Daniel Engber does not seem to get it. Research always pays off in the end. The microwave oven came about as the result of a researcher leaving an egg he intended to cook for lunch on the bench beside a radar emitter. The SKU code and its associated scanners were developed so NASA could keep track of all the parts needed for Project Gemini. Remote station monitoring of vital signs common in hospitals was initially developed for the space program. And so on.

Yes, some of the things at DARPAtech seem a little bizarre, particularly the bionic insects. But consider: at present, no army considers bugs to be anything more than a nuisance, so apart from putting on insect repellant they don't bother about them. If you can make the technology work, it's the perfect cover for sneaking a bionic spy-bug into the enemy's camp so you can see what's there. Win the intelligence battle and you win the battle, period.

As far as the wall-crawling lizardbots go, provided they can be kept innocuous-looking, once again you can get up close and personal against an enemy in a building, without risking any of your soldiers until you must. Apart from the military, I'm sure every SWAT team in America is impatiently awaiting the lizardbots.

With regard to the bionic limbs, yes, they are still in the breadboarded-prototype stage. Yes, they are a long way away from being able to do even a tenth of what a human limb can do. Yes, at the moment they make anyone wearing one look like C-3PO's cousin. But ask a roomful of amputees if they'd like to have an artificial limb they can control with a thought, even if that thought is aimed at influencing a muscle instead of directly linking into the nervous system. Be sure you're out of the way of the sign-up sheet - you'd likely get trampled by the rush.

And rest assured: DARPA isn't showing you all the good stuff they're working on. All Engber saw was stuff that has already appeared in various journals and even been filmed for TV. The really good stuff, the things that would make your jaw drop, was left in the labs. What might such "good stuff" be? Full body suits with jump capability and super-strength like those Robert Heinlein postulated for his Mobile Infantry units? A self-directing tank, like Keith Laumer's incredible Bolos? Powerguns shooting copper plasma bolts, like the weapons David Drake created for Hammer's Slammers? A spaceplane capable of delivering a company of Marines anywhere on the planet in a couple of hours, then flying them back? An aerial vehicle simple enough for anyone to fly without flight training? An aqualung that's really gills, that can take oxygen directly from the water in quantities capable of allowing human activity underwater without scuba tanks?

Rest assured, DARPA only showed people the jokers and the low cards in the deck. The royal cards were carefully left at home. Knowledge is power, and DARPA has a lot more power than you think.

It also seems to me that many of these things fall into the category of "Should we do it just because we can?". In my opinion, all this stuff is going to be used eventually against the typical, restless human being who gets out of line with official pronouncements. In light of recent events and the barrage of provably untrue rhetoric by our government and media, it certainly appears Orwell was right about the future, and I think it sucks.
There are a lot of people who justifiably believe that our governments are now just shills for corporate desire. If you don't fit into the corporate scheme of things, you are basically expendable and undesirable as a citizen. These technologies will be used against your family and mine, and soon it won't be just the moths who get electrodes implanted for control. Nobody is allowed insight or oversight into military budgets or can trace the path of taxpayer monies spent on technologies that the great majority of us would insist on de-funding if we knew about them. I say, turn the light on all of it.
I am not a pessimist by any means, but if you have half an eyelid open you can see what's coming. Who the hell wants to live like that, or wants that kind of future world for their kid? More salient, who's going to stop it? Certainly not our "elected representatives" who are generally funded through various routes by the industrial-military complex Eisenhower warned against. We get milked for our money on every level for the "toys" of the military, but not one thing they've ever developed has lowered the world's level of tension. I take that back - the Internet has allowed enough information about the problem to be disseminated by people who realize it IS a problem. But the big money is in death and destruction, and fear always brings in the biggest money. We've created Frankenstein's monster, and God help us all.