Think I Saw That In...
...Futurama.
Sometimes, people suggest that military boffins are a waste of the taxpayers' money. They either develop hideous weaponry calculated to increase the amount of misery in the world, or fool about inventing pointless gadgetry which wastes our soldiers' time. Not today, though - today is one of those days when the brainboxes of …
... isn't DARPA. It is more how there's so many weapons manufacturers with such powerful lobbies that you couldn't reduce spending if you wanted to. It's the beltway bandits that will come up with overly expensive under performing "weapon systems" where a simple and cheap thing could do just because that's where the money is. It's the interaction between all that and then there's the new bubble, security theatre & circus spending.
This latest bit of wacky tech, BTW, seems to be a relatively small step forward, as it likely requires sweeping up the existing research and "practicalising" it, if not outright weaponising. The interface is another step-up to a Gibson type "cyberspace", so it's worth noting. Astute readers will have noted this would to the opposite of what Gibson's "trodes" do, but come to think of it, he very well might have gotten that backwards anyway. Until we get actual and two-way neural interface jacks. Not sure I'd like to hang around for that.