Dr. Frankenstein Needs His Own Hippocratic Oath

In the next war, instead of a soldier going on a reconnaissance mission into enemy territory, consider this possibility: a cloud of “micro air vehicles,” flying cyborgs, with built-in cameras and microphones, that could be guided by remote control. What military commander wouldn’t want that?

DARPA, the research wing of the Department of Defense, has been on the case. A decade ago, they experimented with building synthetic drones. The Nano Hummingbird can stay aloft for eleven minutes; the DelFry Micro for just three. Then they realized that a far better type of flying machine already existed. In