On Military Ethics

This was originally composed Aug. 26, 2017 at approximately 6:00 am CST.

Remote military operations need to undergo a serious reconsideration of applicable ethics. The “behavioral science” components of warfare were originally intended to understand the psychology of the enemy so as to break his resolve and find ways to mentally penetrate his strategies and forces. Then there were issues with one’s own troop morale and readiness. But now the integration of behavioral sciences into military operations has compromised all of the above.

In a situation where greater technical enhancements to human physiology are being developed and deployed, the ethical considerations become even more important. Technology can be “hacked” by the enemy in the same way that psychological operations were intended to impact the enemy’s readiness and capabilities. There’s also understandings of for whom and for what one is fighting. What determines a civilian when military features are inculcated into any technical enhancement? Without ability to discern between an appropriate enemy and a potential “innocent” you not only leave no way for “winning” the war except to annihilate the enemy but you leave no meaningful incentive to fighting it yourself.

While emotional connections with other warriors occur and serve a purpose, they must necessarily be of a different character than a connection with a civilian. You need to be prepared for the potential that your warrior colleague could be killed in battle and that this death has a specific meaning, emotionally and psychologically. The death of a civilian to which one is connected has a different meaning — as does their life. If someone fucks with that there are consequences. If they get caught up in the war and the enemy comes by, how he/she handles that entails consequences. Those consequences and the ramifications they have on societies are what either support or do not support a general morale that directly impacts military morale, and hence defines the quality of your military readiness and success. There is no victory in slaughtering the enemy just to return home and subjugate your own people. Somewhere someone in the chain of command failed miserably if that becomes the case and hence the failure becomes complete within the military forces as a rule.

That so many military technologies followed a hierarchical programming model also entails consideration of the manners in which biological human beings physiologically integrate with that technology. It is a dangerous paradigm to think that a bio-enhanced soldier in the field trying to follow a direct order might be momentarily compromised by a program over-ride. Also, what does it do to higher-level command direction and execution if officers are enhanced with bio-tech features operating under a hierarchical command structure? Is there some sort of internal negotiation that may be necessary that would render command execution or direction vulnerable to a non-military, non-embedded or non-experienced remote programmer or operator? This is a serious liability in the battlefield and has profound long-term ramifications.

The whole behavioral science field and its saturation of both military and civilian operations have created a tremendous safety and security hazard for the whole population. For one, the paradigm seems to penalize demonstrations of actual effective leadership that does not follow a pre-scripted pattern with predictable outcomes, including outcomes that are predetermined for a narrowly-defined purpose. Even in a peacetime situation, unpredictable events occur. Denying or even penalizing effective extemporaneous leadership or potential leadership who can think beyond pre-scripted roles is a huge liability. And, public displays of undermining or ridiculing such leadership impact entire sectors, as it dissuades the cultivation of such leadership by those leaders as well as any who must necessarily understand, accept and apply that leadership. Repeated exposure to populations that should be the populations that such a leader should be able to work with but that undermine or ridicule such leadership due to a petty bureaucratic conception of the false importance of pre-scripted leadership displays or affects has numerous deleterious consequences. That the behavioral sciences saturation of social conditioning has created these circumstances compels an immediate re-examination of the importance and efficiency of its priority and application in society.

As we become aware of the potential for technology to become sentient independent of the integration of human biology with technological enhancements, emotional intelligence becomes even more important. The current behavioral science paradigm penalizes and punishes some of the most forceful expressions of emotional intelligence including the ones that challenge appearances of authority that operate without ethical considerations or without the ability to make decisions outside of pre-scripted roles. This only hastens a de-development of social intelligence. This is a national security disaster waiting to happen.

The feminization of various technological functions is a likewise disaster scenario — and not due to stereotypes of the liabilities associated with female “histrionics.” Not only are inaccurate stereotypical feminine qualities being programmed into enhancements that masculine operational functions are supposed to integrate, but these feminizations do not even adequately address the needs of the programmed technology. This even outside of an ethical lens is a disaster, as somehow essential security functions that should have autonomous capabilities with attendant authority for implementation were designed to be vulnerable to the commands of an external operator who it seems was permitted to sexualize this functionality. Sex and war have always been connected. Perhaps this development and its attendant problems are the most compelling evidence yet for why military ethics and operations seriously need to reconsider and apply a new conception of the importance of self-control, sexual self-discipline and military relations with women, both women in the military and women in civilian roles.

Typed on 2/3/2018; finished at 3:10 pm CST

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