James Drogan

This morning I was browsing Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution wherein he provided the following link.

6. Excellent profile of Ken Regan and his campaign against cheating in chess, by using computer programs to detect play which is too good.  But this is not merely a chess piece, think of it as a tour de force on the future of law enforcement, the role of Black Swans in life, the importance of social networks, and the different ways that humans organize information.

I followed the link for, I suspect, I found Cowen's use of chess in Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation very compelling.  I don't pretend to understand all that was in the linked article, but I was fascinated by the concluding paragraph.

In 2012, Regan lost an exhibition match to a Lego-built robot running the Houdini engine, equipped with an arm that moved the pieces on a real board and a camera that could interpret the position. The experience made an awesome impression on him. “Is technology going to be so ubiquitous that we’ll not be able to police it anymore?” [emphasis added] he asks while he, his wife, and I eat dinner at a local Thai restaurant. Regan slumps over his food, looking depressed about the need to even ask the question. “Houdini won using only six seconds per move,” he says. The exhibition reminds Regan that his calling has carved valuable time from his research and family. “He’s obsessed,” says his wife, who sits across the table. Then she adds, “But you’ve got to be obsessed to be good.” Regan ignores the flattery, his attention held by an emerging thought. Finally he springs forward in his chair, smiling. “By the way,” he says. “This project was run by a person whose mother and my mother share a best friend back in New Jersey.” 

I'm reminded of Omnius in Dune: The Butlerian Jihad.