The low-tech Louvre maneuvers were in keeping with the conclusion that robbery research had long ago concluded. In 2014, American nuclear weapons researchers at Sandia National Laboratories conducted an in-depth study of this demimonde and produced a 100-page report titled “The Perfect Heist: Recipes from Around the World” Scientists were concerned that someone might try to steal nuclear weapons from the US arsenal, and so they compiled information from 23 high-value heists from 1972 to 2012 into the “Heist Methods and Characteristics Database”, a significant body of working knowledge. They found that the thieves had devoted enormous amounts of money and time to planning and practicing for the races – sometimes more than 100. They used brute force, tunneling through sewers for months (Société Générale bank robbery, Nice, France, 1976), or donning police costumes to fool guards (Gardner Museum, Boston, 1990). But no one was using, say, an electromagnetic pulse generator to shut down the Las Vegas electrical grid. The most successful robbers reached the valuables unseen and made their way out quickly.
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Fast forward the time frame, and the situation looks much the same. Last year, Spanish researchers looked at art crimes from 1990 to 2022 Found that the least technical methods Still the most successful. “High-tech technology doesn’t work so well,” says Erin L. Thompson, an art historian at John Jay College of Justice who studies art crime. Speed ​​and practice take a toll on complex systems and alarms; Even the Louvre heist was, essentially, just a one-minute heist.
The emphasis on speed does not mean that robberies do not require skill – even, skill. As the old saying goes, beginners talk strategy; Professionals study logistics. Even without the gadgets, heist and heist movies still revel in the mindset of an engineer. “Heist movies absolutely celebrate deep nerdiness – ‘I’m going to learn everything I can about the power grid, about this kind of rock and drill, about Chicago at night,'” says Anna Kornbluh, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. he published a paper Last October’s heist movies reflect an Old Hollywood approach to collective art-making, while shows about new grifts, like WeWork or the one detailing the rise and fall of con artist Anna Delvey, reflect the more lone-wolf, disruption-and-growth mentality of the streaming era.
His work may help explain why law-abiding citizens might cheer for people who would steal a crown from the Louvre, or steal $100,000 worth of escargot from a farm in Champagne (as happened just a few weeks later). Kornbluh says that robbery is an anti-oligarchic practice. “Everyone wants to know how to live in an efficient group. Everyone wants there to be better logistics,” she says. “We need a better state. We need a better society. We need a better world.” They are shared values ​​– and as another old saying tells us, where there is value, there is crime.
