Project Harvest, a collaborative endeavor between the Imperial Science Bureau and Imperial Intelligence within the reconstituted Sith Empire, had been underway in different iterations for several decades leading up to the era of the Cold War. Its primary focus revolved around the investigation and restructuring of alien genetics. One participant, Eckard Lokin, ultimately departed the project due to ethical concerns, taking his research with him upon his resignation. Nevertheless, the Imperial Science Bureau retained a duplicate of his research, which subsequently paved the way for the creation of Project Protean. The activities of the project were known to Watcher X, who at some point divulged information about them to the Agent known as Cipher Nine.