A chan. Youre tuned into modus operandi. There are countless movies, comic books, tv shows about them. They range from that mand iron man to the ex. Med, whether its bullet proof arms x, those skeletons to enhanced human bio engineering. The idea of the Super Soldier is one that the military Industrial Complex has long had his eyes on ready or not. They are becoming a reality. Lets talk about it. All right, lets get into the m o the. When you hear the term Super Soldier, what comes to mind a, maybe in iron man type character or Arnold Schwartzenegger and terminator, to maybe a genetically modified human sideboard hybrid. While those things arent entirely off the table, were not there just yet. Not yet. But with dwindling military recruitment numbers across the us and all branches of the military, the d o. D wants to make, who theyve got will make them last, make soldiers more durable if you will enhance human function and capability. Thats where we are right now in 2023. In the us under darpa, the Defense Advanced Research projects agency. There are a myriad of projects currently under way. Take project adapter, for example. That stands for advanced acclimation and protection tool for environmental readiness, and involves sideboard implants to alter soldiers, natural body functions or responses to make food that could make you sick from food poisoning. By producing a reputed substances or chemicals in the body to tell the good not to respond to disruption. Its like a mini factory of good bacteria. It sounds like a minor or even useless thing, but when youre on the battlefield, you cant afford to be sick to your stomach or dehydrated. Food poisoning could literally cost you your life and its not just darpa, not just the us working on these tweaks to human biology that can benefit their battle readiness. Super secret development is underway for several military super powers, like china and russia as well in the us. Subcontractors to the pentagon are lined up in the private sector to develop these advancements like enhanced night vision. Without gambles. This hot new sector has sprung up in the last decade called Synthetic Biology, which has seen billions of dollars poor in from both Venture Capital and the d o. D. So here to discuss this potential game changer in warfare. Well, bring in professor arman christian, and hes an assistant professor of Political Science at East Carolina University and author of several books, his most recent one called military neuroscience and becoming age of narrow warfare. Hes got expertise in International Affairs and National Security professor. Thank you. So much for joining us today. First, tell us a little bit about your book, military neuroscience and the coming age of neuro warfare. Whats it about . What prompted you to delve into this topic . But its about Major Applications of neuro science and you of Human Performance enhancement, as well as Human Performance that your great degree vision and also in terms of the use for intelligence. And does things like a to determine whether somebodys says the truth or not. And so there are many different applications that are National Security relevant. And yeah, my or just not interesting topic 10 because of my earlier work. Im not talking this Weapon Systems. Thats what i found, that Artificial Intelligence research relates strongly to austin, nor science research. So i think the Intelligence Research has tried to build an optic. This will brain that this model on the human brain. And thats why the 2 pos overlap. So lets go beyond psychological warfare. Cy, up or, or even the information war we have now entered the age of what many, when colloquially call body hack it, or what the pentagon calls Synthetic Biology research. One of many darpa projects right now is called in 3 next generation non surgical Neuro Technology program. It aims to provide soldiers with bi directional brain machine interfaces which they called b, c. I. So in brief, basically i would enable neuro pathways to communicate with external devices via an implant that talks to an external receptor. So in theory, the person can control like a swarm of drones just by thought rather than by computer. How and, and why would this be a desirable application for the military . But make sure it has been interested in brand computer interface systems, at least tonight in sixties. A general idea is to combine the high cognitive abilities of the human brain. Thats the response times of machines. So by terry a human brain with a machine or a Weapon System, you can get the best of the 2 words. And thats the reason why the military wants it. And yeah, they have been working on different approaches to do that. So one approach was a project called deep brain stimulation. So thats a topic project from 2013, which requires an basic approach. So you have to drill holes into the brain to insert some implant into the brain and that can be used for um 3 things like that of that up to date so you can relieve stress or pain. So it has been used on notary veterans who have a medical conditions and obviously you could develop that folder in terms of using it for a 4th grade computer phase where you have a seamless connection between the human brain and a computer. So you could allow them to control a computer or a machine by thought. And so that is quite a powerful and yeah, but they are now trying to do is to have a non Invasive Technology which can perform at least somewhat better than what they have already. So whether youre using is e g, a, but theyre looking at Something Better than you g. And again, adopt would be very practical if you could, dont get into some kind of settlement like device. So you dont have to permanently modify your soldiers and