Neuroscience and War

The New Scientist examines the use of neuroscience in developing better soldiers.

If a soldier is struggling, a digital “buddy” might step in and warn them about nearby threats, or advise comrades to zap them with an electromagnet to increase their alertness. If the whole unit is falling apart, biosensors could warn central commanders to send in a replacement team.

I have a problem with the far-term (10-20 years) goal of in-vehicle transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS; “zap them with an electromagnet”).  It just hasn’t been studied enough to know if there are any significant long-term effects associated with TMS.  Putting troops at risk unnecessarily reveals the problem here: you have too many non-military, experimental scientists working together.  There needs to be more overlap.  The scientists need to know what it’s like to be a soldier, with a pregnant wife at home, wondering if all that brain zapping is going to give him Alzheimer’s.  (And why couldn’t you just do it pharmacologically?  Seems easier to carry adenosine-blocking pills than a TMS.)

Moreover, I think the approach is all wrong.  American soldiers are at the top of the food chain.  If you work to improve their current capabilities, you’re struggling for single-digit yields.  Nothing you do is going to make, for example, a 10% difference in performance.  I think a superior goal would be to improve our intelligence-gathering using neuroscience; namely, truth detection (for interrogation).  Improving non-combat intelligence will lead to amazingly-better battlefield outcomes with what we currently have.  More importantly, we can then fight insurgency on our terms, not theirs: good truth detection should lead to fast and efficient capture of enemy commanders (like Osama Bin Laden).  And isn’t that the whole point?