Illuminated by the bluish glow of moonlight, a chopper descends over palm trees both tropical and ominously Jurassic. The blades’ powerful rotation is impossibly quiet, a force evidenced only by the wild movements of surrounding fronds and foliage. Inside the helicopter, a specialized strike force prepares to deploy into the remote South American jungle. This area is known to heavily feature the “kissing bug,” a brown-and-black patterned insect that often carries Trypanosoma cruzi — a parasitic organism that causes Chagas disease. Initial symptoms of Chagas, including fever and body aches, can last for months, and untreated cases develop into decades-long chronic conditions. These particular soldiers, however, have no need to worry. A couple of days prior to this drop, they self-administered a new sort of nanoparticle-enabled, prophylactic Chagas vaccine. If an exposure to T. cruzi occurs, the nanoparticles will be spurred into action, significantly reducing both the severity of the acute disease phase and the risk of developing chronic symptoms.

This hypothetical Chagas scenario was presented to me by Jake Adler, the 20-year-old founder of Pilgrim, a company working to leverage nanotechnology, bioelectronics, autonomous sensors, and AI systems to usher in a new era of supersoldiers and anti-threat biosurveillance. The company recently raised a $3.25 million round led by Thiel Capital, Cantos, and Refactor to pursue this vision. Pilgrim aims to navigate the minefield of government absurdity, leveraging its quirks and failures in order to rapidly deploy usable biotech that will act as a force multiplier on our troops and revamp systems that are meant to protect us against biological warfare. In other words? Pilgrim wants to make supersoldiers, produce futuristic dual-use medical technology, and catch the next pandemic before it even begins.