I have a feeling that thieves aren't going to spend any time fooling around if it isn't obvious, they'll dump the valuables out of the bag, and discard the bag.
If I had nothing of value or only antifragile things I'd just throw everything in an old backpack. The reason I own the pelican case is for when I'm flying with $15k of computers, camera gear, etc. If anything I'd see the pelican case as _increasing_ my risk of it being stolen (who puts some clothes and some deodourant and a toothbrush in a $500 hard case?), but massively decreasing my risk of physical damage which is way more likely.
The air tag isn't even really in there for "sophisticated thieves stole my stuff" purposes so much as "airline made me gate check it and now they've lost it" purposes. Though I imagine the air tag and some basic padlocks would definitely help my chances with most unsophisticated thieves.
Yeah that's kind of what I was alluding to in the last line. Was mostly responding to the idea that "it won't take that long to find".
With a bit of creativity they can be made pretty hard to find. At least hard enough that they're no longer the weak link at all.
The next step would be trying to make it more integral to whatever thing you're trying to track. If you disassemble an air tag and hide it inside your laptop, no thief is gonna pull out some precision screwdrivers and start trying to figure out where the hell it is. They're just going to get rid of it.
... Which I've thought about, but that's a level I don't think is really necessary for my own situation.
