Pentagon Creating Bioengineered Insect Army to ‘Protect Crops,’ Critics Fear Bioweapon Use

What’s the story?

• A research arm of the Pentagon is studying whether virus-carrying insects can be deployed to combat crop loss during agricultural emergencies. But some scientists are worried the technology could be used as a biological weapon.
• The idea behind DARPA’s “Insect Allies” program: a swarm of virus-carrying insects are released upon threatened crops, infecting them with a virus that genetically modifies the agriculture to withstand drought, disease, frost, or “threats introduced by state or non-state actors.”

What are both sides saying?

• In an opinion piece published in the journal Science, a group of skeptical scientists and legal scholars argue that Insect Allies opens a “Pandora's box” to a technology that “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery.”

"The DARPA program is easily weaponized,” they write in their accompanying website.

• DARPA's program manager for Insect Allies, Blake Bextine, pushed back, telling the Washington Post: "I don't think that the public needs to be worried. I don't think that the international community needs to be worried.”

“I think anytime you’re developing a new and revolutionary technology, there is that potential for dual-use capability. But that is not what we are doing. We are delivering positive traits to plants. We’re focused on that positive goal. We want to make sure we ensure food security, because food security is national security in our eyes," Bextine said.

What do you think?

Are you concerned about the misuse of the Insect Allies program? Or do you agree that “food security is national security”? Does Congress need to hold hearings on the use of insects as biological weapons? Take Action above, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / Aukid)