Zombie Spies

By | June 19, 2007
7 Comments

How cool is this?

Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?

A moth which has a computer chip implanted in it while in the cocoon will enable soldiers to spy on insurgents, the US military hopes.

…

At some point in the not too distant future, a moth will take flight in the hills of northern Pakistan, and flap towards a suspected terrorist training camp.

But this will be no ordinary moth.

Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that the moth’s entire nervous system can be controlled remotely.

…

“This is going to happen,” said [Rod Brooks, director of the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)], “It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.”

This is the power, literally, to be a fly on the wall. If we can send one of these, we can send a swarm. The next step is to farm the data processing to AI’s. The AI could wade through thousands of hours of useless junk to find important conversations.

  • MikeD

    If “utility fog” starts life as a gnat swarm, how much ‘utility’ can it have when you’ll spend most of your time swatting it away from your face?

    I wonder if they’re building the defense science to counter these cybermoths; cyberbats… or cyberowls… or cybercandles… oh… yeah.

  • MikeD

    in case my cynicism didn’t seem as funny as I thought it was..

    it is cool. A little scary at the same time, but cool. Roller coasters seem pretty mild feats of engineering by comparison.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Mike:

    Yeah, I definitely see the scary part here. If used for domestic law enforement we could kiss privacy goodbye.

    If this got cheap enough it wouldn’t even have to be government abusing this technology. Imagine stalkers using this.

  • http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/06/cyborg-moths-for-surveillance.html advancednano

    The surveillance stuff is only the tip of this iceberg.

    First you have peer to peer moth surveillance.

    Then you have targeted insect and animal weapons. Poison (regular stinger or add-on) an individual or target contaminate food or water. Hit a compound or a larger area.

    I have this described in an article which I put as my URL. Click the posted by.

  • MDarling

    Too cool, so to speak.

    Mike- that was funny, though I didn’t see the cyncism too clearly.

    And no need for cyber predators or candles- a large electromangnetic pulse (EMP) could neutralize all the chips.

    Stephen- I suspect the NSA can already farm the data, AI and all. And I think privacy is lost already. Odd to me that the US Constitution doesn’t specifically mention a right to privacy.

  • MikeD

    I expect the pusuit of happiness would include privacy – but the authors of the Constitution couldn’t even imagine the invasion to privacy or they most likely would have made provisions protecting it.

    If security is a requirement for privacy today, then clearly the general public doesn’t “get it” – evidenced by the number of unsecured wireless access points, bad password habits, and general cluelessness with information (Send this article to a friend, not via your own email program, but through our email address harvester. Thanks for adding both your emails to the increasing flood of spam)

    http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/warflying.ars
    http://www.hideaway.net/home/public_html/article.php?story=20020624104705262
    http://www.google.com/search?q=email+a+friend

  • doctorpat

    You don’t need much intelligence at all. Just program (or even breed) killer bees to attack anyone who smells of high-explosive. Then release these in areas like… the entire middle east.

    Or have insects that will land on any explosive, at which point the chip detonates…