Originally appeared: February 13, 2009
What if the Pentagon implanted devices called micro-electrical mechanical systems, or MEMS, in insects
to create swarms of tiny, remote-controlled cyborg secret agents, capable of
flying or crawling into enemy territory to gather intelligence in places too
well-guarded or dangerous for human spies?
Half-bugs, half machines could conduct surreptitious video
and audio surveillance and carrying sensors to detect radioactivity or
chemicals. But why stop there?
Just as U.S. Predator drone aircraft have been equipped with missiles, it’s conceivable that insect cyborgs could be equipped with tiny but potent weapons, such as poison or hallucinogenic drugs, that they could use to attack high-value targets, such as a terrorist leader or a dictatorship’s key nuclear weapons scientist.
Utilizing insect cyborgs for intelligence-gathering and covert operations would have some enormous potential advantages. There’s a vast talent pool of potential recruits, since the planet’s insect population includes at least one million species that we know about, plus perhaps an even greater number that are yet to be discovered. And unlike James Bond, they’d work for cheap. Detecting miniscule secret operatives would be exceedingly difficult, and existing countermeasures against insects, such as bug zappers or insecticides, aren’t really all that effective, as anybody who’s been eaten alive by mosquitoes at a summer bar-b-q knows too well.
The potential downside, though, might make you reach for your flyswatter. We could risk launching an insect arms race with Russia and China, and who knows where that might lead. A malevolent president could just as easily deploy insect cyborgs against homegrown political dissidents. (Some even suspect this already has happened, as this 2007 Washington Post article details.) And finally, the conscription of unwilling insects for military purposes is sure to be objected to by the nascent insect rights movement.
And no, I didn’t get this idea from the Onion, as hoaxical as it might seem. (Rank me slightly higher on the skepticism scale than, say, a certain unnamed Chinese newspaper editor, who once lifted an Onion story about the U.S. Congress demanding a new Capitol building and reprinted it as fact.) To the contrary, I got it from the web site of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which actually is attempting to develop a MEMS capacity for insects.
Here’s a description of DARPA’s Hybrid Insect MEMS
project, which is being led by electrical engineer and computer
scientist Amit Lal :
The HI-MEMS program is aimed at
developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing
micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of
metamorphosis. These early stages include the caterpillar and the pupae stages.
Since a majority of the tissue development in insects occurs in the later
stages of metamorphosis, the renewed tissue growth around the MEMS will tend to
heal, and form a reliable and stable tissue-machine interface. The goal of the
MEMS, inside the insects, will be to control the locomotion by obtaining motion
trajectories either from GPS coordinates, or using RF, optical, ultrasonic
signals based remote control. The control of locomotion will be investigated
using several approaches. These include direct electrical muscle excitation,
electrical stimulation of neurons, projection of ultrasonic pulses simulating
bats, projection of pheromones, electromechanical stimulation of insect sensory
cells, and presentation of optical cues with micro-optical visual presentation.
The intimate control of insects with embedded microsystems will enable insect
cyborgs, which could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas
sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination.
Here’s more:
HI-MEMS derived technologies will enable many robotic
capabilities at low cost, impacting the development of future autonomous
defense systems. The realization of cyborgs with most of the machine component
inside the insect body will provide stealthy robots that use muscle actuators
which have been developed over millions of years of evolution. The basic
technology developed in this program could also be used as a biological tool to
understand and control insect development opening vistas in our understanding
of tissue development, and provide new technological pathways to harness the
natural sensors and power generation from insects.
As usual, this idea has been lurking around for years. Back
in 1990, Tom
Easton, a science professor at Thomas College in Maine, wrote a science
fiction novel, Sparrowhawk, in which he envisioned the implanting
of computer chips in insects and other animals.
In the early 2000s, researchers at the State University of
New York and the University of Florida used brain implants to create remote-controlled
rats whose movements and olfactory instincts could be controlled
wirelessly from a distance. Since then, according to news reports, DARPA has
developed the ability to implant devices into moth pupae and have created
cyborg beetles whose muscles generate the electricity to power instruments.
In late January, the Japanese web site Tech On! that at a conference in Italy,
DARPA-funded University of California, Berkeley scientists showed a video of a radio-controlled
rhinoceros beetle.
Researchers at the university controlled the movement of
beetle wings and some other parts using radio signals sent to the six
electrodes on its brain and muscles. They equipped the beetle with a module
incorporating a circuit to send signals to the electrodes, wireless circuit, micro-controller
and battery. The university has so far succeeded in several experiments of
electrically controlling insects, but it used a radio control system this time.
The researchers used rhinoceros beetles in this experiment because they can carry a weight of up to 3g. They can fly carrying the module weighing about 1.3g on their backs. And another reason is that they look cool, according to the university.
So we know that it’s possible. But should the government go
ahead and create an ant-farm version of the CIA? Express your opinion below.
