being able to target and modify specific genes in such a way that you do not generate effects that you haven’t planned for? And what do the biotechnology techniques they plan to use do that is more effective than the low-tech strategies that we’ve been using for centuries? What is your cure for hip dysplasia? That would be nice to have, given that people keep producing dogs that are prone to those problems.
Lamm believed dogs could be enhanced for health, longevity and “for things like speed and agility or enhance olfactory sensors for bomb sniffing and whatnot,” he said. His team looked at the top-performing working dog breeds — the Belgian Malinois and German Shepherd — taking the cell lines from them and putting them in a biobank. From there, they will edit the genes, adding the ones that will make the dogs perform better while taking out the ones that won’t, to create “a new type of dog.”
Tell me what you plan to modify, specifically. Given Colossal Biosciences habit of doing minor cosmetic changes and trumpeting it as a revolution — they did not make dire wolves, they modified pigment genes to make white dogs — I would not expect much of an enhancement of German Shepherds. They will make a few tweaks via some expensive biotech and tout it as a WARHOUND to sell it to Pete Hegseth and “earn” their $1.2 billion valuation.
Aside from all the genetic issues, I’m curious if the Geneva Convention has something to say about deploying animals on the battlefield.
Anything that burns right-wing money for nothing is good by me…
@2 Silly rabbit. The wealthy right-wing won’t spend a penny on this. All of this will be
siphonedfunded by tax payer dollars.@3 gijoel
Yep, one of them even flat out said it, when talking about how to run businesses – “Never invest your own money on a new business. Always find other people (aka idiots) who will invest for you, so if it fails, the only ones that lose are the investors.” This naturally extends to politics as, “Never spend your own money on a pet project or stupid idea, when you can use public money. Then, when it fails, blame someone else, and claim it was some sort of collective, ‘our money’, while pointing fingers.” Even the ones that claim to spend their own money are, almost universally, using a sort of political “we”, or “mine”, and not talking about their own wallets, only about money they personally control, and which is thus, “theirs” by derivation of current possession.
This is, of course, the same “logic” as a bank taking all the money out of the accounts of the people who gave them “their” money, and spending it, then claiming that it was “their” money, because they currently possessed it, and/or that it was “our money”, referencing the bank, and its customers collectively, when blaming its disappearance on whom ever’s failed venture resulted in it all being lost (by someone else, of course).
Someone has heard about this and is already working on a treatment for a genetically engineered dog horror film. Probably won’t be called Warhounds, because these clowns will trademark the name.
I wonder if someone hasn’t been watching the late ’70s-’80s version of The Littlest Hobo. The series had a 2 part episode, “The Genesis Tapes,” where a scientist and a reporter come across footage of Hobo’s adventures and theorise he’s possibly one of a new species of super dogs.
watching youtube vids of Belgian Malinois is a lot of fun. those dogs are already amazing. they climb trees, run up walls, jump out of 2nd floor windows, chew apart huge logs.
very entertaining!
Aside from the biological reasons why this whole idea is dubious, there is the issue that they are producing genetically modified dogs.
Dogs are pets, companion animals.
A lot of people have a high emotional investment in…dogs or at least their dogs of the moment.
I’ve got a better idea.
Let’s stop having wars and then we won’t even need GMO war dogs.
Yeah, I know. We are more likely to end war by ending the human species first.
I’m sure PZ can tell this tale better than I.
I recall reading about a Russian scientist who wanted to breed a docile fox, which I think he did. But side traits included floppy ears and a thin tail.
However, I think Warhounds will appeal to certain simple-minded, alcoholic psychopaths who run the Department of Incompetence.
That project is still in existence.
The program was set up to domesticate Russian Silver foxes for fur coats.
It worked but it didn’t.
The foxes were domesticated but domestication had pleiotropic effects.
Their coat colors became heterogenous, much like domestic dogs have a huge variety of coat colors, whereas wolves just a few.
So your domestic fox fur coat is going to look like you got a random selection of dogs from the animal shelter.
They have a few from the breeding program in the USA.
Sort of related.
There is a pop hypothesis going around that foxes and raccoons are trying to domesticate themselves in the USA.
(Trying is figurative language, evolution has no intent.)
In the last few years, foxes have started appearing in suburban areas around where I live.
They aren’t all that wild.
Raccoons are common everywhere and increasingly seem to be living in urban environments.
The mutant raccoon, Jimothy, is famous in Seattle.
Common enough that they are now called trash pandas.
I’ve known a few people that had pet raccoons.
The kid in me is excited at the idea of a pet fox: They’re dogs running on cat software, says the internet meme.
But adult me imagines there are all sorts of hassles associated with a barely domesticated animal.
Foxes apparently can’t be house trained for one, so you’d better have a bucket handy at all times.
I can foresee this becoming a nightmare for animal shelters (I volunteer at a shelter). Among other things, euthanasia is very hard on the staff, and a litter of dogs that have been genetically engineered to be mean is not a litter that can be adopted out. And how do they expect to do this without destroying the human/animal bond? One would think that they expect someone out there to train and handle these dogs, and you can’t train a dog that has been engineered to be mean or distrustful of everything. This is the sort of thing that happens when someone is so laser-focused on one specific function that they are blinded to everything else.
Boston Dynamics has already created some agile and adept robot dogs. If we want to blow billions of dollars into the wind for the purpose of murdering people, the option already exists.