And a glass of pearls…
The US plans to create "spy plants" with the help of genetic engineering
The Pentagon's Office of Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) plans to create genetically modified plants that will collect intelligence about potential threats. This follows from information for interested partners published by DARPA on one of the sites about tenders and projects of the American government.
In the program called "Advanced Plant Technologies", the goal is called "control and management of plant physiology to identify chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, as well as electromagnetic signals."
According to the authors, "sensor plants" should be developed that are sensitive to certain stimuli and capable of transmitting signals at a distance. At the same time, they must have a high survival rate in order to be able to live in a natural environment for several months or even years.
DARPA sees great potential in the program, as plants are easy to place anywhere, they are widespread and can provide themselves with energy.
In order to endow plants with the necessary properties, it is planned to use precise genome editing tools. The Pentagon intends to involve teams of specialists in various fields in the project: experts in plant physiology, genome editing, biochemistry, modeling, phenotyping, remote measurements and plant ecology.
Potential participants of the program are invited to submit their own versions of such plants and the corresponding threats that they will be able to identify. The meeting and webinar with possible partners will take place on December 12.
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American "spy plants" are a crazy idea, expert says
American developments on the creation of "sensor plants" have great prospects in the distant future, but today they cannot be perceived otherwise as a crazy idea, since there are no technologies in the world that would allow them to transmit the received data, Viktor Murakhovsky, a member of the expert council of the Military Industrial Complex board, told RIA Novosti on Friday.
So he commented on the information that the Office of Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense plans to use genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as the next generation of intelligence. The plans of the military include the creation of new "sensor plants" that would respond in a specific way to changes in environmental conditions.
"The promise of this direction lies in the cheapness of obtaining such funds and the absence of the need to somehow maintain these "complexes": as you know, plants feed themselves through photosynthesis. In addition, they cannot be detected by any of the existing means of intelligence today. It's promising, but it's crazy enough for today. Fundamental problems have not been solved yet, there is no need to talk about any deadlines for its implementation," Murakhovsky said.
According to the expert, the main problem in creating "smart" plants, which DARPA has been working on for about three years as part of the "third technological shift" strategy, and using them in exploration is the lack of any means of data transmission in living organisms, which makes these "sensors" useless.
"Roughly speaking, a cornhusker plane flies by, sows these plants, and they begin to record data. Everything depends on the transmission of information: they don't have a radio module, much less satellite communications. American experts came up with various proposals to overcome this problem, some of them were just crazy, for example, so that when a target is detected, they dramatically change their color, and then these objects are fixed by a drone," the agency interlocutor said.
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