The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is growing moths around a computer chip implanted when the creature was still in the cocoon, meaning that the moth’s entire nervous system can be controlled remotely.

Rodney Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab at MIT, which is involved with the research, said that the MEMS-based were one of a number of technologies soon to be deployed in combat zones. “Once the moth hatches, machine learning is used to control it.”