you dont have to take a huge medical risk that comes with that. So, so that is kind of the context why they are trying to do it. Assign just called robert free. Tess, who is a Nano Technology research or at the institute for molecular manufacturing, has been working on artificial red blood cells called respirators sites. He says these nano machines would give humans the ability to quote, hold their breath at the bottom of a Swimming Pool for hours, or let someone sprint at top speed for at least 15 minutes without stopping to breathe. How might this be applicable to soldiers on the battlefield . May have cross, you would like to have soldiers, we have great the endurance. We have great districts who can perform at the peak level for an extended period of time. Who dont need to sleep much or dont need to eat. And yeah, anything thats kind of accomplish that is obviously desirable. And when a punch is caused and not on medicine. So you can inject nano particles or nano bought into the body in order to achieve some performance enhancement. Also understand that its related to improving the oxygen uptake in the blood. And that allows you to have great and yours and to cope this policy, oxygen in the environment. So how does it so that is quite the real and i think its a new term kind of capability to we have a so that we can use now medicine in order to have some performance enhancement. And especially as a concerns of things like uh, oxygen uptake. I mean, that has been a technique in doping for quite some time. Im so sorry to say not to both of themselves. Um, well, how about that . Because i like them. The one youve described, but robot frightens us. I dont know when that will be a reality. And biotech is a massive field, an estimated 421000000000. 00 in 2022 alone. According to statistics, its generally defined as the use of biological systems or living organisms to develop its products, sometimes called biologics. Meanwhile, the former us director of National Intelligence, john radcliff, accused china of going one step further in biotech. He said china was using chris for technology to alter human genetics in order to create a physically superior soldier without offering any evidence. Mind you, if we entertain the idea that this is actually happening suspending any ethical arguments given how costly a crisper program would be if this concept even feasible and wouldnt take decades to develop an army of super humans. Well, i dont think they are necessarily looking at this time at human genetic engineering. So that would be to design a human soldier from scratch. So you would have to work with the human embryos and you would try to combine human being native of some other. But actually animal dna to create a totally new type of organism. Uh, so obviously that would take a long time. So you would need 18 or 20 years to grow your soldiers. But i dont think that this is commonly the issue. Uh, so what you can do is uh gene therapy or gene doping, so you can, can a gene expression. So you can activate or d, x of age genes. And that can be used for Human Performance enhancement. And that is an interesting kind of technology. You can do it with a series injections as we can potentially insert some new genes into the body as well into something organs. And uh huh. Yeah, its quite possible that the Chinese Military is already working on this and that the us luxury is also considering that very seriously. Course, the technology can be generally used for modifying any time to fill out the organism, including plans and also animals. So you dont have to necessarily, necessarily go to 2 minutes for that. And yeah, according to james clapper, who was the director of National Intelligence before radcliffe. So as you suggested in 2016, the chris but technology is low cost and easy and the correct amount to a weapon of mass destruction if it was abused us. So we would be talking about potentially modifying plants or animals and doing it in a malicious way, in order to cause dysfunction where you could have a organism self destruct. Uh so that is a very dangerous kind of technology, because once you release something into the environment, its very difficult to take it back and then you can combine it with a gene clause. So you could totally modify an existing species as compound. And that would be indeed very dangerous, as of what they are currently considering is working with most details. So genetically modified in a most details, and they can be used for delivering some north talks in or some biological agent. So, so that is a much one year term for us. All right, coming up next has soldier, body hacking, actually existed for a millennia. Well discuss it when we return with professor arman christian in sit tight. The ammo will be right back. The the the the vast majority of the us citizens are not well rented. They 2, they pay very little attention to Foreign Policy. And they would have trouble locating ukraine on a map. And as a result, theyve been very susceptible to a steady stream of propaganda. That has painted russia as this aggressive imperial power. The welcome back to the m. O. I manila, chad with the advancement of ai systems on the battlefield. Does that necessarily mean we are working towards bloodless wars . A back to discuss is professor arman christian and thank you for staying with us professor. Now, despite many of these discussions around crisper and china is alleged experimentation, not much talked about in the us is this thing called spaced genes program, which sounds to me a lot like what Christopher Technology does now from their website under darpa, it says this quote, the safe james Program Supports force protection and military health and readiness by protecting Service