Mutations may occur in all kinds of organisms randomly from the beginning of the world. But designed mutations, the diamond in the crown of biotechnologies in recent decades, quickly became notorious. Radical movements in the US and Europe demanded that all such research stop until the release of genetically modified (mutated) organisms into the natural environment was banned. Not unjustly. Genetic engineering, by intervening in the structure of cells, creates organisms whose evolution is unknown and, in any case, unpredictable. Designed mutation means designed genetic manipulation – but even the wisest among geneticists would not put his hand in the fire that he is not another Frankenstein.
The first genetically modified (micro)organism was introduced in 1987, and it was the bacterium p.syringae, which immediately went to work: it was released in strawberry and potato crops in the US, with the aim of preventing ice formation on plants during winter. Around the same time, trials began for genetically modified plants, starting with tobacco, so that tobacco plants could “withstand” the chemical herbicides promoted by the agrochemical industry.
Despite reactions (particularly intense in Europe) from the 1990s onwards, industrial cultivation of genetically modified plants, which serve as raw material for the food industry, began to gain ground, especially in the US. Genetically engineered corn, rice, soybeans, potatoes, tomatoes, and wheat already cover millions of acres, nearly 16% of cultivated land in the US. For companies producing genetically modified varieties (which have become an oligopoly in industrial agriculture and, to a similar extent, in industrial livestock farming), profits are obvious and enormous. For humankind, it is uncertain, since it is unknown (and in fact unacknowledged) what the consequences are (and will be in the future). Essentially, capitalism has no problem: it creates crises and then appears as the “solution”…
A common method of genetic intervention/mutation is the removal of a gene (a segment of the DNA sequence) or direct intervention in the sequence. Another common method is the introduction of artificial, “synthetic” DNA into the original genetic cells of an organism (in the case of higher mammals, this intervention can be performed on eggs/sperm from artificial insemination). Retroviruses are used to accomplish this genetic invasion/addition. Initially, the additional DNA sequence is added to the retrovirus. The virus is placed next to the target cells and implants the new DNA into their nucleus…
The collaboration of viruses and geneticists goes back several decades – it’s not what one would expect to learn from mass and antisocial media. Nor would one expect to learn in this way about a “biotechnological revolution”, a “discovery”, which was made accidentally by a Canadian geneticist in 2010. Derek Rossi discovered a way of “reprogramming” the molecules that carry genetic information for the development of cells, including human ones – and, consequently, “reprogramming” their functions.
These molecules are called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). The ability to “rewrite” the instructions they carry in order to alter any kind of living cell within an organism (to modify its function) has changed the course of biotechnologies in recent times—and this, too, would not be learned by staring at some screen. According to Rossi… The truly remarkable thing about this discovery was that we could now make mRNA and put it into cells, thus forcing their mRNA to produce whatever protein we want…
The “mutation”, which was/is the name of the intervention directly in the dna, an intervention that had caused so much hostility and while it was proceeding in its commercial applications it still encountered obstacles and serious objections, acquired a “brother”: genetic modification via mRNA, which does not “touch” the dna, and can be called “reprogramming”. In an era of universal digital representations where the abstract idea of “programming” (machines) has become familiar to friendly, “reprogramming” could be a good disguise for research to proceed and for mutation applications to be promoted, without causing serious reactions…
The discovery was so groundbreaking, the trick so clever, and the avenue so broad that opened up for geneticists, that Rossi founded a company in 2014, funded (among others) by one of the many private venture capital funds (of unknown origin) flourishing in the Western capitalist world, Flagship Pioneering1. This company is called Moderna…
The army on the “front line”…
It is unknown what Rossi knew and what he didn’t know in 2014 from the years of research conducted by the technological arm of the American military in fields similar to his own. If there is a mechanism that can be launched as a “protector of human health,” it is the American DARPA. The answer to the question of what the general interests of the American military are in this field of health and disease is obvious: biological warfare.
In 2006, DARPA announced a “predicting health and disease” (PHD) program. A year later, in October 2007, the well-known magazine Wired commented2:
Most of us first sneeze, cough, have cold symptoms—and then we go to a doctor to get something for the flu. The Pentagon’s crazy science department wants to do it backwards: to constantly monitor the health of the military so that illness can be detected before the first sneeze. It’s like having a doctor with a stethoscope passed around his neck… and a crystal ball in his hands.
