Sure, the U.S. military has deployed the power of biology and nature before. For instance, the Navy trains dolphins to detect underwater mines. The Army Research Office studies life sciences to find new ways to better soldier protection and performance. And during the Vietnam War, the military experimented with weather manipulation.
In recent years, however, the military—mostly under the umbrella of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—has created a new suite of programs that take a very different approach to harnessing the power of nature: synthetic biology. Among other initiatives, researchers at DARPA are attempting to engineer insects to deliver protective genes to plants; to transform bacteria and yeast into factories to produce on-demand chemicals and fuels; and to develop methods to reverse any threats posed by gene drives. (Gene drives are a mechanism, both natural and human-induced, that drives genetic traits through a population, in some instances to suppress a population.)
These programs represent a new and controversial approach to leveraging the natural world—one that, in essence, militarizes the environment. The technologies that emerge will not only be a big deal for the innovations they will bring, but also for the legal and ethical lines they may cross. Many of these projects are strictly for defense, rather than offense, but given the size of the budgets here, the U.S. military investment makes up a rather large portion of the money in synthetic biology research. It’s possible, then, that DARPA’s work is bending the entire field of synthetic biology toward military applications.