Weaponizing the Pentagon's Cyborg Insects
by
Tom Engelhardt
and Nick Turse
by Tom Engelhardt
and Nick Turse
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We at Tomdispatch
love anniversaries. So how could we have forgotten DARPA's for so
many months? This very year, the Pentagon's research outfit, the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), turns 50 old.
Happy birthday, DARPA! You were born as a response to the Soviet
Union's launching of the first earth-girdling satellite, Sputnik,
which gave Americans a mighty shock. To prevent another "technological
surprise" by the Soviets ? or anybody else, any time, ever
? the agency has grown into the Pentagon's good right arm,
always there to reach into the future and grab another wild idea
for weaponization. Each year, DARPA now spends
about $3 billion on a two-fold mission: "to prevent technological
surprise for us and to create technological surprise for our adversaries."
Next month,
the agency will celebrate
its anniversary with a conference that aims to "reflect on [its]
challenges and accomplishments? over the past 50 years and to consider
the Agency's goals for the next 50 years." What a super idea! Think
of that. The next 50! If only Tomdispatch is still around ?
my brain well preserved and renewed (thanks to some nifty cutting-edge
science from the TD Advanced Research Projects Lab) ? to see
War 2058 arrive and blow out those 100-year anniversary candles
on the planet.
In the meantime,
the future is now and Pentagon expert Nick Turse is at work ?
see below ? on the latest developments in DARPA's plans to
help an overstretched
military by reaching into the insect kingdom for its newest well-weaponized
recruits. The first larval Marines, perhaps. Ten-HUT! Unlike Americans
at present, they should simply swarm to the recruiting offices.
It's a strange
(not to say hair-raising) subject for a journalist who has lately
been covering the air
war in Iraq and elsewhere for Tomdispatch. But the Pentagon's
urge to weaponize the wild kingdom is a topic Turse has long been
familiar with and that he deals with powerfully in his remarkable
new book, The
Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. It
is ? believe me ? the single most powerful look yet at
all the subtle and complicated ways American lives have been militarized
during the last decades. (For a short video discussion I had with
Turse, click here.)
Oh, and here's
a suggestion for DARPA from a New Yorker. When you're recruiting
those bugs, don't forget the roaches in my kitchen. They've been
idle too long. ~ Tom
Futuristic
Nightmare That Just Might Come True
By Nick
Turse
Biological
weapons delivered by cyborg insects. It sounds like a nightmare
scenario straight out of the wilder realms of science fiction, but
it could be a reality, if a current Pentagon project comes to fruition.
Right now,
researchers are already growing insects with electronics
inside them. They're creating cyborg moths and flying beetles that
can be remotely controlled. One day, the U.S. military may field
squadrons of winged insect/machine hybrids with on-board audio,
video or chemical sensors. These cyborg insects could conduct surveillance
and reconnaissance missions on distant battlefields, in far-off
caves, or maybe even in cities closer to home, and transmit detailed
data back to their handlers at U.S. military bases.
Today, many
people fear U.S. government surveillance of email and cell phone
communications. With this program, the Pentagon aims to exponentially
increase the paranoia. Imagine a world in which any insect fluttering
past your window may be a remote-controlled spy, packed with surveillance
equipment. Even more frightening is the prospect that such creatures
could be weaponized, and the possibility, according to one scientist
intimately familiar with the project, that these cyborg insects
might be armed with "bio weapons."
For the past
50 years, work by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) ? the Pentagon's blue skies research outfit ?
has led to some of the most lethal weaponry in the U.S. arsenal:
from Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator drones and stealth fighters
and bombers to Tomahawk cruise missiles and Javelin portable "fire
and forget" guided missiles. For the last several years, DARPA has
funneled significant sums of money into a very different kind of
guided missile project, its Hybrid Insect MEMS (HI-MEMS)
program. This project is, according to DARPA, "aimed at developing
tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical
systems [MEMS] inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis."
Put simply, the creation of cyborg insects: part bug, part bot.
Bugs, Bots,
Borgs and Bio-Weapons
This
past August, at DARPA's annual symposium ? DARPATech ?
HI-MEMS program manager Amit
Lal, an associate professor on leave from Cornell University,
explained that his project aims to transform "insects into unmanned
air-vehicles." He described the research this way: "[T]he HI-MEMS
program seeks to grow MEMS and electronics inside the insect pupae.
The new tissue forms around the insertions, making the bio-electronic
interface long-lasting and reliable." In other words, micro-electronics
are inserted at the pupal stage of metamorphosis so that they can
be integrated into the insects' bodies as they develop, creating
living robots that can be remotely controlled after the insect emerges
from its cocoon.
According
to the latest reports, work on this project is progressing at a
rapid pace. In a recent phone interview, DARPA spokesperson Jan
Walker said, "We're focused on determining what the best kinds of
MEMS systems are; what the best MEMS system would be for embedding;
what the best time is for embedding."
This month,
Rob Coppinger, writing for the aerospace trade publication Flight
International, reported on new advances announced at the "1st
US-Asian Assessment and Demonstration of Micro-Aerial and Unmanned
Ground Vehicle Technology" ? a Pentagon-sponsored conference.
