Under the DARPA project, Genetic Alteration Agents or viruses will be introduced into the insect population to directly influence the genetic makeup of crops. DARPA plans to use leaf hoppers, white flies, and aphids to introduce select viruses into crops. Among other dubious claims they say it will help farmers combat “climate change.” What no one can answer, especially as neither the Pentagon nor the US FDA are asking, is how will the genetically engineered viruses in the insects interact with other microorganisms in the environment? If crops are constantly being inundated by genetically modified viruses, how could this could alter the genetics and immune systems of humans who depend on the crops?

Since most of the present US food supply is contaminated with toxic Roundup and other herbicides and pesticides along with GMO plants, one might doubt the honesty of the Pentagon statements of concern for the present US crop system. A group of European scientists have published a scientific paper in the October 5 issue of Science magazine, whose lead author is Dr. Guy Reeves of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany. The paper notes that the DARPA “Insect Allies” program, “aims to disperse infectious genetically modified viruses that have been engineered to edit crop chromosomes directly in fields.”

This is known as “horizontal inheritance,” as opposed to the dominant vertical method of GMO alteration that make laboratory-generated modifications into target species’ chromosomes to create GMO plant varieties. The genetic alterations to the crops would be carried out by “insect-based dispersion” in free nature. The European scientists point out that no compelling reasons have been presented by DARPA for the use of insects as an uncontrolled means of dispersing synthetic viruses into the environment. Furthermore, they argue that the Insect Allies Program could be more easily used for biological warfare than for routine agricultural use. “It is very much easier to kill or sterilize a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide or insect-resistant,” according to Guy Reeves at the Max Planck Institute.