DARPA and its Mission DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. When different government agencies in the United States are looking for something to be developed and sometimes just can't figure it out, they might turn to DARPA. DARPA is a place some like to think of as being full of genius engineers and scientists. A lot of projects which are being undertaken by DARPA never make the news and I think we can understand why, the reason is they are secret. When we do hear about what DARPA is working on sometimes it is very surprising, but there are times when rather than being surprised we might be horrified. Recently there was an announcement stating DARPA was working on a plan which would allow the human brain to be hacked. They stated, more or less, this would be a good thing, because it would allow humans to upload skills much in the way your computer uploads software. I wonder how many people actually believe this is a good thing? While the initial concept of being able to learn instantly is very tempting there is such a downside to this technology it reminds me of when we developed the first nuclear bomb and how we believed it would end our problems in World War II, but instead has given rogue nations the power to attack us. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want people fooling around with my brain. How long a leap is it for a government who learns how to manipulate a human brain to decide to take over that brain? If some information is put into our brain will we instantly believe it? Can the information be manipulated in such a way as to make us believe it? Can commands be sent to our brain forcing us to carry out certain actions we never would have done, had our brains not been tampered with? There are just so many questions regarding this subject and quite frankly no matter what we might gain if this succeeds will never equal what we will lose in freedom of thought and action. You also have to wonder what the future might look like. Take today for example, we are being threatened with nuclear annihilation. Will the future threat be we will be threatened with having our minds wiped out or being taken over by some crazy rogue country or even by a future leader of our own government? Remember this, the military would like nothing better than to have a bunch of mindless soldiers who will carry out orders without ever thinking about them. Remember when I was saying I wouldn’t want my brain taken over and I don’t think you would either? It turns out DARPA has a ready perfected a prototype which allows the remote control of brain activity. It uses ultrasonics and was developed by DARPA with support from Arizona State University. While its stated purpose is to cure neurological diseases, it seems obvious when it is completely perfected it could be used for nefarious purposes. Ultrasonic sound is used to stimulate certain parts of our brain to remotely control brain circuits. I remember reading a story which was about the CIA. It was a fictional story, but it could come to pass. The CIA was turning ordinary people into assassins and when they finished their dirty deed the brain control which was used was turned off and they had no memory of what they did, this made them the perfect killers, because no matter how much they were tortured they had nothing to tell. DARPA has many irons in the fire. Some of the projects they have been working on and maybe still working on are tiny drones which would fly indoors and not need direct human control. They have been working on a smart bullet which it is said almost never misses its target. It is called EXACTO. Today when a sniper fires a bullet there are all sorts of adjustments he has to make to the bullets path when his rifle is fired. This makes it even harder to hit the target the further away you are. The EXACTO bullet is a guided bullet. The miniaturization of electronics has allowed electronics to fit into a bullet and create a guidance system. The bullet is able to change his path to make up for movements of the target. The bullet is 5 inches long, fired from a gun and then you forget about it, because it will automatically track its target. Once these bullets go into production and other nations get their hands on them, the battlefield will be an even more dangerous place. Think of this, everyone's military firing can't miss bullets. I guess the next thing which will be developed will be some way to jam the guidance systems on these bullets. In the novel “From the Earth to the Moon” by Jules Verne there was a munitions manufacturer and a armor manufacturer at odds with each other. Every time the munitions manufacturer would develop a more powerful projectile, the armor manufacturer would develop more powerful armor to stop it. This is the type of race we are in today. DARPA is always looking for a way to help soldiers increase their strength and endurance. One of their projects is known as the "Warrior Web Program." The idea is to develop a very thin suit which can be worn under a soldiers clothing. This suit will be able to function in such a way it protects the soldier’s body from undue stress. It is being designed to also reduce the physical burden when performing a task. It will have certain actuators built into it to make the wearer into a sort of super soldier with abilities he would not normally have. The modern American soldier has to carry quite a load and this suit would help reduce that burden substantially, when it is perfected. The dream of DARPA is to develop a handheld fusion reactor. We know scientists are working feverishly to develop a practical fusion reactor, so trying to develop a handheld one feels like science fiction at the moment, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen someday. The agency also wants to develop a way for soldiers to communicate with each other using telepathy. This would be quite interesting, but I have to wonder if enemy soldiers would also pick this up, making it necessary to also develop some kind of blocker. One of the things which it seems we have been working on for almost 100 years is a submersible airplane. So far no one has been able to solve the problems which come up when we try and do this. The Germans had one on the drawing board in World War II, but it turned out to be too heavy for practical flight. DARPA is working on many different projects. Some of them seem to be right out of science fiction and others are of the type which scientists and engineers have never been able to solve in the past. The agency is a go to agency for engineering and scientific problems. Without this agency, many of the advanced technologies we are using today wouldn’t exist. |
