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China Buying US Directed Sound 'Weapon'
holy_calamity writes "The directed sound weapon made by US company ATC is being exported to the Chinese police, despite the public law banning sales of weapons to China. Turns out that such 'non-lethal' technologies are not covered by this law — an omission that may become more widely known if they are used to quell high-profile protests during the Olympics."
Once they finished slaughtering the objectors it sure got quiet over there for a while, didn't it?
and completely ignore the US occupation of Iraq
You're right, I wonder what became of that whole thing? I haven't seen that come up in the media lately... oh wait.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
The reason I bring this up is that lack of protest is not necessarily a sign of contentment with government. And without access to specific kinds of foreign media, there is no way for the Chinese public to become aware that government is, in fact, a mutable thing.
IOW, most Chinese are content with their government because they know nothing different or because they have been indoctrinated with propaganda about their government. By the way, this applies to a lot of people all over the world, including Americans [1].
And here come the kneejerk flamebait mods. Sorry if I've offended some of the super-patriots haunting the halls of Slashdot, but we are all products of what is around us -- and being taught from age 5 that your country is the best is hard to overcome.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The images of pretty affluent Chinese living in modern-looking cities we've come to enjoy in the Western media are not exactly indicative of what actually goes on over there. It's a big country with a billion people.
In any case, it's illegal to express negative feelings about the glorious Communist Party or its leaders, so I'm not sure who you've been talking to over there. Just about every Chinese I've ever met here in the US love their country, but they've rarely had anything but negative things to say about their government, regardless of the era they happened to leave.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Even worse: I read China was buying Direct Sound weapons.
I know DirectX is a pita, but to use it as a wepon is probably over the top.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
The problem is, it takes a lot more justification to fire a bullet than it does to use one of these.
One of these and 2 or 3 people can effectively fight a crowd of thousands. In fact there is no reason for any government NOT to use these to quell their population and keep them goose stepping in line... except for morals.
Furthermore, if a group or government is willing to use a cheap bullet in a situation they would be highly unlikely to purchase, train crews, and deploy these expensive non-lethal weapons.
While these weapons definitely have their uses, they can also easily be abused. Perhaps even more easily than lethal weapons, since there is supposedly no lasting damage done. (Unlike rubber or plastic bullets which cause moderate too severe damage, can be deadly and are inaccurate.) I expect China to get a lot of use out of their purchase from now on.
And on a final note, a lot of these weapons CAN be adjust to cause permanent damage. A lot of the R&D for these weapons was to design a targeting system to keep them from doing that. Change some settings and depending on the weapon large portions of a targeted crowd may never hear again or may never see again.
Your incredulous attitude is troubling.
The sound weapon being sold may be non-lethal, but who is to say they won't RE the device and make lethal sound weapons. Sound can kill. If you stand next to a speaker when 160db of sound comes out of it, you'll be dead. NASA uses sound to test the tiles on the shuttle, anyone caught inside that tester would be killed instantly when the sound came on.