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Are you imagining the Taliban running around with iPhones, ordering mortar fire on areas where all valuable Pokemon have been plucked by US military?

tyingq 5y ago
It would probably be effective.
ahartmetz 5y ago
Guerillas can't be choosers.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Why not? The despite most most depictions, the Taliban (and insurgents in general) are capable of impressive feats of engineering and electronic hacking. Seems like this would be pretty basic.
contravariant 5y ago
When you put it like that, that does sound like a risk I wouldn't be willing to take.
aaron695 5y ago
If you could IED a Pokemon Go site or base location and hurt or kill personnel, every soldier in the region would be told about it and it would affect their daily lives if they played the game. It would work. If you could create something to drawn them in, it would work better, but I'm not sure how the game works. Like attacking certain locations in Go to make them 'hard' to draw solders to an 'easy' IED'ed location. The Taliban are just us, they like creativity, they'd think hacking Western Pokemon Go would be cool, it would help them recruit. But, the logistics of getting for instance a McDonalds on a base also has risk. It's all risk management.
peteretep 5y ago
The US has some very technically advanced adversaries who’d happily share their data with the Taliban
- paganel 5y ago
  > who’d happily share their data with the Taliban Not the Taliban, but ISIS was very quick in adopting Google Earth/Google Maps early in their war in Syria, you could see some map screens in the videos where they used to prepare a targeted suicide bombing and such (not sure if those videos are on YT or Twitter anymore).
- vkou 5y ago
  No, they currently don't, but this is a convenient boogieman to trot out whenever you need to drum up patriotism, or to accuse your political opponents of a lack of patriotism, or demand a higher defense budget or a justification for another extension of the forever-war in the Middle East. This isn't the Soviet-Afghan war, where the US was happily and openly supporting the same mujahedeen that eventually became the Taliban. Russia and China both have significant 'problematic' Muslim minorities, and have little taste for seriously sponsoring Islamic extremism. (The US and Saudi Wahhabism, on the other hand, continue to be odd bedfellows, because, you know, we still can't get over Iran.)
squeaky-clean 5y ago
The article mentions using a hacked client to spoof your GPS location. You just need a computer that can run multiple android emulators. You could probably just make raw API calls. I'm pretty sure that's how all those pokemon-mapping websites worked for the first several months of the game's release before they removed those features from the game.
herbst 5y ago
Don't you think they have smartphones too? Why would that be weird?

tyingq 5y ago

It would probably be effective.

ahartmetz 5y ago

Guerillas can't be choosers.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

Why not? The despite most most depictions, the Taliban (and insurgents in general) are capable of impressive feats of engineering and electronic hacking. Seems like this would be pretty basic.

contravariant 5y ago

When you put it like that, that does sound like a risk I wouldn't be willing to take.

aaron695 5y ago

If you could IED a Pokemon Go site or base location and hurt or kill personnel, every soldier in the region would be told about it and it would affect their daily lives if they played the game. It would work. If you could create something to drawn them in, it would work better, but I'm not sure how the game works. Like attacking certain locations in Go to make them 'hard' to draw solders to an 'easy' IED'ed location. The Taliban are just us, they like creativity, they'd think hacking Western Pokemon Go would be cool, it would help them recruit. But, the logistics of getting for instance a McDonalds on a base also has risk. It's all risk management.

peteretep 5y ago

The US has some very technically advanced adversaries who’d happily share their data with the Taliban

paganel 5y ago
> who’d happily share their data with the Taliban Not the Taliban, but ISIS was very quick in adopting Google Earth/Google Maps early in their war in Syria, you could see some map screens in the videos where they used to prepare a targeted suicide bombing and such (not sure if those videos are on YT or Twitter anymore).
vkou 5y ago
No, they currently don't, but this is a convenient boogieman to trot out whenever you need to drum up patriotism, or to accuse your political opponents of a lack of patriotism, or demand a higher defense budget or a justification for another extension of the forever-war in the Middle East. This isn't the Soviet-Afghan war, where the US was happily and openly supporting the same mujahedeen that eventually became the Taliban. Russia and China both have significant 'problematic' Muslim minorities, and have little taste for seriously sponsoring Islamic extremism. (The US and Saudi Wahhabism, on the other hand, continue to be odd bedfellows, because, you know, we still can't get over Iran.)

squeaky-clean 5y ago

The article mentions using a hacked client to spoof your GPS location. You just need a computer that can run multiple android emulators. You could probably just make raw API calls. I'm pretty sure that's how all those pokemon-mapping websites worked for the first several months of the game's release before they removed those features from the game.

herbst 5y ago

Don't you think they have smartphones too? Why would that be weird?