This Is Your Brain on War

Could pills one day replace bullets in an army's arsenal? It might sound like science fiction, but thanks to new advances in pharmaceuticals and neuroscience, the next generation of conflict may indeed move from the battlefield to the brain. That's according to a recent report commissioned by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to map the future of cognitive warfare.

Combat in years to come, according to the report, will be dramatically influenced by breakthroughs in neuroscience that can be adapted for defense purposes. These developments might involve improving a soldier’s ability to process information with chemicals that alter brain chemistry or computer hardware that interfaces directly with the brain. "There’s the potential to not only bring someone up to a certain level of function, but actually enhance their function, make them smarter or faster than they would be otherwise," says Jonathan Moreno, an expert on neuroscience and warfare at the Center for American Progress who worked on the report.

Building a brighter, brainier army certainly isn’t the only goal. The U.S. military is also interested in applications that impair its enemies' performance. These could range from neural-imaging technologies that tell interrogators when a prisoner is lying, to aerosols that destroy an adversary's will to fight or drugs that alter their moods, even increasing their trust as they are attacked.

And when it comes to laying the groundwork for this future mind warfare, it's the for-profit pharmaceutical sector that often conducts the necessary research. Aging baby boomers in the United States are driving "a growing market for cognitive enhancers" that can be adapted for military purposes, says Diane Griffin, a professor of microbiology at Johns Hopkins University who also contributed to the report.

Unfortunately, lax rules about human experimentation in other countries could mean that advances abroad might "parallel or even outstrip the ... work being done in the West," according to the study. The authors single out China and Iran as potential foes in this brave new war, with active programs in advanced neuroscience and keen state interests in military applications. On the battlefield, it seems, today's firepower might not stand a chance against tomorrow's brainpower.