Darpa, Military behind new covid-vaccines

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.

One of the principal DARPA-incubated vaccine technologies to gain prominence in the Covid-19 era are the nucleic acid (mRNA and DNA) vaccines that turn the human body into its own “bioreactor” (Ghose, 2015; Usdin, 2020). Vaccines using mRNA (such as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s) — which developers compare to “software” (Garde, 2017) and praise for their “programmability” (Al-Wassiti, 2019) — target the cell’s cytoplasm and rely on delivery technologies such as lipid nanoparticles to “ensure stabilization of mRNA under physiological conditions” (Wadhwa et al., 2020). DNA vaccines (such as Inovio’s) are intended to penetrate all the way into a cell’s nucleus and come with the risk of “integration of exogenous DNA into the host genome, which may cause severe mutagenesis and induced new diseases” (Zhang, Maruggi, Shan, & Li, 2019). Describing the scientific community’s early doubts about nucleic acid vaccines — arising from the potential for “many things” to go wrong — a DARPA program manager recently noted, “It was something that was much too risky for groups like the NIH to fund” (Usdin, 2020).

 

Risks aside, DARPA and vaccine manufacturers are attracted to one chief benefit of nucleic acid vaccines: They can be developed much more quickly and cheaply. Other military-initiated technologies are also coming into view with Covid-19 vaccines. These include electroporation, which applies a high-voltage electrical pulse to make cell membranes permeable to a vaccine’s foreign DNA (Inovio Pharmaceuticals, 2020); syringe-injected biosensors that enable continuous wireless monitoring of vital signs and body chemistry (Peer, n.d.; Profusa, n.d.; Diego, 2020b; Tucker, 2020); and the quantum-dot-based infrared detectors that are under discussion as a tool for tracking vaccination status (Johnson, 2011; Trafton, 2019). DARPA has also played a leading role in developing and funding technologies that “blur the lines between computers and biology”, including brain-machine interfaces and neuromonitoring and mind-reading devices (CB Insights, 2019; Gent, 2019; Tullis, 2019).

 

Some of Moderna’s earliest funding came from DARPA, which awarded the company $25 million in 2013 to develop the mRNA platform that has become a key feature of its coronavirus vaccine (Usdin, 2020). Other DARPA beneficiaries now involved in efforts to develop Covid-19 vaccines or therapeutics include AbCellera Biologics, CureVac, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Vir Biotechnology; some of AbCellera’s partners include major players like Pfizer and Gilead (Usdin, 2020).

 

The Pentagon’s involvement in coronavirus-related efforts goes well beyond DARPA-funded research. Four-star General Gustave Perna is serving as chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed alongside chief advisor Moncef Slaoui. General Perna, in charge of U.S. Army Materiel Command, oversees the global supply chain for over 190,000 U.S. Army employees (HHS, 2020b). For the first time ever, the distribution of the eventual coronavirus vaccines is being planned as a “joint venture” between the CDC and the Pentagon, with the latter overseeing “all the logistics of getting the vaccines to the right place, at the right time, in the right condition” (Owermohle, 2020a). In a CBS “60 Minutes” appearance in early November, General Perna indicated that Operation Warp Speed already had doses of (currently unapproved) vaccine and syringes stockpiled and protected by armed guards, and intends to get them out the door “within 24 hours” of vaccine approval and delivered “to every zip code in this country” (Martin, 2020).

 

The Pentagon has indicated that private-sector involvement could be a key feature of the distribution strategy, and the private sector is positioning itself to participate. Merck, for example, is testing drone delivery of vaccines in partnership with Volansi, Inc., a company that provides “on-demand” drone services for the military (Landi, 2020; Simmie, 2020). In July, Merck’s CEO set the stage for its logistics involvement by describing vaccine distribution as “even a harder problem” than the “scientific conundrum of coming forward with a vaccine that works” (Murray & Griffin, 2020).

 

Outside the pharmaceutical arena, technological transformations that are speeding the world toward more centralized control also reveal the influence of the military-intelligence sector. For example, Amazon Web Services has held cloud-computing contracts with the CIA since 2013, with the original $600 million contract extending to all 17 intelligence agencies (Konkel, 2014). In October of 2019, the Department of Defense awarded the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft, a decision that Amazon has unsuccessfully disputed in court (Sandler, 2020). In early 2020, the U.S. Navy awarded a cloud computing contract to Leidos (Leidos, 2020).

 

5G, too, relies in part on the high-range millimeter-wave spectrum previously used almost entirely by the military for “non-lethal” crowd dispersal weapons (Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office, n.d.). In October, the Department of Defense announced it would spend $600 million to test “dual-use” applications of 5G to enhance the U.S. military’s “leap-ahead capabilities”, including applications such as 5G-enabled augmented/virtual reality, 5G-enabled “smart” warehouses, and 5G technologies “to aid in Air, Space, and Cyberspace lethality” (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020).

 

Both 5G and cloud computing are critical components of the Big Data and IoT build-out that is enabling the conversion of individual data into the “new oil” (Fitts, 2020a), and both have exploded in 2020 (Howell, 2020; Klebnikov, 2020). The technologies are essential to the “centrally controlled digital financial transaction systems” envisioned by central bankers, who plan to rely on seamless data flows to and from “every smartphone, community, and home without exception” (Fitts, 2020a