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Just started playing with Twitter @michaelb8309 and have already come across some very interesting people. One of them is Natalie Sambhi @securityscholar a defence analyst operating from Canberra and Jakarta. She blogs with N.R. Jenzen-Jones at Security Scholar and edits The Strategist. Ms. Sambhi recently tweeted a handful of links that lead to articles and papers that go way beyond the ethics and legality of armed drone strikes. I promptly forwarded them to a couple of my like-minded pals. Here they are in case you like digging into the fine grain details:
- Could Human Enhancement Turn Soldiers Into Weapons That Violate International Law? Yes The Atlantic
- Enhanced Warfighters: Risk, Ethics, and Policy The Greenwall Foundation
- More Than Human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers The Atlantic
- Brain Waves Module 3: Neuroscience, conflict, and security The Royal Society
- It Could Be A War Crime To Use Biologically Enhanced Soldiers The Atlantic
Could "enhanced humans...plausibly count as [legally proscribed] 'biological agents?'" That feels like a stretch, but then again, the atomic bomb was a science fiction idea for which we had no ethics or legal precedent a mere 69 years ago.
I'm tempted to hope that biologically enhanced, cybernetically augmented, super soldiers would make wars less frequent and shorter. Of course Hiram Maxim and Alfred Nobel once hoped the same for their inventions.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-hunt/7089511421/in/pool-cps_excursions
An interesting thought experiment. I belief is that one possible boundary would be where the enhancement moves from helping the soldier, vaccines, voluntarily taken meds. To more overt enhancements.
ReplyDeletePerhaps one way to draw the boundary would be to speculate if such an enhancement would be useful commercially in peacetime. Lasik night vision for law enforvement and security, implanted GPS for cab drivers and tour guides.
Toying with someone's conscience could be a literal double edged sword. That which makes a person to quicker on the trigger can result in shots that shouldnt have been taken. I can only speak for the army, current training has changed quite a bit just from the 70's till now. From if they arent your guys, you light them up, to frequent use of COBs (civilians on the battlefield). Often training events hinge on correct use of rules of engagemnet and escalation of force. When, or even should you shoot.
I ponder at times if the incidences of PTSD were higher or lower for "nobler" wars such as WWII where we were fighting for something perceived as more important that the spread of communism or whatever todays designated evil is. It would likely be hard to measure, since being labeled as suffering from mental issues used to be avoided at all costs due to it's stigma.
One interesting book on how we enhance soldiers "holistically" this is "On Killing" by Dave Grossman.