China's cyborg bees: A breakthrough in surveillance or a step toward a spy state?
By avagrace // 2025-07-16
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  • Chinese scientists, led by Professor Zhao Jieliang, have successfully implanted tiny brain-controlling devices in honeybees, enabling precise remote control of their flight paths for surveillance, military scouting and espionage.
  • A 74-milligram device attached to the bee's back sends electrical pulses to its optical lobe, allowing 90 percent accurate directional control. The bees can also carry micro-cameras, sensors and audio recorders, making them stealthy surveillance tools.
  • While useful for disaster relief, the technology's military applications such as covert reconnaissance and urban combat raise ethical and geopolitical alarms, given China's history of mass surveillance and potential misuse.
  • China leads in miniaturizing brain-control devices, but other countries (U.S., Japan, Singapore) are also developing cyborg insects, including solar-powered cockroaches for search-and-rescue missions.
  •  The manipulation of living creatures sparks animal welfare concerns, while the potential for authoritarian abuse such as monitoring dissent or foreign espionage highlights the thin line between innovation and dystopian surveillance.
In a development that sounds like science fiction, Chinese scientists have successfully turned ordinary bees into remote-controlled cyborgs capable of carrying out surveillance, military scouting and even covert espionage. Under the leadership of Professor Zhao Jieliang of the Beijing Institute of Technology, researchers implanted tiny brain-controlling devices into honeybees, allowing them to manipulate the insects' flight paths with startling precision. While the technology could revolutionize disaster relief and search-and-rescue missions, its potential military applications raise serious ethical and geopolitical concerns. The device weighing just 74 milligrams, lighter than a pinch of salt, is strapped to a bee's back and connected to its brain via ultra-thin needles. By sending electrical pulses to the insect's optical lobe – the part of the brain that processes visual information – scientists can command the bee to turn left or right. In tests, the bees obeyed these commands with 90 percent accuracy. (Related: China shows off robot dogs armed with MACHINE GUNS.) Unlike traditional drones, which require complex engineering and power sources, these cyborg bees leverage the natural agility and stealth of living insects. The tiny controllers can also be equipped with micro-cameras, audio recorders and environmental sensors – effectively turning bees into miniature spies capable of infiltrating restricted areas without detection.

Cyborg insects: A new frontier in covert warfare

While the researchers emphasize humanitarian uses such as locating survivors in collapsed buildings, the military implications are impossible to ignore. In their published study in the Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering, Zhao and his team explicitly described the bees as "invaluable for covert reconnaissance" in urban combat, counterterrorism and narcotics interdiction. This raises alarming questions about how Beijing might deploy this technology. Could swarms of cyborg bees be used to surveil political dissidents? Could they gather intelligence on foreign military installations? Given China's well-documented history of mass surveillance and cyber-espionage, the potential for abuse is significant. Beijing is not alone in this pursuit. The U.S., Japan and Singapore have all experimented with remote-controlled insects, including cockroaches and dragonflies. In 2022, Japanese researchers developed solar-powered cyborg cockroaches designed for search-and-rescue missions. However, China's latest breakthrough – the lightest brain-controlling device yet – puts it ahead in the race to militarize insects. Beyond military applications, the ethical implications of manipulating living creatures for human purposes cannot be ignored. Animal rights advocates have long criticized experiments involving brain-computer interfaces, citing the suffering inflicted on test subjects. Elon Musk's Neuralink, for example, reportedly killed over 1,500 animals during brain-chip trials. But the greater concern is how authoritarian regimes might exploit this technology. If Beijing can weaponize bees, what's to stop them from deploying cyborg insects to monitor citizens, suppress dissent or conduct espionage abroad? The line between scientific innovation and dystopian surveillance is becoming dangerously thin. For now, technical limitations remain; battery life is short, and the devices are not yet universally adaptable to different insect species. But as research progresses, these hurdles will likely be overcome. The question is not if this technology will be perfected, but how it will be used and who will control it. Visit Cyborg.news for more similar stories. Watch this video about Singapore developing cyborg beetles that researchers can control. This video is from the Expanding-the-Kingdom channel on Brighteon.com.

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France and China are working on bionic "terminator" troops. Genetically engineered cyborg dragonflies now being weaponized for surveillance missions. Cyborg cockroaches under development as spy weapons; media pushes them as 'safety' cyborgs. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk TheSun.co.uk GBNews.com Brighteon.com
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