To maybe a genetically modified human sideboard hybrid. While those things are 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 to make folders 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 their reputed substances or chemicals in the body to tell them good. Not to respond to disruption. Its like a mini factory of good bacteria. 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 under way 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 millions of dollars pour in from both the Venture Capital and the d o. D. And so here to discuss this potential game changer in warfare. Well, bring in professor arman krishnan, 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 neuro science and the coming age of neuro warfare. Whats it about . What prompted you to delve into this topic . But its about motor applications of neuro science and you of Human Performance enhancement, as well as Human Performance the, your great degree vision. And also in terms of the use for intelligence. And does things like determining whether somebodys assess the truth or not. 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 talking this Weapon Systems. As i found that Artificial Intelligence research relates strongly to austin, nor science research. So i think the Intelligence Research has tried to build an artificial brain to this model on the human brain. And thats why the 2 pos overlap. So lets go beyond psychological warfare. Cy, off or, or even the information more that we have now enter the age of what many would colloquially call body hacking, or what the pentagon calls Synthetic Biology research. One of many darpa projects right now is called n 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 spot, rather than by computer. How and, and why would this be a desirable application for the military . But it makes, it has been interested in brand computer enterprise systems, the least amount in the sixtys. The dont idea is to combine the high cognitive abilities of the human brain. Thats the response times of machines. So by perry, 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 the top of project from 2013, which requires and then basic approaches. 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 that are 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 4th Grade Computers into phase the. So where you have a seamless connection between the human brain and the computers. So you could allow them to control a computer or a machine by thought. So that is quite powerful and yeah, but they are now trying to do is to have a non Invasive Technology which can perform a list of some but a better them, but 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 helmet like device. So you dont have to come in and modify your soldiers. And you dont have to take a huge medical risk that comes with that so, so that was kind of the context why theyre trying to do it. Assign just called robert free test, who is a Nano Technology researcher 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 breeze. And how might this be a plaque of all the soldiers on the battlefield may have cross, you would like to have soldiers, we have great and durance. We have greater strength 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 high. Yeah. Anything thats kind of accomplish that is obviously desirable approach is called nano 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 greater and yours and to call before this 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, especially as a concerns of things that can 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 the t stuff. 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, is this concept even feasible . And when that 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 as to 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 connect 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 existing kind of technology, you can do it with the zeros injections. So we can potentially insert some new genes into the body as well into something organs. And yeah, its quite possible that the Chinese Military is already working on this. And that the us luxury is also considering that fairly seriously. Course the technology can be generally used for modify 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 a director of National Intelligence before radcliffe. So, as you suggested in 2016, the chris, but technology is low cost, an easy and difficult amounts to a weapon of mass destruction if it was of use a. So we would be talking about potentially modifying a 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 ross. 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, not most of the doors, and they can be used for delivering some nor toxin or a some biological agent. So, so that is a much one year term for us. All right, coming up next has soldier, body hacking, actually, existence for a millennia. Well discuss it when we return with professor arman christian in sit tight. The ammo will be right back. The russian states never is as tight as im turning. The no sense community not getting hold of all sun set up, the same assistance must be the one else calls question about this, even though we will then in the european union, the kremlin media mission, the state on rochester routing and split the r t spoke neck even our video agency, roughly all the band on youtube, the Tenant Services question, did you say stephen twist, which is the take a fresh look around his life. Kaleidoscopic isnt just a shifted reality distortion by power to division with no real opinions. Fixtures designed to simplify will confuse who really wants a better wills, and is it just because it shows you fractured images, presented as fast . Can you see through their illusion going underground . Can the welcome back to the m. O. I manila chad with the advancement of a i 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 solution set to protect more fighters in the homeland against intentional or accidental misuse. G, no editing technologies prevent and or reverse on want in 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 to their weapons. So they were present totally different capabilities. So machines can do certain 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 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 a thomas 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 telling them is Weapon Systems for that. The risks of some ti talked to great. And or the a, i show some promise about also some very substantial and inherent problems with it. And so for example, yeah, i realize more than networks that learn by themselves. So nobody knows how they evolved over time. So you can simply put an economist, Weapon System in the field, and hope for the best. You know, i dont 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, i distort the, the eyes Decision Making and even fix the i to attack on forces or civilians. I say, i dont think you can do away with humans or just a, i dont think that is a feasible. Now on that note, as, as you 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 could be the part of that . What is defined as an x of for us to compare the and i need to do, oh, well, so you cannot have a war where you do not inflict some sort of pain on the enemy or causing some financial 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 would be participating as collateral damage. So you will never be able to eliminate that kind of risk. And the only way you could have a bloodless floor 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 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 ancient times and the greek philosopher, the title was suggested to that. And this has been also implemented in modern times. If you think of the s s Reading Program course leaving spawn. 