Members from accidental or intentional misuse of geno editing technologies. Additional work will leverage advances in Gene Editing Technology to expedite development of advanced prophylactic and therapeutic treatments against gene editors advances within the program. Will ensure the United States remains at the vanguard of the broadly accessible and rapidly progressing field of g no editing. Then they go on to say overall, the safe Trans Program is creating a layered, modular, and Adaptable Solutions set to protect more fighters in the homeland against intentional or accidental misuse. G, no editing technologies prevent and or reverse unwanted genetic changes in a given biological system. Facilitate the development of safe, precise, and effective medical treatment that use gene editors. All right, professor. Given the enhancement and use of drones and other non human tack on the battlefield. Why bother with trying to alter human soldiers . Why not continue the advancement of fully robotic warriors . I mean, why cant we take humans off the battlefield entirely . No, its some of the argument to say, we dont need to. And soldiers because they have nuclear weapons. As i said, they were present totally different capabilities. Now, so machines can do something, things better than humans, but humans can also do a lot of things much better than machines. And so we need both types of capabilities. We cannot simply invest in just one type of capability and ignore or the other kinds of to or tip abilities that might be needed. So there are certain circumstances where machines could easily or performed humans. So for example, for space weapons or putting a deep sea nissan off environments that are very suitable for insurance. But that could be a very suitable for autonomy was Weapon Systems. At the same time, if you will have to operate in a human environment such as in a city where you have civilians around. Its probably not the best option to rely on autonomy as Weapon Systems for that. The risks of some to talk to great and or the a, i show some promise about also some very substantial and inherent problems with eod. And so for example, yeah, i realize nor networks that loan by themselves. So nobody knows how they evolved over time. And so you can simply put an economist, Weapon System in the field, and hope for the dest. You never know how it would respond in a new type of situation. And obviously, any adversary would try to click into doing something stupid. So does account, they are. So you might be able to manipulate the Data Collection of the eyes system. And deb, id distort the, the eyes Decision Making and, or even fix the i to attack on forces or civilians. So i dont think you can do away with humans. So just a, i dont think that is a feasible on that note as, as youre just sort of alluded to there, do you ever foresee a future where of war, where there are no human casualties, you know, both soldiers or civilian. What would be the part of that . The ward is defined as an axle for us to compare what you need to do. Oh, well, no. So you cannot have a war where you do not inflict some sort of pain on the enemy or causing some financial or mature. The damage is not enough and tumors for fight. And they both needs to feel pain in order to stop by to. And i dont think that it is, uh, it makes sense to have a ward, it was entirely for by machines. And so there will always be some human participation in more, at the very least, humans will be participating. I was collateral damage. So you will never be able to eliminate that kind of risk. And the only way you could have a bloodless war would be some sort of normal diesel or technology that could mentally course on mind control and, and then the population. So that is a very scary possibility, but luckily its not in the near future. How long do you think countries have actually been genetically or at least chemically altering soldiers without the public knowing . Well, let me know has always been an interest and genetic to improving your soldiers. I mean that the most basic technique is eugenics and breeding. So that is an idea that goes back to the ancient times and the greek philosopher title, who suggested that and this has been also implemented in modern times. If you think of the s s Reading Program called levens born. Uh, so that has been going on for a long time that you want to select the type of soldiers who has the best genetic conditions for the task. And yeah, we have not the technology to do the Genetic Screening. So we would be able to select people for certain jobs and i think that is potentially already happening. So we are not always informed about these kinds of things, but the, the, the technology for Genetic Screening is this. The next step would be genetically modified. So that the start of gene therapy and other types of enhancement. And yeah, the trucks are obviously a part of it. So soldiers have taken drugs for a long time in order to get that a performance incumbent. And, and yeah, thats just the reality of war. And war to such an extreme situation that you need to overcome a lots of physical and mental challenges and anything that helps you with that such as performance enhancing drugs are obviously a good thing for the military. And for historical context. Would you consider that this has actually been done for centuries . Maybe a millennia, even. I mean, take, for example, the fact that the vikings were known to eat psychedelic mushrooms. Were talking about trimmings here before some of the raids that they conducted or not the soldiers had been known to used you to use mass to be able to fight on and march longer. Couldnt these be considered a form of body hacking for soldiers . Yeah, its a very esta