The Pentagon’s Gamble on Brain Implants, Bionic Limbs and Combat Exoskeletons
        
            By Sara Reardon, 
                Nature News
             | 06. 10. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
             
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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...
 
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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