War Games

The US Army is ramping up the development of technology right out of film and television, making science fiction into reality.

The list of things currently in the works is amazing: Regenerating body parts on "nano-scaffolding", telepathy through electronic impulses in the scalp, and self-aware virtual photorealistic soldiers that can be deployed in the battlefield through "quantum ghost imaging". To test these they want to use them into a massively multi-player online games like World of Warcraft or Eve online:

We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human, that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding.

Once they have them perfected, they want to "deploy" these soldiers using something called "quantum ghost imaging". This will allow to create photorealistic, non-CNN-looking holograms out of thin air by "pairing photons that do no reflect or bounce off an object, but off other photons" - whatever that means. It is the same as "“like having a tracing tool … that goes over the image and that’s connected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imitates what it is that you are tracing with the other pen". Yep, that leaves me scratching my head as well.

The rest of their projects are equally mindblowing. Although this used to be the subject of much rumorology and speculation, it has been confirmed that they are working on:

• A project to erase bad memories, which will be critical in helping soldiers with psychological damage.

• Devices that will translate one solider's thoughts into electrical signals that can be beamed to other soliders, to help in stealth operations.

• Growing back body parts, both internal organs and limbs (Parmentola said researchers are not far away from this), using molecular-sized particles that act as nano-scaffolding for the human cells to grow, dissolving after the organ has regenerated.