Hold your horses, world! We’re about to embark on a rollercoaster ride into the heart of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known as DARPA. Now, buckle up and let me unfold a tale as captivating as it is unsettling. DARPA is financing a program whose name alone rings alarm bells: “Insect Allies”.
Dr. Blake Bextine, a DARPA representative, characterizes this initiative as a “natural and efficient two-step delivery system to transfer modified genes to plants.” The players? Insect vectors and plant viruses they transmit. DARPA spins it off as a ‘knight in shining armor‘ move to protect the U.S. food supply against potential threats. Notice their jargon? “Scalable, readily deployable…” But peel back the layers, and the plot thickens.
DARPA’s ‘knightly mission‘ involves weaponizing insects with Genetic Alteration Agents (read: viruses) to directly modify crop genetics. The chosen knights for this endeavor are leaf hoppers, white flies, and aphids, tasked with introducing viruses into crops. DARPA affirms this will aid farmers in battling climate change.
Yet, a looming question remains: how will these GM viruses interact with other microorganisms in the environment?
Could these modified viruses seep into the food chain, transforming the genetics and immune systems of humans who consume these crops?
Since a large chunk of the U.S. food supply is already tainted with toxic herbicides, pesticides, and GMO plants, one can’t help but question the sincerity of Pentagon’s professed concern for the U.S. crop system. A group of vigilant European scientists, led by Dr. Guy Reeves of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany, recently published a paper drawing attention to this alarming program.
Reeves and his team assert that the “Insect Allies” program’s objective is to disseminate infectious, genetically modified viruses engineered to edit crop chromosomes directly in the field. This process, dubbed “horizontal inheritance,” contrasts the conventional vertical GMO alteration, where lab-induced modifications are inserted into a target species’ chromosomes to create GMO plant varieties. These genetic alterations would be delivered via “insect-based dispersion” in the open nature.
Now, enter the ring Bill Gates. The European scientists underscore the lack of convincing reasons presented by DARPA for using insects as an unchecked medium of dispersing synthetic viruses into the environment. Moreover, they argue that the Insect Allies Program could be exploited for biological warfare more effortlessly than for routine agricultural use.
Guy Reeves states, “It is very much easier to kill or sterilize a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide or insect-resistant.” There is no scientific discourse or oversight on the safety of such gene-editing methods in open fields. The U.S. Department of Agriculture dismisses any health or safety testing of gene-edited plants or insects. Thus, the program could be construed as an endeavor to develop biological agents for hostile purposes—a breach of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The U.S. taxpayers have already shelled out $27 million on “Insect Allies.”
DARPA’s Insect Allies project likely employs “gene drive” in conjunction with CRISPR-Cas tools—another area with significant Pentagon funding. Gene drive aims to propagate a genetic modification throughout an entire population, whether mosquitoes or potentially humans, within a few generations.
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Harvard biologist Kevin Esvelt, who first suggested developing gene drives in gene editing, has issued a public caution about the potential for this technology to backfire. Esvelt warns, “Just a few engineered organisms could irrevocably alter an ecosystem.” His simulations revealed that an edited gene “can spread to 99 percent of a population in as few as 10 generations, and persist for more than 200 generations.”
And the cherry on top?
Gene-editing is far from precise.
A trial in China where human embryos were used to edit a specific gene ended in failure, proving the technology immature and unpredictable.
Let’s now turn our attention to Georgia. The Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research, a high-security Pentagon-financed bio-lab near Tbilisi Airport, stands ominously close to Russia. This $350 million facility can handle almost all known lethal microbes. Former Georgian state security minister Igor Giorgadze claimed that risky experiments were conducted at this center, which resulted in fatalities.
So, what’s the truth behind this “Insect Allies” program?
Is DARPA developing a bio weapon disguised as an agricultural advancement?
Imagine the catastrophe if billions of gene-edited, virus-infected insects were unleashed on the world’s breadbaskets.
