DARPA Is Making Insects That Can Deliver Bioweapons, Scientists Claim

The U.S. Government's Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been issued via virus-infected insects.

The Insect Allies program was announced by DARPA in 2016. It is a research project that aims to protect the world by providing insects for insects because they are responsible for the transmission of insects. with threat that would be provided with protective measures in the event of a major threat.

In an editorial published in the journal ScienceRichard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says it is not exactly what it says. Instead, they claim the agency is providing developing insects as a means of delivering a "new class of biological weapon."

How does Insect Allies work?

There are many threats that could impact upon food security. This includes environmental disasters, natural pathogens and intentional attacks. Crop failure, for whichever of these reasons, has the potential to have devastating consequences-wheat and maize, for example, are relapsed to the world for their basic nutritional needs.

How Insect Allies works. DARPA

Genetically altering a species to make it more resilient with problems. Introducing alterations directly into a species' chromosome is slow, as the alteration must be passed down through generations before it takes hold.

Instead, scientists with DARPA are looking at introducing genetically modified viruses that can directly modify chromosomes in fields-these are known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAs).

The DARPA program is using the principles of HEGAAs but, unlike traditional methods of dispersal-like spraying fields with them-it wants to spread them through insects. At the moment, maize and tomato plants are being used in experiments and the insects being used for dispersal of leafhoppers, aphids and whiteflies.

"Insect Allies aims to develop scalable, consistent deployable, and generalizable countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to mature crops," Blake Bextine, DARPA Program Manager for Insect Allies, told Newsweek. "The program is devising technologies to engineer and deliver these targeted therapies on timescales-that is, within a single growing season. To do so, Insect Allies researchers are building on natural, efficient, and highly specific plant viruses and insect vectors.

Why biological weapons?

Reeves and colleagues offer a number of assertions about why an insect can be dispersal. Firstly, they question the very nature of the project-the use of insects. Why, they say, are insects so integral? What is the problem with spraying HEGAAs?

The team says the Insect Alliance "appears to be more limited in its ability to enhance U.S. agriculture or respond to national emergencies … As a result, the program may be perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery."

Potentially, the viruses being opened up could harm instead of good. The insects could be used to disperse agents that would prevent seeds from growing. "HEGAA weapons could be extremely transmissible to susceptible crop species, particularly where insects were used as the means of delivery," they write. "Chromosomal editing would be subject to specific genetics dependent on their genome sequence (presumably those varieties not grown by the deploying parties)."

Maize, one of the crops being tested, is relied upon by millions of people for basic nutrition. iStock

The development of an insect-based system, according to the authors, points to "an intention to develop a means of delivering HEGAAs for offensive purposes." The technology, they say, could quickly be simplified of biological weapons. "They were doing a pretty good job with the idea that they're going to be able to do it." .

The team calls for more transparency from DARPA and the Insect Alliance progresses. However, it also says the potential to weaponize this technology is already out there. They say weapons programs are driven by the competitions of competitors-may the Insect Alliance program is a response to intelligence of another nation's capabilities.

In addition, "the author of the program, with its presented justifications, may well be able to do so in a more efficient way than ever before … Reversal of funding for this DARPA project … would not in Pandora's box that HEGAAs or their dispersal insect may represent. "

DARPA making weaponized insects?

Aphids are one of the insects being used in the DARPA program. iStock

DARPA denies the assertions made by Reeves and colleagues. "DARPA is producing neither the biological weapons nor the means for their delivery," spokesman told Newsweek. "We can accept and agree with concerns about the use of technology, and we are in the process of achieving this goal." and university-led research project that encourages communication. "We also have numerous, layered safeguards in place to maintain biosecurity and ensure the systems we're developing function only as intended," he added.

Bextine reiterated this point. Researchers working with DARPA are allowed to publish their results and work with different agencies. The experiments they carry out are done so in biosecure greenhouses. "At no point in the program is DARPA funding open release of Insect Allies Systems," said Bextine.

She said she disagreed with the conclusion of the editorial ScienceSaying, "Saying a lot more to transparency" -and Insect Allies, she says, meets these high standards.

These methods are particularly useful in the field of drug delivery, especially when it is necessary to respond to these challenges.

"Many existing methods for nurturing crops are inefficient, expensive, imprecise, or destructive to plants," he said. "Sprayed treatments are impractical for introducing genetic modifications to a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying technology does not access the necessary tissues with specificity. Meanwhile, traditional selective breeding methods need to be introduced into the future.

She added that DARPA would never fund the next generation of aerial spraying technology. "Instead, we are able to provide more efficient, more efficient and more effective methods of dealing with potential threats.

Emerging biotechnologies-and especially the cutting-edge research being performed on Insect Allies- are pushing science into new territories. DARPA is proud to be taking a proactive role in working with stakeholders to inform a new framework for considering the benefits of these technologies.