I agree with you, both in your dismay and wonder, but also pose a question: At what decreasing level of complexity is something still "living", but no longer subject to the ethical concerns from this not-exactly-direct control? Insects are often neural networks of (relatively) straightforward response to stimuli. Ants for example [1], react to harmful stimuli, but feel no pain in the debilitating, emotional-trauma-inducing manner that we associate with the word "pain". And a huge chunk of what governs an ant's life is response to environment chemicals, particularly pheromones produced by other ants.

Would it be the same level of control thing if we released micro-doses of known ant hormones in front of them, to prod them into particular actions? Seems pretty similar, and you could even rig it up so that they release from a box that sat on the ant's back.

Going lower, protozoa and protophyta are even more obviously "bags of chemicals that respond to other chemicals in the environment". Would controlling them via chemical releases be equally an issue?

The real question, it seems, is where do we draw the line and say "Life on this side, we don't mess with you. Life on this other side, tough shit we're going to screw with you nine ways to sunday because it's fu--I mean because science!"

[1] I'm not discounting the complexity of an ant's nervous system here, just pointing it out in relative terms to larger insects and invertebrates.