Embranglements

Following the Silk Road.

 

 Oh noes! Even our power strips are spying on us! Power Pwn: This DARPA-funded power strip will hack your network

Summary: The Power Pwn may look like a power strip, but it's actually a DARPA-funded hacking tool for launching remotely-activated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet attacks. If you see one around the office, make sure to ask if it's supposed to be there.

When did the first people arrive in the Americas?

Monsanto has actually something intelligent to say? Monsanto asks its scientists if global warming is real

There goes the other 50% of voters....Mitt Romney vows to ban pornography by installing a filter on every U.S. PC

 "Dramatic" New Maya Temple Found, Covered With Giant Faces Archaeological "gold mine" illuminates connection between king and sun god.

They still look horribly uncomfortable: 600-Year-Old Bras Found in Austria

Heading for the cliff.

That's not just a cockroach!

It's a CIA operative!

So what's hot at DARPA right now? Bugs. The creepy, crawly flying kind. The Agency's Microsystems Technology Office is hard at work on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations — DARPA calls them "insect cyborgs" — would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website.

Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during "the caterpillar and the pupae stages," which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon's bidding. "The HI-MEMS program is aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis," DARPA says. "Since a majority of the tissue development in insects occurs in the later stages of metamorphosis, the renewed tissue growth around the MEMS will tend to heal, and form a reliable and stable tissue-machine interface." Such bugs "could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination."

So we must activate our own state of the art defenses!







The arms race will never cease!

Are we sure these are what the White House says they are?

Robots to actually fix satellites?

The branch of the U.S. military that created the internet has launched into orbit a pair of prototype robots designed to repair and service satellites in space.

The Orbital Express system was launched on an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:10 p.m. ET Thursday.

The Orbital Express is being developed by the research arm of the U.S. military, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), along with the country's space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to extend the capabilities and lives of spy satellites.

NASA hopes to one day use the technology to maintain weather and commercial satellites, and eventually use it for routine supply, mining and exploration missions to the moon and beyond.

Currently, only satellites designed to be repaired by astronauts, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, can be fixed if they malfunction. Most satellites are sealed packages that are rendered useless once they develop a problem.

If you have the ability to fix stuff...you have the ability to take things apart.

Update:

Aside from the satellites, which have become key to the Pentagon's battle plans, most of the other technology is in the research and development stage or awaiting deployment decisions from the White House that are complicated by political complexities.

The George W Bush administration - especially the Defense Department and particularly the US Air Force (USAF) - is anxious to launch a full-scale militarization of space, regardless of its enormous expense and the fact that it will inspire worldwide condemnation, generate a dangerous arms race in outer space, and undoubtedly enhance prospects for major wars in this century.

The rightists and neo-conservatives are not unaware of these potential consequences but they are confident the US will prevail because of its overwhelming power. In effect, "It's worth the price."
But that mindset is not shared so far by most Americans outside the hard right, particularly in the absence of any other country that could come near to threatening the United States for global primacy. In addition, virtually every other nation in the world, including Washington's close allies in Canada and the European Union, opposes the weaponization of space, as is evident from repeated votes at the United Nations.