Several years ago, there were a number of credulous stories in the tech news about a DARPA project called the "Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot", 'EATR' [0], a robot that could refuel itself by ingesting biomass. Obviously the idea that the US military was researching robots that ate (formerly) living things as fuel engendered a certain reaction in the online community.

You probably haven't heard much about EATR in the intervening years. Who knows, maybe it's still being developed?

But what intrigued me at the time, though, was that the research organization to which this EATR project was attributed was one 'Robotic Technology Inc.', RTI [1] - and that, on that organization's projects page, they list (I actually find it kind of amazing that this is still the case to this day):

- EATR

- IVTT (apparently the 'intelligent vehicle technology transfer project' [2]

... so far so DARPA... but then:

- Military Memetics

- Cognitive Collective

So what stood out there: Military Memetics. From their website: "The initial focus is to establish a scientific basis for memetics in order to predict and control memes and their effects.... The attempt to establish a scientific basis for memetics is critically important. For example, within a suitable memetics framework could be the means to prevent irrational conflict and promote rational solutions to endemic national and international problems. Of course, without safeguards memetics can become a double-edged sword."

I leave it to your judgement to determine whether the announcement of the EATR project and its subsequent online reaction were a legitimate DARPA robotics research announcement, or alternatively just a bit of practical military memetics research....

It's kind of interesting that this site hasn't been updated since. It almost feels like a leftover outpost in some kind of ARG marketing campaign.

Note this was first in the news in the timeframe of 2007-2010.

At the time this seemed kind of amusing. Well before Cambridge Analytica, eastern European fake news troll farms, or GRU Fancy Bear weaponized misinformation campaigns. I guess it's kind of reassuring, in a way, that the academic defense research establishment has maybe been considering the post-Internet information warfare environment seriously for some time...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tacti... [1] https://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/home [2] https://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/images/upload/file/Webs... (PDF warning)