The predicting health and disease program will generalize methods for identifying whether an individual will develop an infectious disease before symptoms appear. While current methods diagnose and formulate treatment after a person first visits their doctor, the PHD program aims to change the model by detecting changes in the baseline state of human health through continuous monitoring. The goal is to achieve 100% readiness of soldiers by identifying, intervening, and addressing illness before symptoms appear.
DARPA does not say how it will accomplish this – it only states that “at minimum, innovative analytical methodologies enhanced with traditional and non-traditional diagnostic approaches” will be required. But this agency knows what kind of diseases it is interested in detecting.
It is mainly concerned with viral infections, pathogenic organisms of the upper respiratory tract, which have the ability to reduce the combat readiness of soldiers during a war, and which may lead to mission cancellations and high morbidity in armies. The pathogens in the crosshairs are influenza viruses, parainfluenza viruses, adenoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus, and other similar ones.
So from the moment the army cannot wait, the service wants a quick diagnosis. “The ultimate goal of DARPA is to create the necessary technological innovations for the creation of a portable system, capable of being used in the battlefield, with high accuracy, that will be able to perform a large volume of tests (100 or more) in a short time (within 3 hours) at low cost.
Someone might consider this approach “innocent.” After all, even for the military, it’s about health! But that’s not the case. “Early diagnosis” in a military/war environment does not require an abstract “continuous monitoring of health status,” of the kind where every soldier routinely reports how they feel. On the contrary, it requires some kind of continuous “reporting” of the organism to some kind of “control and certification center”—automatically, if possible. Moreover, even the earliest diagnosis is of limited usefulness if rapid treatment cannot follow. Obviously, with the speed of pre-symptomatic diagnosis, American military researchers would like to prevent the spread of a virus within the ranks. However, depending both on the speed and frequency of health checks/reports, the threat could spread before it is detected and contained. Which initially meant this: monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment should tend toward a unified mechanism of action, one that guarantees maximum “efficiency” in minimal time… In other words, satisfying military specifications required from the outset—eventually—technologies integrating all these processes. No longer a medical team running here and there under “field” conditions to diagnose and treat, but integrated automated mechanisms. Bodies that “transmit” their status and are “repaired” remotely…
In 2010, DARPA, in collaboration with researchers from Duke University funded by it, presented a method of genetic blood analysis that could detect whether someone had been infected by target viruses before symptoms appeared. But such an analysis would still have to be conducted in a discrete laboratory—and not, say, inside the body itself…
In 2014, the year when Rossi founded Moderna with the purpose of utilizing his discovery regarding mRNA and the ability to mutate cells, DARPA announced the creation of the “Biological Technologies Office” (BTO). In the department’s self-presentation, it was explicitly stated:
The Biological Technologies Office develops capabilities that harness the unique characteristics of biology—modification, reproduction, complexity—and applies them to revolutionize the way the United States defends its territory, and prepares and protects its soldiers, sailors, pilots, and marines. BTO assists the Department of Defense in expanding technological capabilities for detecting new threats and protecting the readiness of the American military, applying physiological interventions to restore operational advantages, supporting warrior performance, and focusing on operational biotechnology for mission success.
It is certainly an agenda. We must therefore emphasize the following, which are declared biotechnological and genetic engineering goals for the U.S. military in 2014:
A) “Homeland protection.” DARPA is expanding its purposes to cover all citizens, implying at the very least “biological warfare.”
B) “Physiological interventions.” This can mean nothing less than biological interventions on members of the U.S. military.
C) “Warrior performance enhancement.” One can easily assume genetic and biotechnological enhancement of human bodies (certainly within the military).
D) “Focus on operational biotechnology for mission success.” What else could this “operational biotechnology” include, if not biological weapons?
Given that DARPA, from its position, does not announce its research programs except for those that will impress or those that will secure additional funding, it is interesting the announcement, always in 2014, of a sub-program titled Nanoplatforms in Living Organisms (“In Vivo Nanoplatforms” / IVN). The program manager leaves no room for misunderstanding about what it concerns:
The In Vivo Nanoplatforms program supports military readiness through the development of sensor and therapeutic technologies that can be implanted in living organisms to ensure optimal health and performance of each individual warfighter…. The program has two complementary components.
IVN Diagnostics (IVN:Dx) aims to develop a general in vivo platform that will provide continuous physiological monitoring of the warfighter. Specifically, IVN:Dx investigates technologies that will include implantable nanoplatforms made from biocompatible, non-toxic materials; in vivo detection of small and large molecules of biological interest; complex detection of their synthesis when present at concentrations associated with clinical consequences; and external management of nanoplatforms without the use of implanted electronics for communication [note: with them].
