Forget about a kill Fifa 14 Ultimate Team Coins switch

Forget about a kill Fifa 14 Ultimate Team Coins switch. Planned obsolescence Alreadyobsolete. In the US, the Pentagon's blue-sky researchers wanttomorrow's military hardware to literally cease to exist at apredetermined point. Welcome to the age of suicidal sensors.

The Pentagon's think tank Darpa isn't imagining planes or shipsthat melt into a metallic puddle when their replacements come offthe production line. The research agency is thinking, in one sense,smaller: sensors and other sophisticated electronic microsystemsthat litter a warzone -- and create enticing opportunities foradversaries to collect, study and reverse-engineer. Since it's notpractical to pick them all up when US forces withdraw, Darpa wantsto usher in the age of transient electronics.

If you've ever lost your phone and worried about randomstrangers sifting through your data, you have a sense of why theidea appeals to Darpa. But you probably never imagined Applecreating a piece of hardware capable of physically disappearing ina controlled, triggerable manner. That's where Darpa comes in.Next month, it's going to invite interested scientists andmanufacturers to a Virginia conference to kick around ideas forcreating what it calls triggered degradation. Oh, and some of that degradation willoccur inside a soldier's body.