The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

“I would love to comment, but unfortunately Darpa has installed a kill switch in me,” one unnamed expert tells Danger Room.

As former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld noted in 1975, "When we fail, we fail big." Little has changed. According to DARPA's current chief, some 85%-90% of its projects fail to meet their full objectives. Still, Piller points out, DARPA "has been behind some of the world's most revolutionary inventions" – "the Internet, the global positioning system, stealth technology and the computer mouse."

DARPA's spectacular failure rate and noteworthy successes stem from its high risk ventures. For years DARPA has funded extremely unconventional, sometimes beyond-the-pale, avant-garde research in all realms of science and technology. It is, perhaps, the most creative place in our vast government for a scientist who wants to stretch his or her mind in adventurous directions and be well paid to do so. If you have a wild idea, DARPA's the place to try it out. Said Harvard University pathologist Donald Ingber in a 2001 Los Angeles Times article, "DARPA [has] funded things that a lot of people thought were ridiculous, and some that people thought were impossible. They make things happen."

There's only one caveat -- in one way or another most every project, however mind-stretching, invariably must end, directly or indirectly, in the incapacitation or death of future American enemies.

The projects are often some of the most lethal ever conceived. Over the years, DARPA research has led to a plethora of products designed to maim and kill, among them the: M-16 rifle, Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator drones, stealth fighters and bombers, surface-to-surface artillery rocket systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-52 bomber upgrades, Titan missiles, Javelin portable "fire and forget" guided missiles and cannon-launched Copperhead guided projectiles, to name but a few.

Founded to protect the US against "technological surprise", the agency has achieved some spectacular successes - and failures - in its 50-year history.

Successful projects

The internet: Precisely who 'invented' the mass of linked computer networks that is today's internet is a moot point. But it wouldn't have happened without the ARPANET network built by DARPA in the 1960s. The idea was to make a "self-healing" communications network that still worked when parts of it were destroyed. It was the first network to transmit data in discrete chunks, not constant streams, and led to the development of the TCP/IP specification still in use today.

GPS: We would be quite literally lost without today's global positioning system (GPS). But long before the current NAVSTAR GPS satellites were launched, came a constellation of just five DARPA satellites called Transit. First operational in 1960, they gave US Navy ships hourly location fixes as accurate as 200 metres.

Speech translation: Although not yet available to consumers, handheld language translation devices developed with DARPA funding are already being used in Iraq. Although accuracy can be as low as 50%, the devices have met with favourable reviews from forces on the ground.

Stealth Planes: It's probably the best example of DARPA fulfilling its remit to come up with "surprise" technologies - even the US Air Force was surprised by the idea. The first prototype, Have Blue, was tested in the late 1970s and became the precursor to F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.

Gallium Arsenide: One of DARPA's lesser known accomplishments, semiconductor gallium arsenide received a push from a $600-million computer research program in the mid-1980s. Although more costly than silicon, the material has become central to wireless communications chips in everything from cellphones to satellites, thanks to its high electron mobility, which lets it work at higher frequencies.

Alright, I give up.

What does Dr. Seuss and bong hits have to do with DARPA's crazy plans?

Oh frack, somebody’s been watching Battle Star Galactica.

Battle Star Galactica is a series based on the interaction and interbreeding of the human race with a synthetic race created by machines that is immortal. The Cylons were created by a defense department hoping to create the ultimate soldier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica

Oh for the good old days when the guy running the wars and pushing the country off a cliff was some white guy who could not string a sentence together.

Green and sustainable killing is truly a hard
nut to crack.
Daddy Warbucks brings on the big bluff in the poker game of hubristic blather,
Gaia, studies her cards and finally declares:

"I'll see your immortal synthetic organisms and raise you a cockaroach."

Knowing that she is probably holding a Norway rat as well, Daddy Warbucks
wisely folds...

He sits out the next round and dreams of how to make a weapon out of
carbon dioxide and algae. Green and sustainable killing is truly a hard
nut to crack.