IVN Therapeutics (IVN:Tx) seeks microscopic nanoplatforms for rapid disease treatment in warfighters. This program aims at therapies that increase safety and reduce the doses needed for clinical effectiveness [note: of drugs]; limit side effects; limit immunogenicity; increase effectiveness by ensuring targeting to specific tissues or/and cells; increase bioavailability… If proven successful, these platforms will allow prevention and treatment of diseases affecting the military, such as infections from organisms resistant to multiple drugs.
Back in 2014, the technological arm of the U.S. military was able to announce the technical capability of “implanting” (in the body) unified mechanisms (“nanoplatforms”) for diagnosis and treatment—at a scale (this is certainly the goal) of cells. A purely business-oriented outlet (Business Insider) had already eagerly celebrated: this advanced military project (along with 19 others) will change your life…
In 2014, while Moderna was preparing to proceed with improving and commercially exploiting mRNA, and DARPA was preparing “to change our lives,” the key element was missing: the opportunity (and its proper management). The “last American vagabond” (“the last american vaganond”) wrote in his blog on May 4, 20203:
… From its creation and after the DARPA IVN program, it managed to be funded [note: by the American state] and to produce “soft, flexible hydrogels that can be injected right under the skin to monitor health, which synchronize with a mobile app to immediately transmit health data”, a product produced by Profusa company, which is funded by DARPA and the National Institute of Health (NIH). Profusa, which has received tens of millions from DARPA in recent years, claims that the information collected by its injectable biosensor can be “securely shared” and accessible to “individuals, doctors and those involved in public health.” Thus, the current pressure for a national “contact tracing system” based on citizens’ private health data will likely extend this data sharing, conveniently aligning with DARPA’s declared goal for many years to create a national, online database for preventive diagnoses.
Profusa is also supported by Google, which has been heavily involved in these mass surveillance initiatives called “contact tracing,” and has former Senate Majority Leader William Frist on its board of directors… Last March (2020), Profusa was funded again by DARPA to determine whether its injectable biosensors can predict future pandemics, including the anticipated “second wave” of covid-19, and identify those who would be infected up to 3 weeks before they show symptoms. Profusa expects to receive FDA approval for its biosensors for this purpose in the early part of next year, around the same time a vaccine for the coronavirus is expected to be available…
The meetings…
Who else would be interested in funding Moderna’s research for the commercial exploitation of Rossi’s mRNA discovery? You guessed it right: DARPA. In October 2013, the technological arm of the American army gave Rossi 25 million dollars to advance the technology for manufacturing synthetic RNA. A representative of the agency explained: We fund the development of basic technologies that can be rapidly and safely applied to provide the U.S. population with near-immediate protection against outbreaks of infectious diseases and manufactured biological weapons.
The meeting between DARPA and Moderna was inevitable. As inevitable as it is (and remains) that when explanations are needed (for any biotechnological military research), “population protection” comes into play.
In 2015, DARPA’s research on vaccines with synthetic antibodies and synthetic genetic material expanded, as a vaccine DNA research company, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, was funded with 45 million dollars. At the same time, all these research efforts (and the corresponding enthusiastic promises and media reports) began to be served with selected words. The human body (they began to advertise) will become a bio-reactor.
Failures followed. The DARPA-funded DNA and RNA vaccines and their corresponding companies, namely Moderna, Inovio and the German CureVac, failed to gain approval for their products, because these (“products”) did not induce immunity in human trials. Moderna, for example, tried and failed to create a vaccine against the Zika virus…
Why do we fail? the geneticists wondered. The reasons could be many. They preferred one that was considered technologically manageable: because the synthetic genetic material (RNA or/and DNA) does not reach correctly where it should. What should we do? We should guide it ourselves. How? On nanoparticles… DARPA’s technologists already had experience in the field!
Such a technological breakthrough became even more attractive. Since 2016, the financier of Moderna (and Inovio) became the most powerful doctor in the world. Bill Gates. At least 100 million dollars went into Moderna’s research. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, except for two issues. First, these technologies for mutating human cells had never been tested, had no proven medical value, while on the other hand, countless concerns could be raised against them. Second, there had been no emergency health situation such as to consider these achievements of genetic engineering as “salvation” – to finally be tested, forcibly.
And then “appeared” covid-19: the perfect storm!!
