Vice President Dick Cheney is so favored by the Defense Advanced
Research Project Agency -- DARPA -- that they invited him
to blow out the candles at their 50th anniversary bash.
"This agency brought forth the Saturn 5 rocket, surveillance
satellites, the Internet, stealth technology, guided munitions,
unmanned aerial vehicles, night vision and the body armor
that's in use today," Cheney claimed. "Thank heaven
for DARPA."
The secretive Pentagon outfit, a research arm which develops
new military technologies, refused to allow a scientist to
be interviewed for an article Sunday about on a program that
has received scant attention by the press: small insect cyborgs
that may mark the next generation in military surveillance.
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No, it's not April Fool's.
"No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy
drones," the Washington Post's Rick Weiss wrote last
October. "But a number of U.S. government and private
entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded
teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in
them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and
controlling their flight muscles remotely."
"The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles
to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings
to find survivors," he adds.
But in an article reported late Sunday by TIME's Mark Thompson,
the agency has admitted creating insects with embedded computer
chip systems.
"DARPA declined TIME's request to interview Dr. Lal
about his program and the progress he is making in producing
the bugs," Thompson wrote. "The agency added that
there is no timetable for turning backyard pests into battlefield
assets. But in a written statement, spokeswoman Jan Walker
said that 'living, adult-stage insects have emerged with the
embedded systems intact.'"
"Presumably," he mocks, "enemy arsenals will
soon be well-stocked with Raid."
But he may be underplaying the case. The CIA developed simplistic
"dragonfly" robots in the 1970s, Weiss notes, but
scientists are skeptical that enhanced cyborg surveillance
insects have been created.
Adds Thompson:
