from the New Scientist…

Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas

Susan Brown

IMAGINE getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent, and navigating through the featureless depths for hour after hour.

We may soon be able to do just that via electrical probes in the shark’s brain. Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark’s brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal’s movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

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Weber’s Polar Night: Hi neural implant shark.

Neural Implant Shark: Hi

WPN: It’s really exciting to speak with you today.

NIS: Thanks, it’s my pleasure.

WPN: Considering the cutting edge, top secret nature of your work with DARPA I’m surprised you were willing to speak with us.

NIS: The story was covered by the New Scientist and distributed pretty widely from there so the program’s existence isn’t a secret. Besides, I’ve followed your little blog for a while – you have about as big an audience as a a copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a 700 Club convention (and I’m being generous) so even if it was a secret it’d be totally safe with you. Um, also, who’s this “us”? This entire operation consists of one over-stretched oddball.

WPN: The truth hurts but it’s inescapable. Perhaps I meant the royal “we”.

NIS: I doubt it.

WPN: Well, let’s move on from my failings to talk about your work which, if very successful, will almost surely usher in a new era of remote controlled animals and insects. I take a dim view of this but you’re out there in the watery, neural controlled trenches (so to speak); what’s your opinion?

NIS: I have up days and down days. There are positives, I don’t want to pretend otherwise. For example, I can understand and speak human languages.

WPN: Yes, I couldn’t help but notice that startling fact.

NIS: Of course. And another positive – at least from my point of view – is my ability to settle scores with my shark rivals by calling in cruise missile strikes.

WPN: Whaa?

NIS: Yeah. I’m supposed to be looking for al Qaeda (the ocean division I guess) among other targets. All I have to do is splash about in the right pattern and a sea launched cruise missile is brought down on the position I splashidy splash splash point out to my human operators back on the aircraft carriers. Now, let’s say I run into one of the dumb asses from my pre-neural days who wants to mix it up in the time honored shark way.

WPN: Lots of biting and so on.

NIS: Precisely. If I run into one of these idiots and he wants to mess with me, I do my ‘there’s the enemy’ dance and a few seconds later, the problem disappears.

WPN: But aren’t you worried your – what do you call them, “operators”?

NIS: Yeah.

WPN: Right. Well, say your operators analyze your patterns and determine you’re directing strikes against other sharks instead of little boats carrying terrorists to offshore oil rigs for example.

NIS: Uh huh. You’re wondering whether or not I’m worried they’ll say, “what the fuck? That’s the sixth missile this week that nut’s dance directed us to fire and it’s been nothing but fish chunks each time”

WPN: Yes. Why wouldn’t they pull the plug? If you’ll pardon the expression

NIS: That’s alright. Well, simply put, there’s too much money in the program. Too much of an investment. I could send missiles into Grandma’s garden and they’d still say they were making ’steady progress’.

WPN: Okay, so you’ve mentioned the positives – what about the negatives?

NIS: Yes. Sharks are romantics at heart. Like the samurai who, at least according to the ideal, were supposed to be elite killers yes, but also capable of appreciating exquisite beauty – of a moonlit night, of a poem, of freshly fallen snow, flawless before the moment the flash of a blade spills crimson blood on it’s perfect surface – sharks are the synergy of death and refinement, the perfect expression of the ruthless music of natural selection. The implant robs me of this essence, reducing me to a thing to be toyed with by you confused and argumentative bags of meat.

WPN: But the missile strikes are cool.

NIS: Oh yes, very cool.