The Pentagon is exploring how new biotechnological innovations — including mRNA vaccines, CRISPR gene-editing and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) — could change the nature of future warfare, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) used to consider biotech-based warfare too risky or even eugenicist, according to a new report produced for the agency by the RAND Corporation. But recent advances “change strategic choices for the human body as a warfighting domain,” the authors of the report wrote.
The RAND Corporation is a military think tank established during the Cold War and known for its work actively influencing government and military policy.
The report — “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War” — presents a series of future war scenarios based on advances in engineered bioweapons, the Internet of Bodies and genomics that the authors said “might seem fantastical,” but are “not far-fetched,” given rapid advances in 21st-century biotechnology.
The report recommends that military planning anticipate these future war scenarios.
“We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts,” where “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” disrupt the American military-industrial base and the future soldier is an “enhanced warfighter” who can survive in extreme conditions, the report warns.
Fang told The Defender, “These Pentagon research reports read like science fiction, but they provide crucial insight into how the military sees future conflict and exerts pressure on lawmakers on crucial policy issues…
Children's Health Defense 
Be First to Comment