In raptures about raptors policing our streets

Let’s take a short trip into the future. The year is 2045 and the CIA-seeded Moreau-esque brainchild of tech billionaires Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus and Anduril Industries, and Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences, announces the next generation in dystopian community policing... Waraptor.

From the founders of Texas-based Warhound, a US$200 million In-Q-Tel seed-funded start-up, Waraptor is the latest ground-breaking initiative to leverage up-to-the-minute breakthroughs in genetic engineering and defence technology to create a raptor army to keep the streets safe from anti-hermetic antagonists.

Warhound chief executive officer David Spirk, a United States Marine Corps veteran and former US Department of Defence chief data officer and Palantir executive, is thought to be in raptures about the raptors’ enforcement applications.

Colossal’s landmark breakthrough project was the resurrection of the woolly mammoth, ostensibly a genetic modification of elephant DNA that spawned a cold-resistant pachyderm with all of the core biological traits of the heavily-tusked fluffy giants – looking like them, walking like them, sounding like them – although allegedly not cloned from the DNA of one of them.

But things have moved on since the late 2020s with Colossal Biosciences’ enhanced genetic solutions, biobanking, cloning and selective breeding providing Waraptor with the tools to harness the latest technological innovations to create a raptor army to stamp out subversive elements in society.

In parallel Anduril Industries has built on technology first developed for Warhound’s K9 creations, with advanced software applications, protective armour and battlefield-awareness solutions to transform the Waraptors into the most formidable fighting force on the planet since the Earth’s last great reset.

Complete with bionic augmentation, Waraptors are claimed to be the ultimate security solution to shepherd humanity into the 22nd century... the most cost-effective response to maintain urban populations at sustainable levels and clear rural zones for maximum exploitation and profitability.

Well, forgive that short glimpse into what the future could hold, but back in 2026 the protagonists in the creation of Warhound – an actual Denver-based CIA-seeded start-up – make the scenario seem quite plausible... well, to me at least, although advances in robotics and surveillance technology by the mid-2040s may have advanced to a point by then to make such a scenario obsolete anyway.

But all the elements are already in place and while a raptor-like army may seem like science fiction to most readers it’s quite within the realms of possibility... and in just a few decades from now too I’d suggest.

Either by cloning from harnessed ancient DNA or genetic manipulation of existing species the possibility of a raptor-esque enforcement entity being developed by Colossal Biosciences, Anduril Industries and Warhound is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility... and may even be something already achieved some time ago before the “stealth” initiative was revealed to the public last month.

Accounts of cryptids being sighted and people going missing in US national parks is not an uncommon modern phenomenon, so who knows what CIA-funded research has been going on for decades near top-security military installations without the public being made aware of it?

Just research some of the organisations and names involved – Oculus, Palantir, In-Q-Tel, Colossal Biosciences, Anduril Industries, Warhound, Luckey, Lamm and Spirk. No secret agendas there, all just gracious humanitarians with our best interests at heart, honest guv!

Can’t say I’m familiar with the gestation period of a velociraptor but based on that of a crocodile I’d guess it’s about three months, with the offspring possibly reaching maturity in about 10 years. So if they started work now they could reasonably be expected to bring Waraptors into service before the second half of this century, especially if research into cryptids has been ongoing for several decades since the advent of CRISPR... if that was even when the technology was really first implemented.

Fast, ferocious and able to leap high obstacles in a single bound you’d have to admit Waraptors would represent a huge step up from Warhounds and even the most sophisticated robotic humanoids, although on grounds of temperament alone their bionic augmentation would probably need to be pretty special to prevent deployment mishaps... although such imperfections shouldn’t be anything a portable tactical nuclear device couldn’t negate.

The combination of drone technology designed by “offence” companies such as Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Elbit Systems and Northrop Grumman; paired with AI-powered data integration and surveillance platforms such as Palantir; and supported by robotic military applications in the shape of Lyut Combat Robots, FPV Drone Swarms and China's PF-070 robot dogs is revolutionising modern warfare and taking the profits of military expansionism into the stratosphere.

Now the justification for the application of such advancements in technology is that it removes soldiers from harm’s way by withdrawing them from battlefield scenarios... but at what expense? The weapons are far more destructive, the civilian casualties, based on early evidence from Palestine, are exponentially greater, while the technology feels no remorse for the carnage it facilitates.

And, who knows, maybe velociraptors aren’t the villains contemporary cinema has portrayed them to be, perhaps they’re not the razor-fanged killing machines Hollywood would have us believe? And anyway, would the introduction of Waraptors on city streets be any worse than the road technology is already taking us down?

Waraptors may, or may not be, on the horizon but technology that represents a clear and present danger to humanity certainly is and already has the capability to render us all extinct. Don’t wait for velociraptors to walk the planet once more, the time to rage against the machines is now... the clock is ticking!