DARPA working on genetic weapon tools/creatures

[test_recordings]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02 ... -included/

Also the New Scientist has written about work by DARPA to create symbiotic organic tools with separate DNA to allow soldiers to be implanted with them and receive radio transmissions without external equipment and other useful abilities.

I don't think this is sensible or moral, it could easily be used to create a race of mind-controlled zombies since if a female was implanted with these her children would also have the same organisms residing in it...

[La Cucaracha]

why not man, who's gonna stop them?
everything can and will be used against you, including your taxes

[La Cucaracha]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/category/darpawatch/

[kay]

In b4 they're already doing it.

This would be an awesome step forward. We might all end up dead but hey.

[DRTY]

sounds like MGS

[Motorway to Roswell]

Roy's wish fulfilled?

[stephisaint]

This is scary.

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA,

Who will they be loyal to... Darpa or a particular government? Who has the killswitch and how would the government know all that they had programmed into them? Would there be an over-ride? What happens if they have children/evolve?
So many questions.

[nicenice]

sounds like MGS

[d-T-r]

seems a bit fucked.

with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.

the 'randomness' is why everything is the way it is already.

i think its something that can be used for potential medical/techonology advancements but at the same time its too easy to exploit it for darker uses and im not sure how much i trust the Pentagon.

sounds like the type of thing that could be the start of some mass plague/ zombie film too haha. they accididently fuck up and create some mutant virus they can't kill

curiosity killed the cat.

[WhosZena]

Intriguing. Lets hope they don't have emotions, or were all fucked

[christophera]

david adair worked on better shit than this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUoboH_v3V0

[noam]

This is scary.

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA,

Who will they be loyal to... Darpa or a particular government? Who has the killswitch and how would the government know all that they had programmed into them? Would there be an over-ride? What happens if they have children/evolve?
So many questions.

always wondered about this evolution thing

seems like a hollywood fallacy really, evolution takes millions of years, not a few generations. speculation of course.

either way this sounds kinda fucked. although if it does happen ima be the first to have this shit put in me - dont wana get left behind!

[flopps]

District 9 hello

[64hz]

now this is proper 21st century business.
humanity is at a crux right now.

[magma]

I would doubt their first efforts would be anything like "superhumans" though... more like dogs with better sniffers, surely? Nothing really gets mentioned about humans in there, so I wouldn't get too worried just yet... no reason why not eventually, of course... no reason why the whole population couldn't do with a few upgrades too (nomolecularkillswitch!).

Off the top of my head something like this could be used to replace mosquitos (or perhaps their parasites) with a similar creature that doesn't host malaria without damaging the delicate balance of their food webs - bit of intentional grey squirrel business to wipe out one of our biggest killers.

The future's cool.

[alphacat]

Was thinking District 9 too...

And yes: we are absolutely at an evolutionary crux right now.

@Noam re: Evolution - doesn't always take millions of years, esp. when done by humans deliberately. Every breed of dog on the planet was bred from the wolf within the last 10 to 20,000 years, for instance. Terriers, boxers, chihuahuas, pit bulls, rottweilers, grayhounds, shih-tzus... all wolf descendents whose characteristics were acquired from selective breeding - often selective inbreeding.

So my first thought is, of course, that this is bad. Bad bad bad all the way through. It'll probably have some kind of horrific unforeseen outcome like so many new military technologies have done before.

But my second thought is that they really don't know what they're doing, even though they're quite smugly certain that they do. To bring up a Jeff Goldblum movie quote that got raised in another thread recently, "Life Finds A Way." Shit, some boa constrictors have recently been proven to be able to reproduce asexually, contrary to what all the "experts" said for the previous 150 years. We've created special breeds of plants and animals we thought were sterile (unable to reproduce) and then... a few years or decades down the line we discover that one of them figured out how to reproduce even though the scientists guaranteed us they couldn't.

This itself is cause for alarm for some, but also tells me - that whatever they're doing is just as likely to get ruined by nature as it would be to FSU. What happens when your genetic-based gun gets a cold, for instance?

[christophera]

this stuff isn't new

[knell]

yeh parson's right, Blizzard has been on this tip for years now

[mashmash]

[jowellz]

...often selective inbreeding.

That explains these bizarre creatures then.