How the UK wants to make its soldiers ‘superhuman’ — Analysis

RT investigative unit The Detail has reviewed the disturbing dimensions of a report on human augmentation recently issued by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre. 

Drawn up in conjunction with Germany’s Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning, the document starts by noting that while “significant thought”Consideration was given to the implications “advances in life sciences”Please see the following: “artificial intelligence, automation and robotics,”It has taken relatively little time to dedicate themselves. “what this means from a human perspective.”

For the MoD, this is considered a severe shortcoming. “our potential adversaries will not be governed by the same ethical and legal considerations that we are,”They are also alleged to be “already developing human augmentation capabilities.” As such, “establishing advantage in this field”It is urgently needed.

“Advances in artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomy mean that human processing power, speed of action and endurance are being rapidly outpaced by machines,”The report says so. “People are defence’s most valuable asset but also a key vulnerability; people get hungry, tired, scared and confused. Machines on the other hand are incapable of these things…The role of people is being challenged in three key areas: data, complexity and speed…Human augmentation is the missing part of this puzzle.”

The implication of this view of people is that the legal and ethical considerations apparently holding back the MoD’s vital work should be scrapped. People are just too weak to deserve the protections of legal rights preventing the military from implanting tech in their bodies to ‘augment’ them.  

Continue reading to learn more about a range of augmentation options including wearable technology, psychedelic drug, gene editing, engineering, exoskeletons as well as invasive implant such as vascular implants. “brain interfaces.”It is bizarre that it compares these sinister and sci-fi-reminiscent applications. “augmentation” such as “Humans [adorning] themselves with decorative garments to increase their social standing.”

The focus on the positive aspects of augmentation is too much. It is worth mentioning that in a separate section. “if not effectively regulated by law, such areas of inconsistency and/or ambiguity create the potential for individual privacy to be breached through what could come to be known as ‘under-skin’ surveillance methods,”A passage advocating the addition of soldiers to augment their ranks is what negates this sentence just a few pages later. “against their will,”On the assumption that they might be “guilty of disobeying a lawful command”If they refuse to comply.

The report does not even mention how to augmentation and the risks associated with it. “bioinformatic data, implants and wearables will create vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malign actors,”The “electromagnetic signature”Devices such as exoskeletons “could be easily detected”On a battlefield “implanted technologies”Or “data-reliant human augmentation”It could be “disrupted at a moment of an adversaries [sic] choosing.”

These prospective pratfalls are fairly severe failings, one might think, particularly given implanted brain-related tech could be hacked into, raising the horrifying prospect of someone’s mind and body being infiltrated and hijacked by sinister external actors.  

The MoD doesn’t consider itself to have any authority over the MoD. “malign actor,”According to the report, such hacking poses a lesser risk than that of “surrendering influence, prosperity and security”to nations that are willing to invest, experiment and invent in this area.

This sloppy approach also extends to ethical concerns regarding human augmentation. These concerns are described in the report “significant but not insurmountable,”On the basis of the fact that getting involved in moral arguments on this topic might lead to “the ethics of human augmentation [being] decided for us”Other states. Indeed, “the imperative to use human augmentation may ultimately not be dictated by any explicit ethical argument, but by national interest.”

This means that ethical objections become moot if the MoD ignores ethics and limits and continues to use human augmentation. This is a vicious cycle.

“National regulations dictating the pace and scope of scientific research reflect societal views, particularly in democracies that are more sensitive to public opinion. However, ethicists and the public should not decide what human augmentation will look like in the future.” the paper ominously states.

Further analysis suggests that Western governments should not only implement, but also optimize the use of human enhancement. “governments will need to develop a clear policy position that maximises the use of human augmentation in support of prosperity, safety and security.”

Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, DCDC, argues that augmenting individuals may be itself a form of augmentation. “moral obligation…particularly in cases where it promotes well-being or protects us from novel threats,”This suggests that even augmentation might be possible “controversially”Produce “moral enhancement” of humans and personally “to prevent malicious activity.”

If it looks like a dystopian nightmare, walks like a dystopian nightmare, and quacks like a dystopian nightmare, then it’s probably a report from the MoD.

The DCDC’s entry for the Philip K Dick award furthermore notes approvingly that “ethical perspectives on human augmentation will change and this could happen quickly,”How to record “creating genetically modified humans has been widely considered unacceptable for many years and is formally prohibited in over 40 countries,”However, there are positive signs of this position “is being challenged by the advent of new technologies.” No doubt the British state would also be eager and able to “nudge” citizens into reconsidering their “ethical perspectives”More information.

“The impact of legislative changes on moral beliefs is also important, with some evidence suggesting that changes to morality are often caused by legislative changes,”The report notes. “Defence, however, cannot wait for ethics to change before engaging with human augmentation.”

Disquieting stuff indeed, although even more troublingly, a determination to transform soldiers and citizens alike into cyborgs isn’t restricted to Britain. NATO’s ‘Innovation Hub’ throughout 2020 and 2021 published a number of bizarre papers and convened several conferences on the subject of“cognitive warfare”The doctrine of seeking “militarisation of brain science”Answers to the pressing question “how to free humanity from the limitations of the body.”

US-led alliance military aims to dominate this mysterious, sinister area by 2040. The Innovation Hub used a variety of resources in support of that project. “futurists”To forecast possible outcomes for such primacy and kickstarting “cognitive war.” 

One resultant contribution was a 33-page fable authored by a French evolutionary biology professor, which imagined how in 2039, autopsies conducted on Chinese soldiers killed in skirmishes with US andustralian troops over Beijing’s Silk Road initiative in Zambia would find the dead were “supra-human,” the product of gene-editing in a lab, which imbued them with superior muscles, night-vision, and “resistance to sleep deprivation, thirst, extreme heat and humidity.” A “cognitive war”The following year, it was officially declared.

According to the academic, “human mind should be NATO’s next domain of operation.” Deranged doggerel the work may have been, but it was clearly influential – 10 months after publication, then-US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe accused Beijing of “developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities.”Even though there was no supporting evidence, the media all over the globe rushed to reproduce his incendiary statements without question or criticism.

Clearly then, just as in the Cold War, where bogus claims of Soviet nuclear supremacy prompted a planet-threatening arms race lasting decades, and crazed conspiracy theories about Chinese brainwashing prowess triggered unconscionable experimentation on unwitting human subjects, fear mongering over purported enemy state progress in the field of human augmentation is being used to justify a whole host of immoral policies and practices.

This time round, though, rather than entrenched medical ethics being criminally and covertly circumvented, they’re simply being rewritten to accommodate the national security state’s wanton and egregious excesses. The West has to maintain its integrity. “full-spectrum dominance” in all matters, at all times – even if the threat that’s reportedly being countered is fantastical, farcical, or literally science-fictional.