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MarkusRamikin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong
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I think Harry would laugh all the way to 10 Downing Street, as he allies with sixty million people who agree with him on human rights and have at least a notion of science, security, and total war, even though most of them, of course, aren't trained in it. Notice his remark about "[Muggle lawyers] would think yours are cute". Harry may be mistaken, but I think he believes that for Lucius to tangle with Muggle Britain would be the last mistake House Malfoy ever made.
Lord Malfoy wouldn't bother with Muggle lawyers, he'd use magic and take what he wants. Remember, he doesn't see Muggles as people. The only ones who could stop him from doing anything he wanted would be other magic-users.
The point about lawyers is just that Harry sees the wizard world as rather quaint and old-fashioned; Lucius is a big frog in a very tiny pond. Let the Masquerade be broken in any serious way, and within a year or two Muggle Britain will have produced anti-curse body armour (possibly made of tinfoil) and guns that will reliably break a wizard's shields. In other words, it's not just wizard lawyers that are cute; wizard soldiers are also fundamentally non-serious. This may not be actually true, but I think it is what Harry believes.
By the way, in the Rowling-verse, the Prime Minister is supposed to know about the Ministry of Magic; he's the one official point of contact between Muggles and wizards. I wonder if that's also true in the canonical version?
It's not body armor and such that matters. It's control. Wizards have mind magic. They can alter memories and control people. That would let them act through agents who already possess muggle resources, and who already understand (and can explain whenever necessary) the strengths of the muggle world.
At the end of the day, if wizards seriously get interested in the muggle world, and muggles in the wizard world (not that they should get the chance, if the Malfoys are smart), and both learn about each others' strengths, wizards will still be the ones with the edge.
Hence my mention of anti-curse body armour made of tinfoil. :)
Body armor only protects against weak curses like Somnium that are standard first year hexes. Stupefy, which is castable by first years, is not blocked by armor.
I think you are rather missing my point, here. The body armour that Muggle Britain would invent would not be the kind available to Harry as a desperate improvisation. In a year or two, after a crash research program, Muggle Britain would understand how magic works, what materials block it, and would mass-produce the resulting body armour that does block curses up to and including Avada Kedavra. It would be based on tinfoil because everyone knows that tinfoil hats block the government's mind-controlling rays.