DARPA is encouraging developers to use AI translate all C code to Rust, in an effort to improve security through Rust’s memory safety.

Rust has been gaining traction in the developer community, thanks to a host of modern features. One of the biggest its its emphasis on memory safety, which greatly improves security since memory issues are one of the leading causes of vulnerabilities. Google has seen significant improvements to Android’s security as a result of incorporating Rust, Microsoft is similarly adding it to the Windows kernel, and the NSA has been encouraging companies to switch to Rust and similar languages.

DARPA’s Translating All C to Rust (TRACTOR) program is designed to help accelerate the transition from legacy C to Rust.

“You can go to any of the LLM websites, start chatting with one of the AI chatbots, and all you need to say is ‘here’s some C code, please translate it to safe idiomatic Rust code,’ cut, paste, and something comes out, and it’s often very good, but not always,” said Dr. Dan Wallach, DARPA program manager for TRACTOR. “The research challenge is to dramatically improve the automated translation from C to Rust, particularly for program constructs with the most relevance.”

“Rust forces the programmer to get things right,” added Wallach. “It can feel constraining to deal with all the rules it forces, but when you acclimate to them, the rules give you freedom. They’re like guardrails; once you realize they’re there to protect you, you’ll become free to focus on more important things.”

Interested developers can learn more here.