DARPA funds IBM development of chip that will self-destruct

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a contract to IBM to create a CMOS chip that will self-destruct on command, turning into silicon dust. The goal of the project, called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR), is to develop technologies that would prevent classified military systems from falling into unfriendly hands.

“It is nearly impossible to track and recover every [electronic] device [on the battlefield], resulting in unintended accumulation in the environment and potential unauthorized use and compromise of intellectual property and technological advantage,” DARPA states on the webpage for the VAPR program. VAPR is a “broad agency announcement” program that was announced last month in order to fund multiple development efforts to create “electronic systems capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner…[with] performance comparable to commercial-off-the-shelf electronics, but with limited device persistence that can be programmed, adjusted in real-time, triggered, and/or be sensitive to the deployment environment.”

The technology being developed by IBM under a $3.45 million award will use a glass substrate that shatters when an attached “fuse or reactive metal layer” receives an external radio frequency signal. That sort of command self-destruct would make it possible to destroy electronics lost or abandoned on the battlefield over a large area, and it would prevent scenarios like the transfer of technology found in the helicopter abandoned during the SEAL Team strike on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan