Letter to the Editor

You’ve probably never heard of DARPA, the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s, DARPA has been active in many areas, from solving infectious disease to transforming humans for the theater of war. For example, with an implanted brain chip a soldier’s cognition can be improved. DARPA programs might even allow soldiers in battle to communicate by thought alone.
Journalist Annie Jacobson in an MPR program said that 300,000 U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan returned with traumatic brain injuries. DARPA, using programs to repair some of the damage, can implant brain chips inside the tissue of their brains. “Scientists,” she said, are already testing the use of “implantable wireless ‘neuroprosthetics’” to help soldiers with brain injuries.
Defense One, an online magazine that covers the military, has reported on brain chips to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in veterans. However, researchers state that it would be about four years until permanent chips were implanted in humans.
While this technology is no doubt important, how much better the world would be if war itself could be overcome by patient struggle and diplomacy among nations rather than fooling around with brain chips.
-Polly Mann