The graphics card bomb detector

Bit of an upset in the UK recently, when a bomb detecting device being sold by a British company to a variety of countries was revealed to be useless. The director of the company selling the device was arrested for misrepresentation and exports of the device were banned. And guess who had already bought a shitload of these over-priced toys? Yep, Thailand.

The Thai government have now tested the device, known as the GT200, and have confirmed that it does not work. The Thai army, who laid out the cash for the devices and has been using them in the South of Thailand, disagree and insists that the GT200 works well. So they called a press conference to make their case.

Preparations for the conference went something like this:

Well, Private Somchai, we need to persuade the Thai public that these GT200s work and are a good deal.
Yes Sir! Could be a bit difficult though sir.
Nonsense! Our first argument will be that they have saved lives and are very effective. The UK government says they don’t work, the Thai government says they don’t work; but they don’t wave them around every day like we do. We will say they have saved 7,000 lives; that’s an impressive number.
Very good sir. But the value for money aspect may be a little difficult. A UK scientist says the device is basically a box with a car aerial attached to it.
Ah yes, but I bet the box is stuffed full of complex electronics.
It’s an empty plastic box sir.
What about the different cards you insert to detect different substances? I bet they are really advanced.
Mainly cardboard sir, with a circuit of the type that is used to stop people nicking stuff from shops. It is estimated that entire device costs less than 1,000 baht to construct. How much did we pay for them sir?
More than one million baht.
Well, we bought about 800 units, so that is just a little bit more than 1,000 baht a unit. We got a pretty good deal thanks to our transparent and effective procurement procedures designed to obtain technically acceptable goods at the lowest price. Do you like they way I said that sir? I have learned to say “our transparent and effective procurement procedures designed to obtain technically acceptable goods at the lowest price” without laughing.
Yes Somchai, very droll; but the one million baht cost is per unit. We have spent more than 800 million baht on these pieces of crap. There must be a way we can make them seem more high tech and complex.
I think I have a solution sir!
Do tell Somchai, and it better be good; not like that rubbish you came up with about those refugees who paddled themselves out to sea with no food and water, “for a bet”.
Well sir, my cousin plays a lot of computer games, and he has a souped-up graphics card so he can play “Ninja Giraffe Heroes” at full resolution. The graphics card looks really complex. So we use a photo of all the circuitry to illustrate the complexity of the device.
So we show people a photo of a computer graphics card board and pretend it is the non-existent circuitry of the bomb detector?
Yes!
They will never believe that!
Ah, but here is the good bit sir. The graphics card is called the Nvidia GT200! It’s got the same name!! We just stick up a photo of the GT200 graphics card and everyone will accept that it is somehow a component of the GT200 detector.
Somchai, you are a genius; that just might work!

And so a man in a uniform stood in front of the Thai press yesterday and extolled the virtues of the GT200 bomb detector, whilst a photo of the Nvidia GT200 graphics card was displayed in the background.

Read that last sentence again. They really did that…

Watch the video here:

Just as well the device wasn’t called a Tantalizing Torpedo.