A

s combinations of nano-, bio-, info- and cogni-

tive technologies converge and combine,

humanity is increasing its capacity to actively

change and direct our physical nature. In

contrast to evolution by natural selection,

human enhancement involves the use of technological inter-

ventions to shape us as individuals in ways that we have selected.

The military context is one area where such technological

enhancements are being extensively researched. The guiding

thought is that technologically enhanced soldiers can increase

a military force’s chances of winning.

While wars are fought to be won, the tradition of a “just” war

has applied moral principles to determine when and how war

should be fought. These moral principles can both guide and

complicate what technological interventions can be used to

enhance soldiers during wartime.

This article focuses on ethical issues around research and

the impacts of enhancement during conflict. The particular

worry is that enhancements could impact on the behaviour of

soldiers during conflict in ways that are morally relevant. The

article will frame the moral discussions by reference to the tradi-

tion of a just war, specifically the discrimination and propor-

tionality criteria that look at how one can fight a war justly.

Enhancements include exoskeletons to augment strength

and endurance, “metabolic dominance” to alter a soldier’s eating

and nutrition, and neurological intervention and stimulation

to increase the capacity of a soldier to operate under stress and

decrease the need for sleep. Lest this seem like mere science

fiction or technological speculation to the point of fantasy, one

need only look for the “tactical light operator suit”, search for

human enhancement research supported by the US Defense

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), or read Mind

Warsby Jonathan Moreno to see that exoskeletons, direct

biological interventions and cognitive enhancement receive

extensive interest and funding for military purposes.

In parallel with this research there are a host of ethical discus-

sions on the ethics of enhancement generally and on the ethics of

military enhancement specifically. One of the highest-regarded

centres for ethics research, The Oxford Uehiro Centre For Prac-

tical Ethics, states (http://tinyurl.com/lou2ozo): “Over the last

decade, biomedical enhancement has become the focus of one of

the liveliest and widest-ranging debates in practical ethics”.

The just war tradition, an extensive set of discussions about

the ethics of warfare, goes back at least 2500 years. It has long

been concerned with the conditions that must be met in order

for a war to be justified. For this article, the criteria of discrim-

ination and proportionality are the main interest.

We start with the notion that, in situations like wars of self-

defence, those posing a threat to innocent civilians are legitimate

targets of lethal force. The discrimination criterion then focuses

on who is a legitimate target and why. Proportionality, on the

other hand, focuses on ensuring that the particular harms of the

lethal violence are bound by a set of good outcomes.

There are at least three ethical issues that are of interest.

• Is there a moral responsibility to enhance a soldier?


• Would those enhancements undermine the soldier’s capacity
  to follow the laws of armed conflict?


• Would the fact of enhancement have any negative impact
  on how the adversary treats soldiers?
  On the first issue, a comprehensive discussions of the general
  ethics of enhancement suggest that we have a responsibility to
  enhance people to make them more moral. Arguing that there
  is an urgent imperative to enhance the moral character of
  humanity, ethicists Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu suggest
  in the Journal of Applied Philosophy(http://tinyurl.com/
  m5xx9ay): “If genetic and biomedical means of enhancement
  could counter such natural [racist] tendencies, they could have
  a crucial role to play in improving our moral character”. Persson
  and Savulescu’s position is highly controversial, but if this is at
  all possible then perhaps some enhancements might be morally
  obligatory in the military context. For instance, if certain cogni-
  tive enhancements enable a soldier to make decisions based on
  legitimate threat, and avoid irrelevant features like physical
  morphologies associated with race, then it might follow that

14 ||MAY/JUNE 2017

Will Enhanced Soldiers

Fight a Just War?

ADAM HENSCHKE

Technologies may be able to enhance a soldier’s strength, endurance, stress tolerance and

cognitive ability, but could they reduce their moral capacity to follow the laws of armed conflict?