“The brain is the 21st century battlescape.” as posited by Dr. James Giordano, indicates warfare materialising a new dimension altogether; covert operatives crossing invisible lines through invisible means — neuromodulation, implantable brain-machine interfaces, organic neurotoxins, nanoneurotechnologicals. There are agencies and governments all over the world investing heavily in brain warfare. This is obvious if you look at the fact that all major state actors have initiated large-scale neuroscientific projects within the past several years, and military organisations or national defence agencies are funding a vast degree of that research, although seemingly all for the civilian good. What this really indicates is dual-use at its finest — scientific progress and medical breakthroughs being repurposed for other agenda.
What neuroscientific breakthroughs have propelled is an almost dystopian nature of things: soldiers can be cognitively linked with semi-autonomous robots, microchips called “neurograins” the size of salt can record and re-write neurological activity, fear instinct can be pharmaceutically eliminated from the brain. As per a report by the Royal Society, the military applications of such technologies can broadly be classified in two directions: performance enhancement and performance degradation or weaponisation.
Neuro-weaponisation
Neuroweapons are actually not relatively new phenomena, despite how avant-garde they sound. Historically, chemical nerve agents were first developed in Nazi Germany and have subsequently been used by Iraq against Iran in the Gulf war during the 80s, employed by the Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo in the Matsumoto and Tokyo subway attacks in 1994 and 1995 respectively, and in the 21st century, have played role in the assassination of Kim Jong Nam as well in several attempted assassinations in Russia. There was a case in 2016, after which “Havana syndrome” was coined as a term to describe the effects of the attacks of unknown origin on US diplomats in Cuba, which elicited symptoms ranging from hearing noises to loss of cognitive functions. Other reports of such suspected cases, from government officials in particular, span the globe across Moscow, Shanghai, half of the countries of Europe, and even Australia, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Taiwan, and Uzbekistan.
The more recent class of development in neuroweaponry is now focused on performance augmentation. And while this has always existed in the military through the utilisation of drugs — for example, to remain focused under sleep-deprived conditions — currently, we’re looking into neural interfaces.
Neuro-alteration
Currently, non-invasive neuromodulation techniques like Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Electroencapholography (EEG) are commonly being used to enhance and conceivably improve attention and focus in military personnel by delivering pulses of electric current or magnetism to certain targeted areas of the brain. However, such brain stimulation is accompanied with its own set of indefinites — unknown downstream effects, escaped scattering of impulses, inconsistent parameters, etc. Therefore researchers are and have been for a while, focusing on how to attain more precision with signal resolution for decoding and encoding such signals. Recently, researchers at Institute of Brain Science and Yonsei University in South Korea had a breakthrough by using magnetised nanoparticles to control very specific neuro-circuits in mice, which enabled them to selectively alter feeding appetite, induce parenting behaviour and remodel social patterns.
There also have been multiple projects launched focusing on the bidirectionality of brain-computer interfaces — BCIs which are essentially capable of both extracting and processing neurological signals as well as transmitting instructions directly into the brain, and they’re usually paired with AI to do so. The most famous example of this is Neuralink — an implant that is already capable of aiding subjects in controlling devices with their thoughts; from playing chess and videogames to translating unspoken speech, all directly from the mind. Although the research is still at its infancy, it is rapidly advancing, and the ultimate outcome of bidirectional BCIs could enable anything from controlling unmanned aerial vehicles to telepathic troop communication. But such interfaces present accessibility and opportunity into large amounts of biodata — the algorithms involved can not only interpret, record, and decode thoughts, feelings, and moods, but also change them. This not only raises the concern for privacy and control of extremely sensitive particulars, but also the question of the intricacy of identity and internal independence. Upon neural integration with a robotic system, how much of one’s own thoughts or emotions are of one’s own volition? There is also further concern of what fatal consequences there would be could these interfaces be hacked into by adversarial parties.
While such technology and advancement is far from infiltrating the current parameters of society, it certainly is already doing so within the military. Back in 2022, in a military application study, the Republic of Korean Army demonstrated how brain waves alteration with EEG and BCI technology conducively improved control and shooting accuracy. The US defense organisation Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been running similar if not more extensive trials since 2016, which are increasingly advancing with every year.
