Keep off the grass. No, seriously, lest it report you...

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross.stapletongray () gmail com>
> Subject: Keep off the grass. No, seriously, lest it report you...
> Date: November 20, 2017 at 2:36:27 PM EST
> To: DAVID FARBER <dave () farber net>
>
> Just when you thought that drones were all you need to worry about, DARPA has a proposers day for a new "Advanced 
> Plant Technologies" program:
> https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-18-05/listing.html 
> <https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-18-05/listing.html>
>
> The goal of the APT program is to control and direct plant physiology to detect chemical, biological, radiological, 
> and/or nuclear threats, as well as electromagnetic signals. Plant sensors developed under the program will sense 
> specific stimuli and report these signals with a remotely recognized phenotype (e.g., modified reflectance, 
> morphology, phenology, etc.). Modern plant biotechnology holds significant promise for addressing a range of 
> Department of Defense (DoD) needs; plants are easily deployed, self-powering, and ubiquitous in the environment, and 
> the combination of these native abilities with specifically engineered sense-and-report traits will produce sensors 
> occupying new and unique operational spaces. The long-term success of engineered plant sensors requires the ability 
> to ensure plant survivability for months or years in a natural environment subject to stresses not present in a 
> laboratory environment. Meeting both the sensor and survivability technical goals of the APT program will require a 
> combination of plant genomics emerging technologies, precision gene editing tools, and novel methods for engineering 
> new sensing capabilities and physiological responses. Proposing teams should include experts in diverse fields 
> including plant physiology, gene editing, biochemistry, modelling, phenotyping, remote sensing, and plant ecology.
>
> As someone who started his professional career in the Intelligence Community (1988, at the tail end of the Cold War), 
> it's remarkable how much the world has become a pulsing ball of sensors; while commercial space imagery back then was 
> primitive (e.g., Landsat gross surveillance), it's now fine-grained, 3D and available as a web API; most any system 
> that's being deployed, from building heating and cooling, to traffic lights, to in-car cameras, can collect data, and 
> the cost of sharing is heading toward zero (or is zero, because it's just a side effect of something someone else 
> will pay for).
>
> We're really not keeping up, policywise.
>
> Anyone in the Bay area interested in a meet-up to kick around ideas for coping with/thriving in the era of ubiquitous 
> surveillance?
>
> Ross
>
> Ross Stapleton-Gray, Ph.D.
> Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
> Albany, CA




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