Self-Destructing Electronics Becoming a Reality
- 10 years ago
Soon, self-destructing electronics will not be the exclusive property of fictional spies.
Soon, self-destructing electronics will not be the exclusive property of fictional spies.
DARPA – that’s the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – has announced they’ve begun awarding contracts to companies for the purpose of developing disintegrating technology.
Their mission is to create devices that are every bit as reliable as the regular versions, but with the ability to crumble beyond both use and recognition on command.
The initiative is called the Vanishing Programmable Resources program, or VAPR for short.
In a statement, DARPA addressed the importance of such a project, noting that while compact electronics are beneficial in the battlefield, if they fall into the wrong hands the results could be devastating.
Further, tracking down and destroying all gadgets left behind is a nearly impossible task.
Thus, one of the first awards distributed to PARC, a Xewrox company, explores a dummy circuit that can, once signaled, reduce itself to tiny particles and render the device that houses it useless.
That project is called Disintegration Upon Stress-release Trigger, but is also commonly referred to as, you probably guessed, DUST.
Simultaneously, IBM is working on a glass coating that when triggered by a radio frequency signal will shatter and destroy the silicon chips.
Soon, self-destructing electronics will not be the exclusive property of fictional spies.
DARPA – that’s the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – has announced they’ve begun awarding contracts to companies for the purpose of developing disintegrating technology.
Their mission is to create devices that are every bit as reliable as the regular versions, but with the ability to crumble beyond both use and recognition on command.
The initiative is called the Vanishing Programmable Resources program, or VAPR for short.
In a statement, DARPA addressed the importance of such a project, noting that while compact electronics are beneficial in the battlefield, if they fall into the wrong hands the results could be devastating.
Further, tracking down and destroying all gadgets left behind is a nearly impossible task.
Thus, one of the first awards distributed to PARC, a Xewrox company, explores a dummy circuit that can, once signaled, reduce itself to tiny particles and render the device that houses it useless.
That project is called Disintegration Upon Stress-release Trigger, but is also commonly referred to as, you probably guessed, DUST.
Simultaneously, IBM is working on a glass coating that when triggered by a radio frequency signal will shatter and destroy the silicon chips.