"In the latest work," he noted, "a Manduca moth had its thorax truncated
to reduce its mass and had a MEMS component added where abdominal
segments would have been, during the larval stage." But, as he pointed
out, Robert Michelson, a principal research engineer, emeritus
at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, laid out "on behalf of DARPA"
some of the obstacles that remain. Among them were short insect
life-spans and the current inability to create these cyborgs outside
specialized labs.
DARPA's professed
long-term goal for the HI-MEMS program is the creation of "insect
cyborgs" capable of carrying "one or more sensors, such as a microphone
or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target
destination" ? in other words, the creation of military micro-surveillance
systems.
In a recent
email interview, Michelson ? who has previously worked on numerous
military projects, including DARPA's "effort to develop an ?Entomopter'
(mechanical insect-like multimode aerial robot)" ? described
the types of sensor packages envisioned, but only in a minimalist
fashion, as a "[w]ide array of active and passive devices." However
in "Insect Cyborgs: A New Frontier in Flight Control Systems," a
2007 article in the academic journal Proceedings of SPIE,
Cornell researchers noted that cyborg insects could be used as "autonomous
surveillance and reconnaissance vehicles" with on-board "[s]ensory
systems such as video and chemical."
Surveillance
applications, however, may only be the beginning. Last year, Jonathan
Richards, reporting for The Times, raised
the specter of the weaponization of cyborg insects in the not-too-distant
future. As he pointed out, Rodney Brooks, the director of the computer
science and artificial intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, indicated that the Pentagon is striving toward a
major expansion in the use of non-traditional air power ?
like unmanned aerial vehicles and cyborg insects ? in the years
ahead. "There's no doubt their things will become weaponized," he
explained, "so the question [is]: should they [be] given targeting
authority?" Brooks went on to assert, according to The Times,
that it might be time to consider rewriting international law to
take the future weaponization of such "devices" into account.
But how would
one weaponize a cyborg insect? On this subject, Robert Michelson
was blunt: "Bio weapons."
Cyborg
Ethics
Michelson
wouldn't elaborate further, but any program using bio-weapons would
immediately raise major legal and ethical questions. The 1972 Biological
and Toxin Weapons Convention outlawed
the manufacture and possession of bio-weapons, of "[m]icrobial or
other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin? that have
no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful
purposes" and of "[w]eapons, equipment or means of delivery designed
to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict."
In fact, not only did President George W. Bush claim that Iraq's
supposed
production and possession of biological weapons was a justification
for an invasion of that nation, but he had previously stated,
"All civilized nations reject as intolerable the use of disease
and biological weapons as instruments of war and terror."
Reached for
comment, however, DARPA's Jan Walker insisted that her agency's
focus was only on "fundamental research" when it came to cyborg
insects. Although the focus of her agency is, in fact, distinctly
on the future ? the technology of tomorrow ? she refused
to look down the road when it came to weaponizing insect cyborgs
or arming them with bio-weapons. "I can't speculate on the future,"
was all she would say.
Michelson
is perfectly willing to look into future, especially on matters
of cyborg insect surveillance, but on the horizon for him are technical
issues when it comes to the military use of bug bots. "Surveillance
goes on anyway by other means," he explained, "so a new method is
not the issue. If there are ethical or legal issues, they are ones
of 'surveillance,' not of the 'surveillance platform.'"
Peter Eckersley,
a staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital
rights and civil liberties group, sees that same future in a different
light. Cyborg insects, he says, are an order of magnitude away from
today's more standard surveillance technologies like closed circuit
television. "CCTV is mostly deployed in public and in privately
owned public spaces. An insect could easily fly into your garden
or sit outside your bedroom window," he explained. "To make matters
worse, you'd have no idea these devices were there. A CCTV camera
is usually an easily recognizable device. Robotic surveillance insects
might be harder to spot. And having to spot them wouldn't necessarily
be good for our mental health."
Does Michelson
see any ethical or legal dilemmas resulting from the future use
of weaponized cyborg insects? "No, not unless they could breed new
cyborg insects, which is not possible," he explained. "Genetic engineering
will be the ethical and legal battleground, not cybernetics."
Battle
Beetles and Hawkish Hawkmoths
Weaponized
or not, moths are hardly the only cyborg insects that may fly, creep,
or crawl into the military's future arsenal. Scientists
from Arizona State University and elsewhere, working under a
grant from the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, "are rearing
beetle species at various oxygen levels to attempt to produce beetles
with greater-than-normal size and payload capacity." Earlier this
year, some of the same scientists published an article
on their DARPA-funded research titled "A Cyborg Beetle: Insect Flight
Control Through an Implantable, Tetherless Microsystem." They explained
that, by implanting "multiple inserted neural and muscular stimulators,
a visual stimulator, a polyimide assembly and a microcontroller"
in a 2 centimeter long, 1?2 gram green June beetle, they were
"capable of modulating [the insect's] flight starts, stops, throttle/lift,
and turning." They could, that is, drive an actual beetle.
