In the skies of Moscow, pigeons would no longer just fly where the breadcrumbs call them, they would be commanded by human operators. In any case, this is what the Neiry company says, a flagship of Russian neurotechnology, close to the Kremlin, which claims to have implanted chips directly in the brains of birds to take control of them.
Equipped with mini-solar panels on their backs and high-definition cameras, these “bio-drones” have a major advantage over conventional drones: with their natural autonomy of 400 kilometers, they do not need bulky batteries and blend into the urban landscape. But behind the claimed technical prowess lies a very worrying conception of power and control of nature.
The project is supported by the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Moscow State University, headed by Katerina Tikhonova, Vladimir Putin’s youngest daughter. A leading figure in Russian tech, she has developed joint projects with Neiry, particularly in the field of invasive neural interfaces.
The colossal financing of the company comes from funds created on the direct order of the Russian president or through oligarchs like Vladimir Potanin. Why such an investment for a few pigeons? Because the bird is only a prototype for Neiry, who intends to “program” living things without limiting himself to birds alone.
The specter of human reprogramming
Neiry CEO Alexander Panov does not bother with ethical precautions. For him, the ultimate goal is the advent of a Homo superior. His declarations, tinged with bellicose nationalism, are unequivocal. Referring to the conflict in Ukraine, Alexander Panov suggested on his social networks that the captured populations could be “rescheduled” through technology, arguing that it would be more economical to modify existing minds than to train new Russian citizens.
We are no longer here in the field of fundamental research, but in that of war transhumanism. The pigeons, then the rats, then the cows on which Neiry conducts his tests, are only the stages leading to the neuronal domination of man by man.
During the Cold War, the CIA had already tried to transform animals into high-flying spies. The project “Acoustic Kitty», which aimed to hide microphones in cats, ended in a tragicomic fiasco when a taxi ran over the first guinea pig who had barely been released in front of the Soviet embassy.
But in 2026, the precision of brain-machine interfaces changes the situation. If the scientific veracity of Neiry’s successes remains to be confirmed by independent peers (which is almost impossible in Russia today), the political will to transform living things into weapons is entirely real.
