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stream. Three Square Market, a tech company
in River Falls, Wis., claims to have chipped 673
people in the U.S., including 85 of its employ-
ees, who are using the device for “personal
data retention and some for door access also,”
according to CEO Todd Westby, who first
tested the technology on Biohax chips. “At this
point, we are still developing and learning its
capabilities,” he says. Last summer, reps from
Japanese companies working on the Tokyo
Olympics committee visited Österlund to see
how they might use biochips for the smooth
running of the Games.
Across Sweden, too, Österlund has become
a featured attraction at corporate events,
where he shows up with a stock of syringes,
ready to inject anyone who wants to be
chipped. Last March, he demonstrated Biohax
chips to PricewaterhouseCoopers executives
in Malmö, on Sweden’s border with Denmark.
Måns Liljenlov, PwC’s regional market-
ing chief, immediately signed up and now
unlocks his office and locker and buys lunch
at work with a wave of his hand. He says he is
planning to renovate his house this year and
install chip readers instead of keyholes. When
I reach him in late November at a gathering
for clients in Helsingborg, he tells me hisbranding and septum piercing. In fact, almost
every biohacker I met in Sweden was heavily
tattooed, including Österlund, who lifted his
shirt one night to show me a large inkwork
of a woman stretched clear across his belly.
(“You should see the rest of it,” he chuckled.)
For many bodyhackers, it is an easy extension
from tattoos and piercing to implants. “People
find themselves extremely fascinated that you
can alter body functions,” he tells me, as we
zip up Sweden’s west coast on a high-speed
train. “I am allowing my body to speak to
machines. And it is a lot better being digital in
a digital world than analog in a digital world.”
I
F BIOCHIPPING IS EVER TO TAKE OFF,
of course, it will need to become
a real business. Österlund is do-
ing what he can, starting with
attempting to raise capital for Biohax. He says
a Swedish investor, who remains unnamed,
made a “six-figure” investment in Biohax in
December. And Österlund claims that he has
lined up about 100 doctors and nurses to work
with Biohax to implant chips, once he has
formally commercialized the business beyond
its current tattoo-parlor stage.
In late November, Biohax signed a partner-
ship deal with Verisec, an information technol-
ogy security company in Stockholm, to provide
an electronic-identity platform for Österlund’s
biochips. That would allow Biohax chips to
be used for regular electronic payments, not
just for those within closed environments like
a staff cafeteria, and to store documents like
driver’s licenses and passports. Österlund calls
the deal “the beginning of the big time.”
In the U.S., the use of implants to measure
glucose, heart murmurs, and other condi-
tions has risen steeply in the past few years,
all devices that until recently were avail-
able only as external monitors. “It is a short
leap to having that on a chip that’s inside
you,” says Raj Denhoy, a medical technology
analyst for Jefferies Financial Group in New
York City, who believes the growth trajectory
for biochips will be steep. “The use of clinical
data to drive better treatment outcomes is
something that is going to get much, much
bigger,” he says. “To the extent that biosen-
sors allow medical interventions to be better,
that is undeniable.”
Little by little, biochips are going main-
BIOHACKING
“WE WANT
TO HAVE AN
INSANELY
ROBUST
PLATFORM
AND
SAFEGUARD
EVERYONE’S
INTEGRITY
AND
PRIVACY.
IT CANNOT
TURN INTO
THE WILD
WEST.”GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
The idea of biochipping may seem outlandish in real life, but216
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