NATO plans to ‘leverage human enhancement technologies’

Western militaries intend to “leverage” opportunities to “enable individuals to operate beyond normal human limits or abilities,” according to a new NATO strategy document.

“Biotechnology and human enhancement technologies (BHE) will transform our economies, societies, security and defense in unprecedented and unforeseeable ways,” the allies state. “Against this context, NATO will provide the transatlantic forum for BHE in defense and security, leveraging the potential of BHE while safeguarding against its malicious use by state and non-state actors” who might threaten the alliance.

Such concepts have been the preserve of comic book storylines for decades. Yet NATO officials maintain that a “multi-trillion dollar industry” has been born, albeit one “still in its infancy” — and it is not just Western powers that see the potential, as “Russia continues to invest heavily into” the nascent technologies.

“The Alliance’s strategic competitors and potential adversaries systematically invest in BHE technologies, including for their military and security benefits,” the NATO document states. “With biotechnological experimentation increasingly less expensive and more available today, novel proliferation risks also extend to non-state actors, including terrorist groups. This proliferation requires stronger monitoring, prevention and civil preparedness tools.”

At least some of these technologies will grow out of existing “military medicine and rehabilitation” applications, such as improved prosthetics. NATO officials also have an interest in “robotic devices worn externally to enhance strength, endurance, and mobility, providing support for physically demanding tasks” and even “Brain-Computer Interfaces” that could equip “individuals to better control technology,” as NATO’s Strategic Warfare Development Command put it in a bulletin last year.

“NATO and Allies will responsibly develop and use BHE in support of our three core tasks – deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management and cooperative security,” the strategy document states. “Opportunities to leverage human enhancement technologies for our defence and security include improving…Cognitive awareness, especially in complex operational environments where human-machine interfaces and fatigue countermeasures can enhance decision-making beyond baseline human capabilities.”

The strategy document puts a spotlight on a misgiving that U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers have developed in recent years: the exploitability of genetic data for military purposes. In recent years, U.S. lawmakers in both parties have warned that foreign powers are researching “weapons under development, and developed, that are designed to target specific people,” as Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) told the Aspen Security Forum in 2022. As early as 2019, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is on the Intelligence Committee, warned that Chinese companies involved in U.S. healthcare could compile genetic data for Chinese security services and researchers. 

 “I can tell you that people that are experts on biological warfare say that it is a futuristic possibility that you could design biological agents that only harm people of a certain genetic makeup,” Rubio told the Washington Examiner in 2019.

NATO officials raised that concern more generally in the new strategy document: “Allies [will work to] limit undesirable access to biological data by potential adversaries and strategic competitors where this data can be used to develop novel bio-weapons, enable surveillance of groups or individuals or support enhancement of potentially adversarial forces.”

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The transatlantic alliance unveiled its strategic goals alongside a pledge to conduct the development and deployment of such technology in accordance with an ethical framework. 

“BHE will be developed and used in accordance with national and international law, including International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, as applicable,” the document states. “Individuals are not deprived of their sense of judgment and freedom of conscience so that they retain their innate human dignity.”