What Could Possibly Go Wrong? : Giant Cyborg Beetles

Ohh, DARPA. You gotta hand it to the Department of Defense. Rather than going the traditional and tiresome route of defeating mad scientists one by one with expensive and unpredictable secret agents, they just created an agency and started hiring them. If you fund it, they will come.

And what has our national evil genius corps come up with lately?* Giant cyborg beetles. You think I'm joking. Apparently giant beetle nervous systems are comparatively simple to hack into with a wireless reciever implant, allowing the bug to be controlled remotely. The implant just delivers a little nudge, and the beetle's own nervous system takes care of the complicated business of doing the actual flying, making the resulting abomination considerably more stable than any miniature flying robot.

Here's my two cents: I've also heard tell that they're pursuing similar cyborg technology with rats, ostensibly (again!) for search-and-rescue operations. Good cover, DARPA. But if you can control a beetle, you can control a bear. Just sayin'


*That they'll tell us about, of course. If this is what they release to the media, Hephaistos only knows what they're working on in secret.