A while ago, back in the depths of the p.c. ages, when an insignificant virus wasn’t wreaking havoc everywhere, when references to technological developments weren’t “conspiracy theories,” when mRNA platforms weren’t occupying the (later) carabinieri, one could read (or not read…) this carelessly (October 2015, cyborg no 4):
It is unlikely that you will understand what the image shows, and it is even more unlikely that you would think such a thing would be possible. The photograph is enlarged. On the right is the tip of an injection needle. And this grid-like structure coming out of the needle’s hole is an electronic circuit in liquid form.
An international team of researchers from various specialties, under the auspices of Charles Lieber’s Lab, presented this past June this liquid material that is a circuit at the nanoscale. This liquid can be injected into an organism, like any injectable drug. Once it is there, it can “make contact” with (external) electronic devices and, according to the inventors, it can monitor the activity of a body’s neurons, it can repair tissues, and even transmit signals to neurons.
Charles Lieber made celebratory statements. “I feel that what we have achieved has revolutionary potential. A completely new field is opening up, where we can study the interaction between electronic structures and biology. Significant steps have been made over the last 30 years toward smaller and smaller scales, but no one has tackled this issue, the interaction between electronics/cells, at the level that biology works.”
The prospect of the invention is (what else?) therapeutic. In the future, therefore, we should get rid of the craving. Scratch – scratch, some damage may be done to the circuit/drug.
Electric – circuit – in – liquid – form – enters – the – body – with – injection – to – monitor – the – function – of – nerves; Shame! Disgrace! (It doesn’t even have Lord Basil, so even worse!). Interaction – between – electronic – structures – and – cells; Shame, disgrace you old “sprayed” ones!!!
That’s how it is for whoever finds it convenient…
Cyberpunk.link discovered something interesting about the inventor: Charles Lieber. Despite whatever curses Lieber may have, his inventions exist, like the one above. He is a professor at Harvard, and is considered one of the world’s leading experts in nanotechnology. Only this time he is a “professor at Harvard on leave“: he fell victim to another kind of liquidity, large scale, which he did not appreciate in time, being devoted to nano-… What is the problem with Mr. Charles?
For some ten years now, Lieber, being a first-rate “techno-intellectual capital,” has been openly collaborating with Beijing, within the framework of a well-known Chinese program titled “Thousand Talents Plan,” which has been running since 2008. According to this, the Chinese regime initially funded (and continues to fund) “minds” of Chinese emigrants in Western capitalist countries, in order for them to return to China and excel there. At some point, the program evolved to also attract non-Chinese specialists. In exchange for substantial compensation and coverage of living and travel expenses, Beijing offered such Western experts the opportunity to work for a period each year in China. Quite a few responded positively.
Lieber was one of them. Not only did he start working and collaborating with Chinese technologists, but (with funding from the Chinese regime) he established in 2013 a state-of-the-art nanotechnology laboratory in Wuhan (yes, that one again!), at the city’s technological university. Named the WUT-Harvard Joint Nano Key Laboratory. With by no means negligible compensation: a salary of $50,000 per month, plus $150,000 in living and accommodation expenses…
All of this was fine… until it wasn’t. Since 2017, the smoky weed declared Beijing a dangerous technological rival, and gradually began to escalate. «The Chinese are stealing our technology» it said and repeated, and perhaps many thought of demonic tiny Chinese people breaking into Silicon Valley at night.
Lieber, either because he didn’t want to lose his post in Wuhan or because he considered himself so good that he couldn’t be touched, declared in 2018 that he “no longer has anything to do” with the “Thousand Talents Plan.” But he had…
This year, at the end of January, the FBI knocked on his door… The American defense department was looking for him, as the projects he was working on in Wuhan are now considered a threat to national security. He should have realized it: among the funders of his research in the US are the notorious DARPA, the research arm of the American navy, and its air force counterpart. (And also the national institutes of health…).
Now anyone who wants can connect these two distinct issues. On one hand, the escalating interstate conflict and the burning issues of cutting-edge technology; on the other hand, precisely this cutting-edge technology, even that which reaches through syringes into human skin… Some connections might be born this way.
No, let’s not fall into superstitions about “chipping by the antichrist”! There are neither gods nor devils here! Only the existing, most real technological stack of capitalism. So real that it can even cause the arrest of a Lieber…
(“Academic freedoms” even at the highest level? Yet another casualty on the altar of intra-capitalist competition.)