However, unlike the June bug you might find on a porch screen or
in a garden, these sported on-board electronics powered by cochlear
implant batteries.
DARPA-funded
HI-MEMS research has also been undertaken at other institutions
across the country and around the world. For example, in 2006, researchers
at Cornell, in conjunction with scientists at Pennsylvania State
University and the Universidad de Valparaiso, Chile, received an
$8.4 million DARPA grant for work on "Insect Cyborg Sentinels."
According to a recent article in New
Scientist, a team led by one of the primary investigators on
that grant, David Stern, screened a series of video clips at a recent
conference in Tucson, Arizona demonstrating their ability to control
tethered tobacco hawkmoths through "flexible plastic probes" implanted
during the pupae stage. Simply stated, the researchers were able
to remotely control the moths-on-a-leash, manipulating the cyborg
creatures' wing speed and direction.
Robo-Bugs
Cyborg insects
are only the latest additions to the U.S. military's menagerie.
As defense tech-expert Noah Shachtman of Wired magazine's
Danger Room blog has reported,
DARPA projects have equipped rats with electronic equipment and
remotely controlled sharks, while the military has utilized all
sorts of animals, from bomb-detecting honeybees and "chickens used
as early-warning sensors for chemical attacks" to guard dogs and
dolphins trained to hunt mines. Additionally, he notes, the DoD's
emphasis on the natural world has led to robots that resemble dogs,
monkeys that control robotic limbs with their minds, and numerous
other projects inspired by nature.
But whatever
other creatures they favor, insects never seem far from the Pentagon's
dreams of the future. In fact, Shachtman reported
earlier this year that "Air Force scientists are looking for robotic
bombs that look ? and act ? like swarms of bugs and birds."
He went on to quote Colonel Kirk Kloeppel, head of the Air Force
Research Laboratory's munitions directorate, who announced the Lab's
interest in "bio-inspired munitions," in "small, autonomous" machines
that would "provide close-in [surveillance] information, in addition
to killing intended targets."
This month,
researcher Robert Wood wrote
in IEEE Spectrum about what he believes was "the first flight
of an insect-size robot." After almost a decade of research, Wood
and his colleagues at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory are now
creating small insect-like robots that will eventually be outfitted
"with onboard sensors, flight controls, and batteries? to nimbly
flit around obstacles and into places beyond human reach." Like
cyborg insect researchers, Wood is DARPA-funded. Last year, in fact,
the agency selected him as one of 24 "rising stars" for a "young
faculty awards" grant.
Asked about
the relative advantages of cyborg insects compared to mechanical
bugs, Robert Michelson noted that "robotic insects obey without
innate or external influences" and "they can be mass produced rapidly."
He cautioned, however, that they are extremely limited power-wise.
Insect cyborgs, on the other hand, "can harvest energy and continue
missions of longer duration." However, they "may be diverted from
their task by stronger influences"; must be grown to maturity and
so may not be available when needed; and, of course, are mortal
and run the risk of dying before they can be employed as needed.
The Future
is Now
There is plenty
of technical information about the HI-MEMS program available in
the scientific literature. And if you make inquiries, DARPA will
even direct you to some of the relevant citations. But while it's
relatively easy to learn about the optimal spots to insert a neural
stimulator in a green June beetle ("behind the eye, in the flight
control area of the insect brain") or an electronic implant in a
tobacco hawkmoth ("the main flight powering muscles? in the dorsal-thorax"),
it's much harder to discover the likely future implications of this
sci-fi sounding research.
The "final
demonstration goal" ? the immediate aim ? of DARPA's HI-MEMS
program "is the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific
target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control,
and/or global positioning system (GPS)." Right now, DARPA doesn't
know when that might happen. "We basically operate phase to phase,"
says Walker. "So, it kind of depends on how they do in the current
phase and we'll make decisions on future phases."
DARPA refuses
to examine anything but research-oriented issues. As a result, its
Pentagon-funded scientists churn out inventions with potentially
dangerous, if not deadly, implications without ever fully considering
? let alone seeking public or expert comment on ? the
future ramifications of new technologies under production.
"The
people who build this equipment are always going to say that they're
just building tools, that there are legitimate uses for them, and
that it isn't their fault if the tools are abused," says the Electronic
Frontier Foundation's Eckersley. "Unfortunately, we've seen that
governments are more than willing to play fast-and-loose with the
legal bounds on surveillance. Unless and until that changes, we'd
urge researchers to find other projects to work on."
March
31, 2008
Tom
Engelhardt [send him mail]
who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com,
is the co-founder of the American
Empire Project. He
is the author of several books, including The
Last Days of Publishing: A Novel, The
End of Victory Culture, and most recently, Mission
Unaccomplished (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch
interviews. His blog is The
Notion. Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director
of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for Los Angeles Times,
the San Francisco Chronicle, Adbusters, the Nation,
the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch. His first
book, The
Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, has
just been published in Metropolitan Books' American Empire Project
series. His website is NickTurse.com.
Copyright
© 2008 Nick Turse
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