Hollywooden Technocratic DARPAnoia

Padraig

Banned
[1] US 'plans stealth shark spies'

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported.

They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says.

It says the aim is "to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails".

The unusual project was unveiled last week in Hawaii, it says.

'Steering' sharks

The research is being funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), according to the magazine.

It aims to build on latest developments in brain implant technology which has already seen scientists controlling the movements of fish, rats and monkeys.

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[2] Pentagon plans cyber-insect army

The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.

The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later.

Experts told the BBC some ideas were feasible but others seemed "ludicrous".

A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to feed and mate.

The new scheme is a brainwave of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which is tasked with maintaining the technological superiority of the US military.

It has asked for "innovative" bids on the insect project from interested parties.

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The problem is not how to reduce mind to neuronal activity, or replace the language of mind by that of brain processes, but rather to grasp how mind can emerge only from the network of social relations and material supplements. The real problem is not how, if at all, machines can imitate the human mind, but how the 'identity' of the human mind can incorporate machines. In March 2002, Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at Reading University, had his neuronal system directly linked to a computer network. He thus became the first human being to whom data could be fed directly, bypassing the five senses. This is the future: not the replacement of the human mind by the computer, but a combination of the two. In May 2002, it was reported that scientists at New York University had attached a computer chip directly to a rat's brain, making it possible to steer the rat by means of a mechanism similar to that in a remote-controlled toy car.

It is already possible for blind people to get elementary information about their surroundings fed directly into their brain, bypassing the apparatus of visual perception; what was new in the case of the rat was that, for the first time, the 'will' of a living agent, its 'spontaneous' decisions about its movements, were taken over by an external agency. The philosophical question here is whether the unfortunate rat was aware that something was wrong, that its movements were being decided by another power. And when the same experiment is performed on a human being (which, ethical questions notwithstanding, shouldn't be much more complicated than it was in the case of the rat), will the steered person be aware that an external power is deciding his movements? And if so, will this power be experienced as an irresistible inner drive, or as coercion? It is symptomatic that the applications of this mechanism envisioned by the scientists involved and by the journalists who reported the story were to do with humanitarian aid and the anti-terrorist campaign: the steered rats or other animals could be used, it was suggested, to contact earthquake victims buried under rubble, or to attack terrorists without risking human lives
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===>Bring Me My Philips Mental Jacket

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[3] Darpa's Far-Out Dreams on Display

ANAHEIM, California -- Conspiracy freaks, hold onto your tin hats.

Darpa, the Pentagon's far-out research arm, may have publicly abandoned its creepiest programs, like Total Information Awareness. But the agency, as shown at its DarpaTech conference, still has a project to make you run full-speed into your bunker.

Mighty Isis: Darpa wants to start planning for a blimp, three times the size of Goodyear's, that would keep watch over an entire city.

Hovering 70,000 feet above ground, the ISIS (PDF) airship (short for Integrated Sensor Is Structure) would use a giant, flexible radar antenna to give, in the words of Darpa program manager Larry Correy, a "dynamic, detailed, real-time picture of all movement on or above the battlefield: friendly, neutral or enemy."

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"We will apply this technology to track people emerging from buildings of interest and follow them as they move to new locations," said Darpa's Paul Benda. "Imagine the impact it will have if ISIS tracks the movement of individuals for months. Hidden webs of connections between people and facilities will be revealed."

Such a system is meant to keep tabs on urban combat zones -- abroad, of course. But there's no reason ISIS couldn't float over New York or Chicago or Kalamazoo. More ...

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[4] DARPA's Remote Human Mind Control Programmes

More shortly
 

blunt

shot by both sides
Bit like the dolphins that went AWOL (both literally and figuartively, it seems) in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I guess this has the added virtue of being reported in a reputable publication like New Scientist.

And on a (marginally) lighter note, Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely did a great 3-part comic series last year called WE3 that was essentially an update on the 60s Disney movie Incredible Journey in light of research of this ilk. Beautifully realised, and actually strangely moving.

What is it they say about truth being stranger than fiction? Not to mention life imitating art...
 

adruu

This Is It
i think the people that sit around at the pentagon and write up crazy fantasy stuff like this have funny jobs.

i like the one about the satellite that could drop a huge spear from space...
 
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