Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/27/the-pentagon-is-training-an-ar.html
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Has anyone seen @Scientist around? Just checking.
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This is Barani Raman’s work. Barani is a good guy and a collaborator (although unfortunately not on this project). There is a lot of similarities with stuff I’ve done. The original chip that developed into the one they’re using was designed for experiments in my current lab.
It sucks that all conferences are canceled this year. I’d have really enjoyed talking to him this fall about the cyborg locust uprising.
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So at least one of the authors of the strange simulation we’re all stuck in is very clearly Michael Crichton.
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Well, riddle me this: How many of these dang cyborgs have I accidentally crushed at airports while putting my shoes back on?
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If only we had triggered the nuke before the bat escaped into the wild.
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Whatever happened to the mine sniffing piglets? Was that not a Pentagon project?
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Would it too Onionesque of me to imagine the downside of even one of these cyborg locusts sniffing around an already skittish, booby-trapped insectophobic hostage who must… not… fucking…move?
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In this case it is not cheaper to keep her: Locusts over dogs!
" The Black Hornet, a sparrow-sized drone, is at about the technical limit of what can be built…"
But can it maintain airspeed while carrying a coconut?
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I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right? 
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I realize that these are just detection locusts, so this isn’t actually how it would work; but my imagined worst case scenario (provisional title “The Blast Famine”) involves an otherwise generic futile forever-war that normally grinds along at roughly contemporary tech levels; but periodically descends into bayonets and blunt trauma when the now-feral populations of detector locusts reach swarm concentrations and devour all the explosives in the theater. Once the swarm burns itself out and supply chains catch up people are able to carry on as normal.
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Oh that would make an interesting dystopian novel…
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With the cyborg locust uprising? A bomb sniffing locust plague that seeks out all explosive materials and detonates them. Crops destroyed and cities blown apart. Picture a bomb train trying to escape the swarm descending from all sides to blow it up. Maybe something like that
*Well, for accuracy (and safety) sake I should point out that these aren’t truly locusts. Schistocerca americana is the same genus as the desert locust that decimates so many places, but it doesn’t swarm at all. So in reality it would just be individual cyborg grasshoppers to defend ourselves against which wouldn’t be hard
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Will the Borg-locusts attempt to assimilate us? 
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Ah HA! So you’re admitting it! That was your plan all along!
Ivory Tower Eggheads!!!
/s
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All I can think of when reading this …
“I am Dyslexica of Borg. Your ass will be laminated.”
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