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Real Dogs Like Conan Still Beat Killer Robots

The robots that didn’t track al-Baghdadi, and the brave dog that could

Matt Bartlett
OneZero
6 min readDec 3, 2019

Zero Bark Thirty: Conan, the hero of this story. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

WWere it not for the fact that he’s facing impeachment, the past few weeks could have been glorious for President Trump. The hearings in Washington, D.C. have taken the spotlight away from the successful mission on October 26 to kill Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Of course, the real success was that of the Delta Force strike team who carried off the tightly executed attack against al-Baghdadi’s bunker deep in Pakistan. In particular, the mission made a hero of the strike team’s canine support: a Belgian Malinois nicknamed Conan. With the advantage of declassified military updates, we now have a much better idea of how the strike unfolded.

After Delta Force broke into his compound, al-Baghdadi escaped into the labyrinthian tunnel network underneath, wearing a suicide vest and bringing two of his own young children with him. The Delta Force team was still suppressing al-Baghdadi’s bodyguards and family in the compound, some of whom were wearing their own suicide vests. Worse, the compound and tunnels were likely to be covered with booby traps and other explosives (Delta Force entered the compound by destroying a wall, to avoid the front door).

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OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Matt Bartlett
Matt Bartlett

Written by Matt Bartlett

Writing about the intersection of technology and society at https://technocracy.substack.com/.

Responses (2)

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Thank you for sharing this excellent article!
You can see the extraordinary abilities of dogs, even with your pet. Living in the countryside, I have a dog, and I am also doing some training. The dog’s olfaction and sense of hearing are amazing. She…

Dogs are intelligent and focused. It is so sad that our culture doesn’t recognize or understand this. But the military does. Thanks for your article.