Imagining War in the Neurotechnological Age

According to neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, founding member of NeuroRights Foundation, “We are entering a world, where technologies no longer simply threaten our bodies. They are directly affecting our minds” (quoted in Evans, 2022). In this new neurotechnological age, which is characterized by a growing geopolitical neurobiological and Artificial Intelligence (AI) arms race (NSI, 2017a: 20), traditional concepts of war, security and peace are increasingly replaced by terms such as “cognitive warfare” (NATO, 2021), “neurodeterrence” (NSI, 2012: 50), and “digital biosecurity” (Giordano and DiEuliis, 2021: 22).

In my article “The Biopolitics of Algorithmic Governmentality: How the US Military Imagines War in the Age of Neurobiology and Artificial Intelligence”, I scrutinize how the neurotechnological age is seen to reshape how war is practiced and defined within the US military – ostensibly offering both new governing tools for predictive and pre-emptive warfare as well as new vulnerabilities and threats. To do this, I trace how the US military has sponsored interdisciplinary collaboration between the neurosciences and the computer sciences through what is called the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) programme – a US interagency network sponsored and facilitated by the US Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff.

While the rise of AI and algorithmic governance is often claimed to replace or decenter the human, eschewing the “need to acknowledge the motives and beliefs that shape actual behaviour” (Duffield, 2016: 147), researchers within the SMA programme speak of AI as a “force multiplier” (NSI, 2018: 25) for neuroscience, and as spearheading a “neurocognitive revolution” made possible by the “fusion of techniques for looking into the brain and changing behavior” (NSI, 2017: 16). According to James Giordano, Senior Science Advisory Fellow to the SMA programme, “neuroscience may have ‘put the brain at our fingertips’, but neuroscientific information and the insights – and capability – it yields will not be operational to the extent needed for national security intelligence and defense without the scope and depth of informational use that will be afforded by big data approaches” (NSI, 2014: 42). What makes algorithmic interventions into the human mind possible according to the SMA programme is what they refer to as the increasing availability of neurodata garnered by emerging biotechnologies. Within the SMA programme, large scale collection of neurological data has been described as an “implicit measure” (NSI, 2018: 51), a means to make “unconscious, involuntary, and often unknown features” (NSI, 2018: 49) accessible to algorithmic correlative analysis and intervention.

As I discuss in the article, the synergies between AI and neuroscience in military practice and discourse have serious implications for how we understand the relation between war, politics as well as peace and freedom. Indeed, within the US military, the neurotechnological age is seen to move the spatio-temporality of war even further “left of bang” (Giordano and DiEuliis, 2021: 17) than the current use of crowdsourcing predictive algorithms is held to make possible, firmly disbanding any distinction between war and peace (NSI, 2015). What characterizes this war, I argue, is a synergy between human and algorithmic forms of security, through which our emotions, subjectivity, and inner life are made accessible to the algorithm, and hence are translated into objects of security, surveillance and control.

References: Duffield M (2016) The Resilience of the Ruins: Towards a Critique of Digital Humanitarianism. Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses 4(3), 147-165. Evans B (2022) Histories of Violence: Why We Need a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Brad Evans Interviews Rafael Yuste. LA Review of Books, 5 September.

Giordano J and DiEuliis D (2021) Emerging neuroscience and technology (NeuroS/T): Current and near-term risks and threats to US—and global—biosecurity. A strategic multilayer assessment invited perspective paper. Available at: https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SMA-Invited-Perspective\_Emerging-NeuroST\_Giordano-and-DiEuliis\_FINAL.pdf (accessed 27 December 2022).

NATO (2021) Cognitive Warfare: First NATO scientific meeting on Cognitive Warfare, Bordeaux (France), 21 June. Available at: https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Cognitive%20Warfare%20Symposium%20-%20ENSC%20-%20March%202022%20Publication.pdf (accessed 27 December 2022).

NSI (2012) A world in transformation: Challenges and opportunities: Strategic multilayer assessment, 6th annual conference, 6–8 November. Available at: https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/A-World-in-Transformation-Challenges-and-Opportunities-6th-Annual-Conference.pdf (accessed 27 December 2022). NSI (2014) 8th Annual Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) Conference 28-29 October 2014: A New Information Paradigm? From Genes to Big Data and Instagram to Persistent Surveillance: Implications for National Security. Available at: https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/A-New-Information-Paradigm-From-Genes-to-Big-Data-and-Instagram-to-Persistent-Surveillance...Implications-for-National-Security.pdf (accessed 27 December 2022).

NSI (2015b) No War/No Peace: A New Paradigm in International Relations and a New Normal. Available at: https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/No-WarNo-Peace…A-New-Paradigm-in-International-Relations-and-a-New-Normal.pdf (accessed 19 September 2023).

NSI (2017) 10th Annual Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) Conference. Jointly held with DHS, NCTC, DNI/NIC. From Control to Influence? A View of—and Vision for—the Future. Joint Base Andrews, 25-26 April. Available at: https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/U_Final_SMA-Conference-Proceedings-25-26-April-2017.pdf (accessed 27 December 2022).

NSI (2018) SMA white paper: What do others think and how do we know what they are thinking? Available at:https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/White-Paper_What-Do-Others-Think_March2018_FINAL.pdf (accessed 27 December 2022).