It is unimaginable at first glance to assume that such technological breakthroughs (we have presented only a small portion of DARPA’s related research and its corporate “partners”) would remain in drawers for long, while the geneticists who are paid for them would pray for the health and longevity of populations. Could the construction of the atomic bomb remain a theoretical design? Or be built once and displayed in museums without being used?
And yet common sense is, above all, what has been poisoned—with the help of large doses of ignorance. On one hand, the conspiracy theorists, who neither understand nor want to understand how capitalism “works,” would definitely claim that covid-19 is a manufactured virus—released to “reduce the human population” (!!!). On the other hand, the deeply frightened and disciplined “soldiers of the war against the invisible enemy” would denounce any capitalist operation as a product of “conspiracy theorizing.”
And yet. The biotechnological revolution in “disease / health management” does not need a manufactured virus to unfold! It can utilize any of the thousands of existing viruses! It tried it with the “bird flu” virus, it tried it again with the “swine flu” virus. They failed and failed again then, the experts of fear, of constructing “emergency situations” for specific exploitation, but the reason was not that those viruses were “natural”, so that an artificial one would be needed. Certain elements were missing: neither in 2005 nor in 2010 was it feasible to confine hundreds of millions of the planet’s passengers in their homes but at the same time to “communicate”, to “work”, to “be educated”, to “have fun”. In 2020 this was technically and socially feasible. And it happened.
On the other hand, capitalist functions and technological developments are, for the most part, so accessible to anyone (who cares…) that Debord’s position that “there are no longer any strategic secrets of the system” is a truism. It is proof of low intelligence for anyone to consider “hidden” anything they ignore; and to complete their ignorance by considering “conspiracy theory” the suggestion of all those things they could and should know but are indifferent to. For such minds, the greatest “conspiracy theorist” of the last 2 centuries is Karl Marx: he showed analytically how capitalism “works,” something that even today there are many who ignore; considering it an obscure preoccupation…
The fact is this: the development point of capitalism’s technological base in the 21st century has reached such a level that virtual crises are absolutely necessary (even) for real leaps in applications to occur. Capitalist restructuring and the 4th industrial revolution are not philology!
This point is known: far more technological innovations and applications are being produced than can be absorbed through “smooth” ways, at market and consumption rates!
Integration
It is fair from a historical perspective to attribute to DARPA the generalization and manipulation of the idea of the “asymptomatic.” Its origin is HIV: those who were infected might not have had any symptoms (and indeed, even after decades, many HIV-positive individuals have not displayed any symptoms, meaning they have not fallen ill). We have emphasized elsewhere4: the social and medical experience of AIDS completely and forever changed the perception of what illness means. Before HIV, illness necessarily meant symptoms. After HIV, illness meant the likelihood of falling ill.
The way this reversal in the concept of health/illness was absorbed by populations is complex. In any case, for DARPA the “asymptomatic” (that is: potentially everyone) became a weapon. And this was because it perfectly aligned with, indeed legitimized, its orientation toward the continuous, 24/7 monitoring of the health status of American soldiers, sailors, pilots, etc. We could speak of “militarized hygiene” – but it is not simply ideology. And, above all, it does not entrust each individual separately with self-monitoring of their physical condition. No. DARPA designed – and has advanced significantly in this direction over the past several years – a center for continuous monitoring of the physical condition, primarily of the military. In the name of war.
Continuous monitoring in the age of bioinformatics—what else could it mean other than that everyone is obligated to be a continuous “transmitter” of information about their condition; and a “receiver,” whenever needed, of the supposedly appropriate treatment?
It is about the shift from the online regime to the onlife regime according to the terminology we used from these pages. Among many other analytical texts of cyborg in June 20175 under the title from online to onlife: engineering everything we wrote:
…The [Turkish-American] Zeynep Tufekci writes [in her article engineering the public: big data, surveillance and computational politics], among other things:
… The impact of big data in the public sphere through computational politics unfolds through multiple and interconnected dynamics…
Firstly, the expansion of digital mediation in social, political and economic relationships results in an exponential increase in the volume and variety of available data, especially available to large companies and organizations capable of managing them.
Secondly, the emergence of computational methods allows political or/economic targeting to move from analyzing vaguely defined sets to standardizing specific individuals.
Thirdly, this standardization allows questions to be asked about the individual without asking questions of the individual, thus opening the way to new techniques of concealment and opacity.
Fourthly, developments in behavioral sciences have resulted in a shift from “rational man” models to more accurate, refined and realistic models of human behavior. Combined with developments in other fields, these new models allow improvement through social engineering via networks.
