Bug Borgs Are Born
The term “bugged” may very well have a whole new meaning now. In fact, it may be much more literal than before.
A team of researchers at Cornell University have developed the world’s first insect cyborgs. Using tobacco hornworms in their early pupae stages, electronic circuit probes attached to a tiny circuit board (measuring 8 mm. by 7 mm. and weighing 500 mg.) are implanted into their back muscles that would eventually control flight. As they metamorphose into moths, their muscle tissues would grow around the probes, thereby assimilating the circuitry into their physical structure and allowing manipulation of their flight movements.
This project, dubbed as “Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems” (HI-MEMS), is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is an autonomous arm of advanced military research that reports directly to the U.S. Secretary of Defense – it is the same agency that laid the foundation for our modern Internet. HI-MEMS is actually a product of inspiration from Thomas Easton’s science-fiction novel Sparrowhawk, in which insects and animals are genetically manipulated to be oversize and implanted with control systems.
The success of HI-MEMS brings to mind several possible applications of these moth cyborgs – the most obvious being espionage, which is DARPA’s main intention for them (once they hurdle the obstacle of tapping into the insects’ sensory system).
It is the perfect spy tool. Most of the time, we tend to ignore the presence of insects unless they are armed with a stinger and raging at us. We would never think of them being a risk to information leakage. In short, they are inconspicuous, which is the most crucial attribute for spies. Even if a full electronics security sweep were performed, it is quite possible for the moth cyborg to remain undetected due to its instant mobility – all the controllers have to do is to have it stealthily flit away to safe part of a room each time it is in danger of being discovered.
This is a powerful tool that we can only hope would be used solely for military purposes. If it is ever gained control of by governments or corporations with crosshairs trained on us as a society, a whole different can of worms would be opened and the world would turn very ugly indeed.