On the Aspect of Consent
In the military, order and command is a stringent doctrine so inextricably encoded in the system there is no room for hesitation, and defiance is an infraction. It is an entirely different world from the civilian normality we live in, and a soldier is never in the position to question any authority. So, that leads us to the question: how free are enlisters to truly consent on their own accord to any of the trials the military runs? And, consent quite delicately operates on a balance of information transparency and complete self-autonomy. Which seems reasonably dubious considering the military. The human brain is the least understood and most complex biological system. Intervening with it not only poses medical and biological risks, but also has implications for moral and personal identity. Subjecting soldiers to neuro-alteration could very well mean redefining what it means to be human for them.
On the Aspect of Favourability
On the other hand, brain research is also making groundbreaking progress on the virtuous side of things. Very recently, there’s been a breakthrough with a compound known as Ibogaine to treat PTSD and traumatic brain injuries in war veterans, and the effectiveness rate of this treatment is life-changing. With bionic advancement, tissue-integrated prosthetics that directly link to the body’s muscles and nerves are allowing for finer neuro-control, enabling seamless interaction between the robotic limb and self. This is revitalising for amputees, especially soldiers who’ve lost their limbs in war. Within the last three years of the Russo-Ukraine war, as many as 100,000 soldiers lost their limbs in combat. Fortunately however, this has siphoned some pre-eminent surgeons to Kyiv in the aim of restoring functionality with the new technology in place.
Brain organoids — the term for a 3D co-agglomeration of human neural cells grown on a chip — are redefining boundaries for testing grounds: enabling the testing of neurotoxins and antidotes and studying blast impact on neural tissues. There’s even potential of therapeutic repair by implantation of the organoid directly into the brain currently being researched. This line of research has so far been funded by both DARPA and the Australian military.
Neuroethics of it all
While there are neuroethical laws governing the medical field, there are no such legal frameworks in place for dual-use applications or experimental studies when it comes to neurotechnological development pervading the militarian arena. This puts soldiers in the military at an exploitative disadvantage, especially when they already are in a position vulnerable to intra-systematic pressure and coercion; a closed domain sensitive to lack of consent and lack of adequate information relay is essentially manipulative of human rights of awareness and independence.
As of May 2025, UNESCO did finalise a draft of the “Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology” which interdicts neurotechnology’s use in unlawful interrogation and coercive behavioural conformity, advocates governmental transparency and public disclosure, outlines data privacy issues and cybersecurity standards, and also explicitly addresses the dual-use of neurotechnology in research. However, this has not yet been officially adopted, and is far from being propelled into practice by the member states.
Geopolitical consequences
The stated logic behind this degree of investment in the neuro-armament race as put forward by the major countries, is that opposing countries cannot be trusted to not advance themselves in this domain as means of potential attack and advantage, and therefore doing the same is a standardised equalisation on the grounds of territorial defense and transnational power. However, this reasoning about the equalising effect is misaligned with the diametric conditions of reality. This is because most of the technical power in this realm of development is limited to very few countries. Within 2000-2020, 87% of all IP5 patents in the field of neurotechnology came from six countries alone — US, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany and France.
Development towards neuro-war puts economically and developmentally lagging countries at sizable disadvantage in the geopolitical scenario, whether it be at negotiations or warfront. Global inequalities are going to be exacerbated, and all strategic power is likely to be entirely monopolised by the few major existing powers.
The very existence of human beings is indissoluble from their humanity; relationships and society, built and complexified by the evolutionary nature of our interactions, are more crucially shaped by the intrinsic solvency of being humane. Understanding how technology, information, and practices are warping and transforming this very nature of us, is key to safeguarding democratic congeniality. As society and technology progresses and evolves, we need to articulate where the boundaries are, highlight the overlap of progress and destruction, and necessitate rules and laws that protect us from creating a world where basic rights and equality cannot keep up with the rapid pace of modernisation.
