A US study has gone into what may happen with military human enhancements. Where the use of other novel technologies, such as robotics and cyber-weapons, have caught society and policymakers by surprise, it is claimed, a report by the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at Cal Poly anticipates ethical and policy dilemmas ahead.
Funded by the Greenwall Foundation, “Enhanced Warfighters: Risk, Ethics, and Policy” looks at issues arising from military enhancements. Even philosophical questions here—such as how to define enhancement, and whether enhancements technically are biological weapons—have real-world policy impacts, such as determining which international humanitarian laws apply.
The technologies range from use of cognitive stimulants (including amphetamines or “go pills”) to future use of exoskeletons and neural computer chips. For example, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been funding research to change human metabolism (so that fighters won’t need to eat or sleep) and synthetic telepathy (so that fighters can communicate by thought alone).
Dr Patrick Lin, lead author of the report at Cal Poly said: “These are game-changing technologies in war, but dangerously little has been said about ethics, law, or policy. As we’re seeing in the debate on military drones, it’s crucial that we consider policy, law, and ethics before these technologies take off, not after the genie has left the bottle.”
Co-authors of the report are Prof Maxwell J Mehlman, law professor at Case Western Reserve University, and Keith Abney, senior philosophy lecturer at Cal Poly. The report is free to access at http://ethics.calpoly.edu/Greenwall_report.pdf.
About the group
Based at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group is a non-partisan body focused on emerging technology ethics, including risk, legal, policy, and social impacts of new technologies and sciences. Visit http://ethics.calpoly.edu or http://www.emergingethics.com.
