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Comment by dsq | Hacker News Reader

This, together the news that North Korea also has weaponized marine mammals, makes me more saddened than from the usual dismal news we hear. Even the primal innocent are being roped into our primate rivalries. It gets even worse, as each side in such an umderwater war will blast away every cetacean it detects, just in case.

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''' Even the primal innocent are being roped into our primate rivalries. '''

what's your opinion of say, horses used in olden times (heck till about WW-I, quite extensively) in battle ?

The accounts of horses in war are quite horrific, and their replacement by machines in the role of war transports is gratifying.

Indeed, the horror of their long history of participation in our primate wars puts their modern militarization in perspective.

Is the modern military's exploitation of animals actually significant compared to any other time in human history?

Or current K-9 units?

Cops still use horses, too. And routinely kill suspects' dogs (https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/jun/16/doj-polic...).

They are often used to maul people maliciously by cowards so yeah also bad

Is there something about cetaceans that saddens more than canidae, columbidae, equidae, or "sapiens?"

For some people I have met, the answer seems to be yes. There are definitely people that would rather spend their mindshare improving the animal condition than the human condition.

> rather spend their mindshare improving the animal condition than the human condition.

How does arming dolphins improve the human condition?

Did you read the article? They aren't arming the dolphins.

The dolphins are scouts for intruding mines and infiltrators - they find something strange, they come back and report it, and are sent out with a buoy to mark it, or attach to the intruder to float them for capture.

Someone could make a compelling argument that US' global military dominance imposes a kind of Pax Americana that is net beneficial to the human condition, and this is one limb of that military dominance.

I think you'll need to repeat that a little bit louder beacuse it seems like they didn't get the news in the middle east.

I'm not making the argument myself; it's just one I could imagine being compelling.

For better or for worse, horses and dogs have been alongside humans in peace and war for millenia and are adapted specifically for that. They are even classified as domestic/farm animals. I hope that current K9s do not strap bombs on dogs.

Yes, I'm thinking about the question more because I think that the use of marine mammals is somehow different emotionally even if not different semi-objectively. Maybe part of it is that horse and dog are domesticated as almost extensions of people (and the pigeon doesn't have the mammalian emotional resonance).

In a larger than dolphins specifically sense, it is something significant to think about since autonomous machines will be asked to perform similar tasks and since no war is "anything goes" it will be advantageous to think about how people perceive these other methods of execution.

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