Military Neuroenhancement and Risk Assessment - Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense - page 245

Seriousness
A risk of death or serious physical or psychological harm is understandably seen
differently than the risk of a scratch or a temporary power failure or slight monetary
costs. But the attempt to make serious risks nonexistent may turn out to be prohibi-
tively expensive. What, if any, serious risks from military neuroenhancements are
acceptable—and to whom: soldiers, noncombatants, one's family, the rest of one's
environment, or anything else?
Probability
This is often conflated with seriousness but is conceptually quite distinct. The seri-
ousness of the risk of a 15-km asteroid hitting Earth is quite high (possible human
extinction), but the probability is reassuringly low (though not zero, as perhaps the
dinosaurs discovered). What is the probability of harm from military neuroen-
hancements? How much certainty can we have in estimating this probability? What
probability of serious harm is acceptable? What probability of moderate harm is
acceptable? What probability of mild harm is acceptable?
Who Determines Acceptable Risk?
In all social theorizing, the understanding of concepts retains a certain degree of
fluidity, dependent in part upon how those in power or epistemic authority deter-
mine their meaning. The concept of risk, which includes psychological, legal, and
economic considerations as well as ethical ones, is certainly no different. Hence, the
concept of an acceptable risk—or an unacceptable one—is at least in part socially
constructed. In various other social contexts, all of the following have been defended
as proper methods for determining that a risk is unacceptable (Lin et al. 2008).
Good-faith subjective standard : Under this standard, it would be left up to
each individual to determine whether an unacceptable risk exists. That
would involve questions such as the following: Can soldiers in the battle-
field be trusted to make wise choices about acceptable risk? The problem
of nonvoluntary risk borne by civilian noncombatants makes this standard
impossible to defend, in addition to the problems raised by the idiosyncra-
sies of human risk-aversion and the requirements of the chain of command
and the reasonable expectation that orders will be carried out.
The reasonable-person standard : An unacceptable risk might be simply what
a fair, informed member of a relevant community believes to be an unac-
ceptable risk. Can we substitute military regulations or some other basis for
what a “reasonable person” would think for the difficult-to-foresee vaga-
ries of conditions in the field and the subjective judgment of soldiers? Or
what kind of judgment would we expect an enhanced warfighter to have:
would we trust them to accurately determine and act upon the assessed risk?
Would they be better—or worse—than an “ordinary” soldier in risk assess-
ment? Would their enhanced powers distort their judgment?
Objective standard : An unacceptable risk requires evidence and/or expert
testimony as to the reality of, and unacceptability of, the risk. But there