“Whether we like it or not,” an implantable microchip meant to read COVID-19 vaccination status could be implemented globally, according to Hannes Sjöbald, the managing director of Dsruptive Subdermals, a company headquartered in Spain, which has already designed the chip. Dsruptive Subdermals is already marketing the chip as a simple way of always having proof of COVID-19 vaccination status with you.
The chip is roughly the size of a grain of rice — two millimeters by 16 millimeters in size — and is implanted under the skin. When it is scanned, a PDF will appear showing the details of a vaccine passport. According to Sjöbald, it is also easily programmable to show other things that the user may need.
“This technology exists and is used whether we like it or not,” Sjöbald told The Express in an interview. “I am happy that it is brought into the public conversation.
Sjöbald, who calls himself a “bio-hacker,” is a co-founder of BioNyfiken, a Swedish Association of biohackers that works to expand access to biotechnologies for the people of the world.
According to French news agency AFP, each implant costs €100 (around $112).
“New technologies must be broadly debated and understood,” Sjöbald said. “Smart implants are a powerful health technology.”
It’s basically the same technology that has been used for decades as a way of monitoring the whereabouts of house pets. However, according to Sjöbald, this chip is not designed to track you — only to dole out information that you wish to have readily available at all times, such as a vaccine passport.
“If you understand how these implants work, they don’t have a battery. They cannot transmit a signal by themselves. So they are basically passive. They sit there asleep,” Sjöbald claimed. “They can never tell your location, they’re only activated when you touch them with your smartphone, so this means they cannot be used for tracking anyone’s location.”
No offense to Mr. Sjöbald, but color me unconvinced. The simple fact that the chip is programmable lends itself to all kinds of future possibilities such as banking, a storage space for emergency information and, yes, even tracking a human beings’ whereabouts.
Sjöbald himself confirmed the easy programmable aspects of the device, saying, “It is easy to update the implant, you can use an app on your phone to change what is on the chip. So I can add new info to the chip every day — yesterday it was my Linkedin, today it’s my COVID certificate, tomorrow it could be something else.”
“Something else” indeed. A quick check of a person’s bank account? Tracking of a person’s whereabouts? Their political affiliations?
Sjöbald, one of the inventors of the intrusive chip, uses it himself, and declares that it’s simply a harmless appliance.
“I have a chip implant in my arm, and I have programmed the chip so that I have my COVID passport on the chip, and the reason is that I always want to have it accessible,” he said.
“This means it is always accessible for me or for anyone else, really, who wants to read me. For example, if I go to the movies or go to a shopping center, then people will be able to check my status even if I don’t have my phone.”
Dsruptive Subdermals has also developed another chip meant to be implanted in humans that constantly tracks body temperature, doing away with the necessity of taking a person’s temperature.
Regarding that chip, Disruptive Subdermals claims, “DSruptive’s clinical study demonstrated the viability of chip implants to track body temperature and that they are robust, reliable, and most importantly safe. This will change the way we track and fight diseases, another weapon in the arsenal against Covid-19 and any future infectious disease.”
Whatever the case, this new chip stinks of transhumanism — linking the human brain up to a global computer system. It also brings to mind a Bible verse — specifically Revelation 13:17:
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666.”
