Pylimitics

Wired magazine reports on thefts of “hardware destined for AI data centers” that are right out of scenes from action movies. Car chases, accidents intentionally induced, cargo trucks disappearing. It’s all predictable, I suppose, given that there’s a new commodity that’s very valuable and in short supply.

But what I’m thinking about, also partly from movie scenes, is the whole idea of “escort vehicles.” Why are they considered a good addition to security? More than that, I’ve seen a lot of movie scenes with motorcycles used as escort vehicles. That has been happening in real life too, for, as far as I know, about as long as motorcycles have been around.

If you have a large vehicle carrying a valuable cargo you want to protect, you have a few options. Make the vehicle as attack-proof as possible (the “armored car” approach). Add an additional line of defense (the “escort vehicle” approach). Use subterfuge to mislead any potential attackers (the “decoy” approach). All of these have been used.

Employing motorcycle riders as a line of defense, though, suggests that the thinking around escort vehicles is often just theater. Because motorcycle riders are fully engaged in operating their cycles. On modern motorcycles, each hand and each foot have a function, plus you have to keep the bike upright (not actually difficult in most cases). If bad chaps appear in cars, they have immediate advantages over your riders: in a car-to-bike impact (or threatened impact) the car always wins. A driver does not need to be as engaged in driving as a rider does in riding, and so could more easily spare a hand for, say, shooting. And of course cars can carry more passengers, not to mention more cargo — like stuff to toss out the window to force a motorcycle to avoid or be disabled.

Unless you’re going to use WWII-style German motorcycles with side-car-based machine guns, just forget the motorcycle escorts. Unless your whole operation is security theater, of course. Which accounts for a huge amount of “security” these days.

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Aside on “how long motorcycles have been around:” longer than you probably think. The first steam-powered ones were invented in the 1860s. Gottlieb Daimler invented the first internal-combustion-powered motorcycle in 1885. Part of my interest in this comes. from living in Waltham, Massachusetts, where the first US-based production motorcycle was made in 1898.