Post by Steve Gardner on Jun 10, 2008 14:43:48 GMT
This is the Executive Summary of the document referred to in the WIRED article cited in the thread posted earlier in the Science, Technology & Nature board entitled, Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes.
Taken together with the article posted in the same board about how a Trust drug may cure social phobia and the case made by the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council that Kids set for 'Matrix' future, you've got to wonder what sort of furture we're creating for ourselves.
Source: Federation of American Scientists
Taken together with the article posted in the same board about how a Trust drug may cure social phobia and the case made by the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council that Kids set for 'Matrix' future, you've got to wonder what sort of furture we're creating for ourselves.
Source: Federation of American Scientists
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The fields of neuroscience, psycho-pharmacology, and cognition are in rapid flux because new scientific tools have provided the capability to develop fundamental understanding of linkages among brain activity, electrical and chemical stimulation, and human behavior. Applications to human performance modification are being driven primarily by medical needs, e.g., “cognitive repair,” and there are significant new technological developments in this area. As a result, there is popular excitement about, and thus commercial markets for possible applications in “cognitive enhancement.” This area is certain to be investigated extensively over the next decade. Awareness of developments in cognitive performance enhancement, including cultural differences in adoption, will be important because these may affect the behavior and effectiveness of opposing military forces in both symmetric and asymmetric warfare. The findings and recommendations of our study fall under three categories, evaluation of military effectiveness, brain plasticity, and brain-computer interface as outlined below.
Evaluation of Military EffectivenessFindings:
1. There already exists outstanding in-house (military) U.S. expertise in assessment of human factors. This internal expertise is essential for evaluating how developments in human performance might be used by adversaries. Extrapolation of civilian research to military scenarios cannot be relied upon to yield useful conclusions.
2. The most immediate human performance factor in military effectiveness is degradation of performance under stressful conditions, particularly sleep deprivation. If an opposing force had a significant sleep advantage, this would pose a serious threat. However, the technical likelihood of such a development is small at present.
3. Normal cultural assessments of the effects of human performance improvement are likely to lead to incorrect conclusions with regard to military effectiveness. Furthermore, the publicity and scientific literature regarding human performance enhancement can easily be misinterpreted, yielding incorrect conclusions about potential military applications.
4. A broad range of nutritional supplements advertised to have some performance-enhancing effect is reportedly often used by soldiers on their own initiative. The effects of such supplements are generally small and have high variability from person to person. Such effects are unlikely to find direct military utility. However, the unregulated supplement supply train does present a vulnerability to attack.
Recommendations:
1. Maintain a strong internal research activity, with concomitant personnel expertise, because this is crucial for evaluation of potential threats based on the activityof adversaries in human performance modification.
2. Monitor enemy activities in sleep research, and maintain close understanding of open source sleep research. Use in-house military research on the safety and effectiveness of newly developing drugs for ameliorating the effects of sleep deprivation, such as ampakines, as a baseline for evaluating potential activities of adversaries.
3. Develop a corps of trained analysts capable of evaluating technical developments in human performance modification. These analysts should be trained in assessing the meaning of statistical metrics, and also in assessig the experimental methods and results of the original scientific literature on which claims are based.
4. Mitigate potential attacks to the supplement supply by educating military personnel regarding the risks, developing awareness of the gray market supply, and implementing a testing program for soldiers to use to verify that the supplements they have bought are safe.
Brain PlasticityFindings:
1. Increasing scientific understanding of the mechanisms of brain plasticity has lead to the development of training regimens for permanently establishing new neural pathways, and thus new cognitive capabilities. Adversaries could use such scientifically designed training regime’s to increase troop effectiveness or modify troop behavior and/or emotional responses.
2. New types of neuropharmaceuticals are being developed that more directly target synaptic firing, and thus impact brain plasticity far more effectively than existing drugs (e.g., modafinil, donepezil). When approved for use, these new drugs will certainly have extensive off-label use for improvement of memory and cognitive performance. These drugs may have the additional effect of weakening or overwriting existing memories. Depending on the ultimate performance of these drugs, adversaries might use them in training programs or field operations.
Recommendations:
1. The US should monitor the state of the art in training capabilities, and evaluate their impact in military scenarios. Specific actions should include:(a) Use neuroscience tools to evaluate training effectiveness in US Military programs, and thus develop quantitative understanding of the levels and types of changes possible.
(b) Develop information training activities adversaries.
(c) Develop information about popular/commercial activities in training and how these may differ in cultures of adversaries.
2. The US should closely monitor the uses and capabilities of the new classes of plasticity-enhancing neuropharmaceuticals that are under development. The prevalence and effectiveness of these drugs in off-label uses in the US will be a significant indicator of how they may be used by adversaries. The market for these drugs in foreign cultures should also be monitored.
Brian-Computer InterfaceFindings:
1. The ability to pick up electrical signals from the brain externally using EEG is well documented and has important applications in improving the quality of life for tetraplegics. The technique is, however, slow (10s of bits of information transfer per minute) and subject to electromyographic noise due to physical movement even at the level of eye movements. The potential for field applications is not evident.
2. The ability to modify brain activity using external stimuli (transcranial magnetic stimulation or direct current stimulation) is also well documented, however the ability to predict or control the response remains phenomenological.
3. The use of motor-nerve signals has proven valuable in controlling prosthetics and in providing feedback for recovering function following strokes or brain trauma.
4. Neural implants involving connections through specific nerve bundles (e.g., ocular, optical) have shown dramatic results for ameliorating severe disabilities, however the level of improvement in all cases is well below the level of normal function.
5. Direct implants into the brain most often involve undifferentiated stimulation of a locality in the brain (rather than individual contacts to neurons or synapses), and for humans have been limited to intransigent medical conditions. The demonstrated level of behavior control (in animal studies) has involved simple stimuli that either simulate known physical (sensory) signals for specific actions, or provide a “rewarding impulse.
6. At present the primary threat potential for adversarial use of a Brain-Computer interface may arise in a feedback mode, in which a the interface provides a soldier with a simple signal or a pain/pleasure pulse in response to externally provided situational information. Longer term adversarial developmentsmay include prosthetic applications providing specialized sensory input or mechanical output.
Recommendations:
1. The US should maintain awareness of medical advances in brain-computer interface, especially use in prosthetic devices, and monitor any developing non-medical applications closely. The US should monitor how such developments are proceeding in other cultures.