Palmer Luckey's latest startup: genetically modified military canines

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This analyst has some good context to add as well for where we stand in the working dog world. I’ve worked with quite a few over my days and I can understand the purpose.

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The US military gets over 80% of its dogs from Europe, and fewer than half of them turn out fit for service. South Korea hit the same wall back in 2007, and their fix sounds like a movie plot. They took their best drug-sniffing dog, a Lab named Chase, and cloned him seven times. All seven puppies got the same name, Toppy, short for "tomorrow's puppy." They went through the customs service's detector dog program like any other recruit while researchers tracked how they did. Regular puppies made the cut about 30% of the time. The clones made it 86% of the time, and by 2009 they were working airports and harbors across the country.

That's the business case for what Palmer Luckey and Colossal's Ben Lamm just launched. Training one of these dogs can run past $60,000. When half your dogs wash out, every dog that graduates is secretly paying for the one that didn't, so each graduate really costs you something closer to $120,000. Get the pass rate up to Korea's 86% and that drops to about $70,000. You'd knock roughly 40% off every working dog the military buys before the dog does a single thing better. And Warhound wants the dog to do things better. Korea could only copy a great dog. Lamm's team is banking cells from top German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois and then editing the genes. According to Lamm, the dogs that fail usually fail on stuff they were born with, like bad eyesight, cancer risk, hip dysplasia and muscle wasting. So the plan is to copy the best dog they can find and fix whatever would have ended its career.

The cloning runs through ViaGen, a Texas company Colossal owns that has spent years cloning people's pets for around $50,000 a dog. Anduril builds what goes on top of the dog, like vests with sensors that feed data back to the handler. For the record, Palmer doesn't own any of it. Colossal holds the equity, and the CIA's venture fund In-Q-Tel is in the $200 million round with Sequoia. First puppies are due early next year. Korea's clones needed 16 months of training to prove themselves. If Warhound's dogs put up anything close to those numbers, the next generation of America's war dogs gets born in Texas instead of bought from Europe.

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I would figure that their role would be better accomplished by those terrifying robo-canines, but maybe genetic engineering is cheaper than robotics engineering.

Regardless, both are not great outcomes and the future looks increasingly dystopian.

This is right up there with a MWD I met that had its canine teeth replaced with chromed titanium implants. That was scary just to look at.

Now you are telling me they are going to genetically enhance these fur missiles? I am out.

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if the process produces healthy animals

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that's a big "if".

I would prefer dog aliens much better than reptile/ insect or whatever. Maybe Captain Kirk had it good with the all female planet

Whatever team of company spooks that found this guy in the 7th grade at a math contest and decided to groom him to become a computer geek straight out of central casting knocked it out of the park.

Today, finding homes for the dogs that fail out is a huge problem. Most of them have to be put down. Friend of mine did that. A Mal is by nature super aggressive (not "mean" as in random attacks, they just do everything at 150%) and not just anyone can handle them. If this solves a lot of that problem, then it's a good thing.

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raised $200 million in seed funding

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Yes because the 4 legged meat missile called the Belgium Malinois isn’t psychotic enough