If you are interested in this topic you should enjoy my book Headspace!
On 3/30/08, Eric Toepfer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> this might be interest for those list members who are interested in the
> military dimension of surveillance.
> eric
>
> +++
>
> Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon's Battle Bugs
>
> 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
>
>
>
> Weaponizing the Pentagon's Cyborg InsectsA 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.
>
> Click here to read more of this dispatch.
>
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