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 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. Im to, 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 established method of Human Performance enhancement. And obviously majors have used it for a long time. And the person i mean, was giving the soldiers cocaine in the 19th century. And so that goes back a long time. And obviously you have no synthetic drugs like math, im settlement that was used by them often in the 2nd world war. And also was use the logic stand by the American Military in vietnam. So that is not something unusual. Obviously you have some downsize that comes to drugs so you can get a highly irrational, unpredictable, the idea as a result of those drugs does the risk of addiction and asterisk, of other kinds of Health Damage to the follows from this. So the use of drugs is not ideal. Um, but its a, its a reality more. Do you think the automated Weapon Systems are a competitor to the concept of genetically altered super soldiers and, and that would be the success of ai and economists. Weapons that this field of research will drop out of the limelight and not receive as much funding in the future. I dont see that happening at all. I think the potential for your husband is exaggerated a lot, especially recently. So there are lots of downsides to a i dont think that you can get rid of the human on the battlefield. What do you smoke or is trying to do is to pair soldiers list. Im sending autonomous machines. So you would have soldiers directing a set of drones or other types of robots that would assist the soldier in the task. So. So that is clearly not something that they would prefer to the possibility of just putting in autonomy a system into the field. And then hoping that it does the job as intended. So you might have a big problem with controlling autonomous Weapon Systems. So if youre dealing with no networks and they might be able to develop the capability of circumventing certain programming, and then you might use control over those machines that doesnt amount to the front of the machine becoming self aware and fighting against humanity. But it can result in the machine doing something really stupid, and that kind of have very serious consequences. So you have to consider that autonomous Weapon Systems have extremely Fast Response funds. So when something goes wrong, it might be too late for us, human to effectively intervene and in that, and you might get some knock on effects that are uncontrollable. So the machine much destroyed a satellite and space and it might be an Early Warning sort a lot. The other side might consider that is the start of an attack and much launch new to a weapons. A sort of is something that is a real and a very scary possibility. Assessing fee to not look for ways of ensuring that theres sufficient human control overdose machines. I dont think it is a viable or reasonable option to let those machines just operate by themselves. Do you need to have humans that are nearby and that can potentially intervene in that . If something goes wrong, professor arman christian and author of the book, military neuroscience and the coming age of narrow warfare. Thank you so much for that informative. And if im being honest, truly frightening conversation, thank you. All right, thats going to do it for this episode of modus operandi the show that dig deep into Foreign Policy and current affairs. Im your host manila. Chad. Thank you so much for tuning in. Well see you again next time to figure out the, the 196 the us i saw was returning to peaceful life with the newspapers didnt report ongoing massacres and the ukranian saw, according to intelligence ukrainian nationalist and the ukranian in search of ami said by real mind shall give each the joy to these atrocities. For future was the best hold at the old school and what, but i senior to sell school knew what to do. I to be like this is of course well do a new one. Obviously the plaintiff was the head of the n, k, v d sabotaged department at the time he was tasked with stopping the atrocities in ukraine for good reason, general sort of blonde. It was very familiar with the situation. Hes had experience finding the nationalist before the war named, loveless, take on that, a z a do. Its a negative. So didnt know, could i e, but it was, well thats funny. So give me the task was tremendously difficult, but suit up a lot that was determined to complete his. He had personal accounts to settle with the ukrainian nationalist the most affordable cuz it was the business. And you agree in the 3 of the day that was chosen . You know mary, comes green when you wrote it, you would just go through this desktop. Sure, absolutely. And ill see if i can provide you with stuff such and show him was not sure of the different incident in full, which of course and yet usually throw in the probably just a moment. That was curious if it was just the or that was sent to you yesterday i just checked the top 3 yours man. Im looking at these studies for civilian forge, of twice to, for me to on, on, on their, to their which, which is a little bit emotionally just some of the posted sustainable loan because of this new way to close or do school goals . Was there any, dont know whos the guy . No, for the dont know as much of a, just a do given me other than a year for us to sort of these best opinion finance has come up with the we are close to concluding agreements with 6 african states where we intend to supply food free of charge, including logistics, we will start deliveries in the next couple of weeks. Were setting up president s by the met fruits and says, russia is all set to send free grand shipments to africa as he meets with the tech is to be the red ship. Uh, do you wanna come all over at spec link, food and secure z, impulsively reducing the black sea green deal. Unofficial, the south african investigation refutes a us claim that the country had hosted a vessel tank. Weapons bouncer, russia. None of the person who made these on vacation could provide any evidence to support the claims that had been