The Pentagon’s Gamble on Brain Implants, Bionic Limbs and Combat Exoskeletons
By Sara Reardon,
Nature News
| 06. 10. 2015
Untitled Document
When Geoffrey Ling talks about the future of technology, his ideas go flying around the room like a whirlwind. Ling eagerly describes a world in which people live far beyond their natural lifespans, minds can be downloaded into external 'hard drives' for enhancement by artificial intelligence and robots and aircraft are controlled by human thought.
“It's abso-posi-frickin-lutely going to happen,” he declares. “The next 20 years are going to make our heads spin, because we've already crossed over into that realm.”
Ling should know: he is doing as much as anyone to make these visions real. A neurologist by training, he is also a US Army colonel and director of the first biology funding office to operate within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's avant-garde research arm. The Biological Technologies Office (BTO), which opened in April 2014, aims to support extremely ambitious — some say fantastical — technologies ranging from powered exoskeletons for soldiers to brain implants that can control mental disorders.
DARPA's plan for tackling such projects is being carried out in the same...
Related Articles
By Zusha Elinson, The Wall Street Journal | 08.12.2025
BERKELEY, Calif.—Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon.
Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting...
By Cade Metz, The New York Times | 08.04.2025
Image by Mike MacKenzie / CC BY 2.0
In downtown Berkeley, an old hotel has become a temple to the pursuit of artificial intelligence and the future of humanity. Its name is Lighthaven.
Covering much of a city block, this...
By Kristel Tjandra, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 07.30.2025
CRISPR has taken the bioengineering world by storm since its first introduction. From treating sickle cell diseases to creating disease-resistant crops, the technology continues to boast success on various fronts. But getting CRISPR experiments right in the lab isn’t simple...
By Matt Novak, Gizmodo | 07.23.2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has made a big push to get agencies like the Food and Drug Administration to use generative artificial intelligence tools. In fact, Kennedy recently told Tucker Carlson that AI...
