Psyche, Science, and Society

Neuroscience for killing as military moves in

April 16th, 2007

Hugh Gusterson, in The militarization of neuroscience, warns of the the dangers of military “application” of new neuroscience research. Based upon “Jonathan Moreno’s fascinating and frightening new book, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense (Dana Press 2006)”[which I have not yet read]  he writes:

the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research in the following areas:

• Mind-machine interfaces (”neural prosthetics”) that will enable pilots and soldiers to control high-tech weapons by thought alone.
• “Living robots” whose movements could be controlled via brain implants. This technology has already been tested successfully on “roborats” and could lead to animals remotely directed for mine clearance, or even to remotely controlled soldiers.
• “Cognitive feedback helmets” that allow remote monitoring of soldiers’ mental state.
• MRI technologies (”brain fingerprinting”) for use in interrogation or airport screening for terrorists. Quite apart from questions about their error rate, such technologies would raise the issue of whether involuntary brain scans violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
• Pulse weapons or other neurodisruptors that play havoc with enemy soldiers’ thought processes.
• “Neuroweapons” that use biological agents to excite the release of neurotoxins. (The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention bans the stockpiling of such weapons for offensive purposes, but not “defensive” research into their mechanisms of action.)
• New drugs that would enable soldiers to go without sleep for days, to excise traumatic memories, to suppress fear, or to repress psychological inhibitions against killing.

And the article’s end is sobering:

Unfortunately, however, Moreno (p.163) quotes Michael Moodie, a former director of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, as saying, “The attitudes of those working in the life sciences contrast sharply with the nuclear community. Physicists since the beginning of the nuclear age, including Albert Einstein, understood the dangers of atomic power, and the need to participate actively in managing these risks. The life sciences sectors lag in this regard. Many neglect thinking about the potential risks of their work.”

Entry Filed under: Psychology, Science, Violence, War and Peace