Can (and Should) We Regulate Neurosecurity? - Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense - page 251

On the one hand, there have been failures in design; these are failures that
result from bad science. For instance, a freedom of information act request by
the (now defunct) Sunshine Project in 2005 revealed that the U.S. Air Force
considered spending several million dollars in an attempt to develop a gay bomb.
As noted on the Project's website (offline since February 2013), the use of such a
weapon could adversely alter discipline and morale in enemy units; a distasteful
but nonlethal example would be the use of strong aphrodisiacs to induce rampant
(homo)sexual behavior. With the gay bomb deployed, or so the thought went,
enemy soldiers would be too preoccupied with sexual lust for their fellow sol-
diers to take up arms and engage in military actions. Needless to say, a gay bomb
was never developed; it was never developed because it was a failure from the
very beginning: a failure in design, a failure in being based upon flawed science
and logic. Homosexuals have served openly in the military of countries such as
Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, and the Netherlands (McLean and
Singer 2010). In 2011, the United States joined this list with its abandonment of
“don't ask, don't tell.” Soldiers from these countries were/are just as capable as
their heterosexual counterparts in fulfilling their military duties, despite the “gay
bomb” effect(s) of their nature and nurturance.
There are also failures in implementation: these are based on sound science, but
fail at the point at which sound science is implemented for military ends. A tragic
example of this unfolded in 2002 in Moscow. Chechen militants took nearly 900
civilians hostage at the Dubrovka Theater. After a two-day siege, Russian forces
pumped aerosolized fentanyl (an opiate analgesic commonly used during medical
procedures) into the theater. Russian forces weaponized a medical intervention as a
means to disable terrorists. The problem was that the use of fentanyl did not discrim-
inate between terrorist and hostage. When Russian forces subsequently assaulted
the theater, it became obvious that terrorists and hostages alike had not just been
sedated but were killed by the drug. The Russian government has closely guarded the
details and cause of death of those hostages involved, but best estimates posit roughly
150-200 dead from fentanyl overdose, and several hundred more suffer long-term
disability from fentanyl poisoning (Pilch 2003).
Lesson Two from history is that the relationship between science and the military
presents a mixed bag of successes … and failures . What is more, neurosecurity
seems to be particularly vulnerable to failures, in part because neuroscience itself
is a complex—and somewhat nascent—science. So let us not simply look to the
Manhattan Project as representative of science “getting it right.” There are plenty of
gay bombs and fentanyls that “get it wrong,” which raises significant concerns in the
ethical discourse.
l essOn T hree : n eurOsecuriTy i s n OT T TOTally u nique
This volume is devoted to neurotechnology in national security and defense. It is
focused specifically on the intersection of neuroscience and the military because
this raises a unique set of ethical concerns. But it is important to realize that (1) the
military engaged science and technology long before neuroscience was a discipline,
and (2) other sciences also can raise ethical issues.