A Biohacker Explains Why He Turned His Leg Into a Hotspot

[beep]

Hit me.

Johnny Mnemonic, William Gibson's

data-carrying courier from the year 2021,

could store dozens of gigabytes of data in his head.

We still haven't figured out how upload files

directly to our brains, but biohackers are finding new ways

to use technology to change human bodies

and push the limits of what's possible.

From implants that extend our vision

[chimes] to chips that

let us open doors.

A device called PegLeg is a new frontier of privacy,

storing and transferring data in the human body.

But only if you can stomach a 30-minute operation.

We spoke with Michael Laufer at the Biohacker

and one of the creators of this new device.

What do you have in your leg?

I have a half-terabyte pirate server that's open access.

So, where did the idea from this come?

When the internet first started,

when I was a little kid,

there was so much promise.

We all hoped that, and we believed,

we didn't just hope, but we believed

that it was going to be this thing that set us all free

and it was going to fix so many things

because it was going to be impossible to manipulate,

impossible to censor, impossible to surveil.

As we've seen,

all of those things have turned out to be false.

We see that surveillance is happening just about everywhere,

from just about everywhere they can afford it.

Now, can you tell me a little bit about

what the PegLeg is and how it works?

The basis for it a Raspberry Pi Zero-W,

so it has WiFi built in,

there is an antenna built into the PCB.

Here is where you have your microSD card

that holds the software and is also the data repository.

This one is just 16 gigs, mine's 512.

This unit here is a second WiFi card.

This allows for it to communicate to other PegLegs.

That's the mesh part of the network.

On the back, we have the coil

that allows it to accept power.

This is the power management circuitry.

And then this is a capacitor that acts as a power buffer.

It allows fluctuations in input.

When you hold a battery to PegLeg,

it creates the network that anyone

who has a internet enabled device can then connect to.

Right, so it's like a WiFi hotspot in that way.

Whatever you have, you just look for WiFi networks

and PegLeg will come up and you'll click on it

and then the splash screen comes up.

But it's not connected to the regular internet, right?

Right.

When we have a local area network,

then all of us in this room can connect to it

and we can talk, but nobody's gonna be able to surveil that

unless they're here.

And again, everything's anonymous,

so how would you know who's saying what, anyway?

So go ahead and turn your WiFi on.

And then in your list of networks,

you should see an open network that says PegLeg.

And select that.

[Daniel] I'm in.

[Michael] And then if you go down,

it should say browse files.

[Daniel] Okay.

So these are all the files stored on your leg.

[Michael] Yeah, so far, I know there aren't many,

but the one that says Omni is the issue of Omni from 1981

where Johnny Mnemonic first appeared.

[Daniel] Downloads pretty fast.

High-speed internet. It is.

High-speed anti-internet.

PegLeg, as far as implants go, is pretty large.

Can you tell me a little bit about

what the procedure was like, getting this in your leg?

I've never had surgery of any kind,

so it was new for me.

It was a new thing.

But everybody was there and they were very supportive.

I was told that I did faint for a few seconds.

It was less than 30 minutes.

He made an incision and then he made a pocket

and slid the thing up and sutured it up.

This device that you now have gotten implanted

in your body is already existed

as a piece of physical hardware

that provided this capability outside of your body.

So, what are the advantages of putting it in your leg?

Ah, right.

This is always the key question.

This is different because a wearable can be confiscated

at a border and a wearable has to have

an internal power source that will fail.

And wearables don't talk to each other.

Part of the magic of it

is that they can't compel me to turn it on.

I mean, I suppose they could strap me to a chair

and put a battery up to it

if they understood it well enough to do that.

But it's a passive device.

It only turns on if I want it to.

It doesn't even matter because it's an open network anyway.

So anything that I would want to shroud

would be encrypted and then it wouldn't matter.

Who are these community of people getting these devices?

The grinding community is sort of a sub-subculture

within the biohacking subculture.

The grinders are ones who are fearlessly innovative.

The bleeding edge, as it were.

And so there've been a lot of really fascinating experiments

that have come out of the grinding community.

I'm sure you've seen some of them,

like the night vision eyedrops

and the flexible armor implants.

These people are saying, look, it's my body

and I have autonomy over it, I can do what I want.

And I'm not afraid.

Because I think this could make the world better.

And they do.

Most biohackers that I've ever met

are very aware that what they're doing is dangerous.

You understand to some degree what you're doing.

I mean, to be fair, right?

You're taking a risk every time you take a medicine,

every time you go for surgery in a hospital.

The differentiation is that

in the United States especially,

but in the western world,

we have a terrible habit of outsourcing responsibility.

Think about how many people you know

who only even change their own oil.

Or fix their own computer.

Or void the warranty on anything they own.

It's really exciting to me

to realize that because of the pace

which the grinders are taking biohacking,

the next big innovation to come out of biology,

it's equally likely to come out of somebody's garage

than it is to come out of an ivy league research institute.

You're arguably best known

within the biohacking community

for your role as the public face

of Four Thieves Vinegar Collective.

Can you tell me a little bit about what that project is?

Oh, Four Thieves is a collective

that works to try to bring medicine

and medical technology to people who don't have it.

What we've done over the years

is worked on projects that allow people to,

again, manage their own health.

Ways to manufacture their own medicines

or build their own medical technologies

so that they can bypass all of those problems.

If what they need is too expensive

or not legal where they are

or just not available where they are,

then they can take control of their own health,

and still have access to the technology which exists.

People should be able to interface

with the medical community

and be able to have more open conversations

with their medical providers

and be able to audit the systems

that they're putting into their bodies.

And be able to look at the pharmaceuticals

and read all of the studies that were done.

Couldn't someone presumably take the instructions

that you're providing and mix something incorrectly

even though they're doing it themselves?

If they don't have a background in chemistry?

If I get something from an institution,

it's an act of faith that that institution

has the safety protocols that I would deem appropriate.

And I don't get to see those or check those.

If I'm at home and I manufacture a pill,

I know everything that went into it.

I made the pill one at a time,

I know how much active pharmaceutical ingredient

went into this pill and I closed it, I capped it,

I took it, I'm safe.

Four Thieves hasn't released any data,

so it's impossible to know how many people are using this

or if it's been effective.

But Laufer says he and other biohackers

continue to dream up new ways of using technology

to augment their own capability.

Biohacking has always figured prominently

in science fiction.

William Gibson, he made prolific use

of modifications in his stories,

and was that influenced the way

you think about body hacking?

When I put this in, I had a moment where I thought

the only thing better than witnessing

your childhood dreams coming true

is making them come true.

And it was a great moment to sort of

see Johnny Mnemonic come to life.

Michael, thank you so much for joining us

and telling us about the future of the internet,

which is inside your leg.

Well, I hope so.

And a lot of other places.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, thanks.