This Scientist Wants Tomorrow's Troops to Be Mutant-Powered

Greater strength and endurance. Enhanced thinking. Better teamwork. New classes of genetic weaponry, able to subvert DNA. Not long from now, the technology could exist to routinely enhance ' and undermine ' people's minds and bodies using a wide range of chemical, neurological, genetic and behavioral techniques.

It's warfare waged at the evolutionary level. And it's coming sooner than many people think. According to the futurists at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, by 2030, 'neuro-enhancements could provide superior memory recall or speed of thought. Brain-machine interfaces could provide 'superhuman' abilities, enhancing strength and speed, as well as providing functions not previously available.'

Qualities that today must be honed by years of training and education could be installed in a relative instant by, say, an injection or a targeted burst of electricity to the brain. Rapid advancements in neurology, pharmacology and genetics could soon make such installations fairly easy.

These modifications could give rise to new breeds of biologically enhanced troops possessing what one expert in the field calls 'mutant powers.' But those troops may not American. So far, the U.S. military has been extremely reluctant to embrace human biological modification, or 'biomods.' And that could result in a veritable mutant gap. In this new form of biological warfare, the U.S. could find itself outgunned.

But not if Andrew Herr can help it.

A 29-year-old Georgetown-trained researcher with degrees in microbiology, health physics and national security, Herr is one a handful of specialists in the defense community preaching greater U.S. investment in biomods. First as a consultant with the Scitor Corporation, a Virginia-based firm whose clients include top military and intelligence agencies, and later as the head of his own research organization, Herr's job has been to think about biological modifications whose effects he says are 'more than evolutionary.'

Another word for that: revolutionary.

Whether positive or negative, the impact of routine biomods could be huge. 'The best-case scenario is extraordinary increases in quality of life in the First World and beyond,' Herr says. The worst-case scenario, he adds, is people being biologically modified 'without them knowing it.' That is, an evolutionary sneak attack.

But it's not clear how closely the government is listening.

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