Are Cyborg Warriors a Good Idea?

You already have a lot to worry about. Climate change, fake news, inequality, the stability of democracy. But I feel obliged to point out yet another threat: soldiers whose capabilities are enhanced by electronic devices implanted in their brains. Call them cyborg warriors.

Science fiction has been warning about cyborg warriors for a long time, mainstream journalism not so much. But several recent articles have focused on this potential peril, including one in The Atlantic titled “The Pentagon Wants to Weaponize the Brain.” The subtitle asks, “What Could Go Wrong?”

Journalist Michael Joseph Gross reports on efforts of the Pentagon’s think tank, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to create technologies that result in “merging minds and machines.” The most dramatic are brain chips, arrays of electrodes that, when implanted in the brain, can receive electrical signals from and send them to neural tissue.