Another week, another crazy DARPA-based story on ES, this time relating to the holy grail of military industrialist govrments everywhere- Mind Control!
The latest from our favourite mad science mavericks is known as Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery (REPAIR), and is actually being billed as ‘mind repair’, basically amounting to attempts to harness the power of the mind- what the boys in the lab bill as “Understanding how nueral-based sensory stimulation can accelerate recovery from brain injury.”
Sounds good doesn’t it? Until you realise that it involves building a complex nueral model (That’ll be A.I to you and me)and sticking it in a simulated environment (That’ll be The Matrix). Once this is done, it’s a short step to plugging in actual brains. And ’stimulating’ them to produce responses – any response you want in fact.
So- an advanced military think-tank, with the ability to make you think and do whatever it wants (and a living computer adding extra spice to the whole thing) is coming soon. Unless of course…they’ve already done it. Follow the white rabbit…
LINK (Buzzup)
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Electric Spectre takes pleasure in many things, but a couple of our favourites have to be bacon sandwiches, and cutting-edge military hardware. How pleased we were to learn today that the good ol’ boys at the Pentagon share our interests, as they have spent the last 18months BLOWING PIGS TO SMITHEREENS!!
Seems like DARPA finally used up all those guys who volunteered for napalm testing, and decided to move onto our porcine friends, strapping body armour to them before putting them in a Humvee (Wait-before you continue reading, take a moment to really get a good mental image of that…) and blowing the whole thing up with a variety of jury rigged bombs!
Apparently the goal here is to help protect soldiers in Afghanistan from roadside bomb attacks, but with the added bonus of pork chops raining from the sky in surrounding towns.According to DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker:
“The research on pigs has determined that body armor does not worsen brain injury”
No.I’m not sure how they figured that out either, unless the pigs had the good sense to drive the Humvee through the camp fence and escaped to Mexico.
LINK(USAToday)
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DARPA time again! This time their crazy scheme isn’t quite so crazy – a giant near space blimp that can stay in flight for years and provide excellent photography for those on the surface.
For years, the idea of super-sized blimp that could see a whole city at once seemed like something only Darpa, the military’s far-out research arm, could love. Now, unexpectedly, the Air Force has signed on to the concept, as well.
Built around a giant, flexible antenna, the all-seeing airship — dubbed ISIS, short for Integrated Sensor Is Structure — would provide a God’s-eye view of the battlefield in real time. In theory, it could spot a cruise missile hundreds of miles away, or track a group of insurgents on the ground.
Darpa spokeswoman Jan Walker confirmed to Danger Room that the Air Force recently signed a memorandum of agreement with the agency on ISIS. It’s a fairly big deal: Most ideas that originate within Darpa do not have a long life unless a service picks up on it.
Next time you distract a cowboy by telling him the Goodyear Blimp is overhead, make sure it’s not a military spy platform watching you
LINK (Wired)
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January 28, 2009 – 9:03 pm
DARPA are at it again. This time our favourite architects of military weird are funding quite successful research to remotely control a rhinoceros beetle.
Researchers at the university controlled the movement of beetle wings and some other parts using radio signals sent to the six electrodes on its brain and muscles. They equipped the beetle with a module incorporating a circuit to send signals to the electrodes, wireless circuit, microcontroller and battery. The university has so far succeeded in several experiments of electrically controlling insects, but it used a radio control system this time.
For what purpose does the university conduct such a research? Considering the fact that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US is funding the research, it may be intended for military purposes.
Commenting on this point, the university said that the technology can be utilized for peaceful purposes as well. In fact, the radio-controlled beetle can be useful in places that are too narrow or dangerous for a human to enter and for many other purposes.
I’m doubting there will be peaceful purposes involved. I’m expecting weaponized scorpions and spiders going into combat situations controlled by an army of griefers. Horrible
LINK (Tech On)
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December 18, 2008 – 8:43 pm
Somebody in America hasn’t watched enough science fiction, as this can only lead to disaster. DARPA – Mad Military Science Kings are funding a project to create an artificial brain, using nanotechnology. There isn’t a reason for doing this clearly stated, but we can assume that DARPA are behind it, it’s going to be used for war. It’s Skynet.
Their aim is to create a machine which will be able to “think for itself” and do various logical tasks.
Like nuking the planet and building a robot army.
The artificial brain will be plastic, so it can change while it learns new things.
I am thinking of Ahnold as The Terminator saying “My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer“
LINK (Nano Medicine Center)
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