Fifthly, digital networks allow these social engineering methods to be experimentally tested in real time and directly applied, adding a level of control over the public sphere that was unknown until recently.
Sixthly, the data, tools and techniques that compose these methods require access to expensive and patented elements, and “work” through invisible algorithms. This is a kind of “black box”, algorithms that constitute “intellectual property” of a few internet companies and are used by them. In other words, every ordinary user is unaware of their existence.
…
DARPA had the conditions to give the generalization of onlife a specific purpose (“health protection”…) and a specific methodology (“installation of microcircuits inside the body”). The perception of the body as a combat organism, as the “living limb” of unified human-machines, could not be limited only to the handling of digital/electronic machines outside, separate from the human body. The end of the process of fusion between human and electromechanical, or more correctly the beginning of an entirely new condition, is indicated by research programs of the IVN type. The fact that “health” and not, perhaps, other popular titles of system campaigns (such as, for example, “public order”) became the banner also for DARPA constitutes proof of what American (and not only) militarism identified as the gateway to social relations through mass (social) hygiene….
The “last American wanderer” in the same article of his (which we mentioned before), notes:
… Another long-running DARPA program, now overseen by BTO, is known as “Living Foundries.” According to DARPA’s website, the Living Foundries program “aims to create flexible, scalable, and on-demand synthetic molecules through the programming of fundamental metabolic processes of biological systems to produce a large number of complex molecules that otherwise could not exist. Through Living Foundries, DARPA is transforming synthetic bio-industrial production into a predictable engineering practice that will support a wide range of national security goals…
Here, DARPA envisions a purely “productive capacity” of the living/machine fusion at the micro-scale of “fundamental metabolic processes of biological systems,” that is, of life itself—and adds an abstract, general explanation regarding “national security.” But “health” has proven to be the most advantageous slogan for the most ferocious attack of genetic engineering and engineering everything, thus far. And this is because, in the developed capitalist world, any other conception of health appears to have died out, except that which is promoted by the various sectors of the health industry.
This is the “ideal” of the followers of Human plus!!! Of post-humanism, which, after being announced a few years ago resembling a futuristic fantasy of some gigs (but also entrepreneurs of the bio-informatics-security complex), is now entering the daily agenda en masse, through mRNA vaccines.
Why what DARPA (and many other “institutes”, “research centers”, academic, corporate, etc.) is seeking goes far beyond camps and wars might be easy for someone to understand. Just as with “destructive work” (war), so too with “creative work”, the forms of labor we usually call production, it is the machines that define the speed, intensity, and productivity; to the extent, always, that they are imposed upon living labor. The same has been true for consumption over the past 4 decades: mechanical mediation intensifies it, drastically reducing the reproduction cycle of each specific capital.
Consequently, if it were technically feasible to reduce the time and space distances between machines and the raw material of life (the cells), if, that is, it were feasible for molecular machines to exist within cells (muscular, nervous, even in the brain) that direct vital processes at their source, this would be perfect from a capitalist perspective!
This is the strategically important leap that mRNA vaccines promise to initiate! It is understood that they will mutate human cells… However, the ideologues of Human plus had declared it in a timely manner: the evolution of the human species, which until now was happening at extremely slow rates and through natural means, has been completed; from now on, the continuation of evolution will be technically mediated!
Look, then, at the last 10 months in reverse. If the threat of a virus that would hardly stand out, under other circumstances, from ordinary flu viruses, had not been inflated to the utmost degree; if a deathly fear had not been intensively and ruthlessly constructed; if the politics of violent control over everyday life had not been implemented; if the ideological and institutional conditions had not been created to declare genetic engineering (without, of course, mentioning either this name or any similar one, even minimally) as the “savior of humanity”; if, finally, this “war against an invisible enemy” were not actually a real war for the control of social relations and subjectivities, then what would become of the current capitalist trend of engineering everything?
Ziggy Stardust
- Flagship Pioneering specializes in financing biotechnology companies. Among its “beneficiaries” are AstraZeneca, Nestle’s “health science” arm, and Bayer’s agricultural biotechnology division… ↩︎
- Darpa Goal: Phychic Doctors, 11/10/2007, Noah Shachtman. ↩︎
- Coronavirus gives a dangerous boost to DARPA’s darkest agenda. ↩︎
- Sarajevo.pdf 147a, 148a. ↩︎
- Cyborg no 9 ↩︎