We live in a world where most all of our private information is, in one way or another, linked up somewhere it shouldn't be. It has gotten to the point that many of us can barely remember our login information for the handfuls of websites that we use to manage our day-to-day lives. True encryption is something we strive for, but it's hard to come by. Think about how much harder this must be for governmental/military entities that rely on keeping their data safe? The latest efforts in high-security technology is from the Engineers at Xerox PARC, who have developed a self-destructing chip as part of DARPA's Vanishing Programmable Resources Project.

Sounds like something we'd see in a high-tech action thriller, doesn't it? Something goes wrong, security or identity is breached, chip explodes into tiny pieces with the touch of a button. According to Blic Spy, DARPA's method actually involves Gorilla Glass (instead of traditional plastic and metal) to construct the chip, and a laser to trigger the self-destructing process. Gorilla Glass, of course, is a Corning-produced technology that has been widely-used in smartphone glass screens, known for its dependable and strong properties. But the chip engineers state that in this case, we “ion-exchange temper it to build in stress”.

Along with the laser triggering a response from the chip, a physical switch is used to boost radio signals into the device. These heavy amounts of stress cause peak levels of shattering. We could see this type of chip used for this in military situations, when “extremely sensitive data needs to be protected at all costs”. Sorry guys, we all want our own information secure, but this will never end up in our own hands. During DARPA's “Wait, What?” Future Technology Forum event in St. Louis this month, the team of engineers demonstrated the Self-Destructing chip's explosive properties.