[Editor’s Note: Mad Scientist Laboratory is pleased to present our latest edition of “The Queue” – a monthly post listing the most compelling articles, books, podcasts, videos, and/or movies that the U.S. Army’s Mad Scientist Initiative has come across during the previous month. In this anthology, we address how each of these works either informs or challenges our understanding of the Operational Environment (OE). We hope that you will add “The Queue” to your essential reading, listening, or watching each month!
1. “The Russian Military Will Soon Assign Soldiers Based on Their ‘Genetic Passports’,” by Michael Peck, The National Interest, 12 November 2019.
Russia will begin using genetic testing to profile and assign its Soldiers’ occupations. Using their “genetic passports,” the project seeks “to find genetic predispositions among military personnel, which will allow them to be properly oriented according to military specialties,” according to Alexander Sergeyev, Chief, Russian Academy of Sciences. On the surface, this seems a natural and logical 
progression, given recent advances in human genetics. Since the rise of modern professional armies, nations have long sought to select and place recruits where they best fit military requirements (e.g., the tallest into elite Guards units; those with natural mechanical and mathematical aptitudes in mechanized, aviation, engineering, and artillery arms; those with extreme mental fortitude and physical endurance into special operations organizations). Per Sergeyev, “It is a question of understanding at the genetic level who is more prone to, for example, … service in the fleet, who may become a paratrooper or a tankman.”
Yet in the hands of an authoritarian state, the implications for genetic profiling may have far more nefarious consequences, for both its citizens and ours. For ethnically diverse states, problematic minorities or dissident populations may find themselves vectored into units designated for initial combat operations – cannon fodder – under the guise of their “genetic fit.” It may also presage the development of personalized warfare agents, designed to target an enemies’ genome, while proving harmless to one’s own troops. This quest to be “the best of the best of the best” is just the latest manifestation of the changing character of warfare.
2. In Future Wars, the U.S. Military Will Have Nowhere to Hide, by Michael Beckley, Foreign Policy, 20 November 2019.
Michael Beckley argues that in the future the United States will not have the luxury of fighting its wars from safe havens. This change will undermine a particular American way of war that involves massive assaults from out of theater safe havens. This change is driven by new technologies that will enable near peer competitors like China and Russia to carry out precise and devastating attacks against U.S. bases and logistics nodes with new classes of hypersonic missiles and lethal drones.
Michael Beckley’s argument is compelling but does not take into account the complete challenge. Both Russian and China are transitioning to a hemispheric threat with a primary focus on challenging the U.S. Army all the way from its home station installations (i.e., the Strategic Support Area) to the Close Area fight. The U.S. can expect cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure, the use of advanced information warfare
such as deep fakes targeting units and families, and the possibility of small scale kinetic attacks during what were once uncontested administrative actions of deployment. In all of these examples, there is no institutional memory for this hemispheric threat and adding time and required speed for deployment is not enough to build future readiness.
Additionally, the examples provided by Michael Beckley do not recognize the availability of these capabilities to regional powers and non-state actors. Several 
non-state actors have demonstrated the capability to deliver “poor man’s precision fires” using drones with saturation tactics and way point navigation against static targets like airfields and infrastructure. Also, democratization of weaponized information empowers regional hegemons and non-state actors, enabling them to target the U.S. and our allies and achieve effects at a fraction of the cost of conventional weapons, without risking armed conflict.
The character of warfare is rapidly changing and it will impact the traditional American way of war. The means to attack vulnerable logistics and basing will be available to a wide range of adversaries. The realities of this threat should immediately influence U.S. Army concepts like Multi-Domain Operations, its doctrine, and all training associated with deployment activities and unit and family resilience.
3. “A 2020 US election simulation just ended with 32 dead and 200 injured,” by Justin Rohrlich, Quartz, 13 November 2019.
Boston-based cybersecurity firm Cybereason hosted a 2020 national election simulation that saw their “Red Team” face off against the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, DHS, and the Arlington, Virginia, Police Department. Their mission was to undermine the election without interfering with any of the actual election equipment. In the end, there were 32 deaths and 200 wounded (all simulated). The Blue Team chose to cancel the election and declare martial law. The Red Team took full advantage of an arsenal of cyber tools including deepfakes, controlling news websites and twitter accounts (Fox News and CNN), hacking elected officials’ social media accounts to spread misinformation, and remotely controlling autonomous vehicles and stoplights. The attack was too much for the 
authorities to handle. What’s more concerning is that, while this was a simulation, all of the capabilities and technologies used are widely available to everyone from state actors to terrorist organizations to private citizens. The Army won’t have to provide security for domestic elections, but it will face all of these threats in an OE that will be defined by weaponized information. As units prepare to deploy during periods of heightened tensions, our adversaries will employ this capability to target key personnel (and their dependents), distracting our troops from their deployment preparations and disrupting unit cohesion. Spurious videos could further sow division with our coalition partners causing them to hesitate, question, and withhold their military support. This simulation shows the overwhelming effect of these attacks, the ease of accessibility, and the speed of information warfare. How can the Army prepare for these types of non-kinetic attacks? How can we determine fact from fiction? What additional training paradigms are necessary to prepare Soldiers for this environment?
4. “Apple Plans Standalone AR and VR Gaming Headset by 2022 and Glasses Later,” by Mark Hurman, Bloomberg, 11 November 2019.
Tech giant Apple is aiming to release a number of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices over the next three to four years. It will begin with an iPad geared more towards AR leading to a combined VR/AR headset for gaming, videos, and virtual meetings, culminating in less obstructive AR glasses that will provide information fed from a user’s iPhone, Apple watch, or similar device.
This last technology, non-obstructive AR glasses, is potentially the most impactful on the operational environment and the future of warfare. AR glasses that “wear” similar to normal glasses or sunglasses may lead users away from being “tethered” to mobile devices they have to carry and shift to strictly wearables. Such devices have been conceived of in works of fiction like Spiderman: Far From Home and Black Mirror.
While AR has been envisioned for some time in science fiction, its mass adoption – over half the U.S. mobile market share belongs to Apple – would dramatically change how content is presented, how humans interact with each other and their surroundings, and if immersive enough, what is “reality.” Additionally, the Army, and larger DoD, will have to grapple with how to integrate this technology into training, operations, and even leadership practices, while defending its exploitation as a new threat vector for weaponized information.
5. “The Weirdness Is Coming A glimpse of the near future as seen through the recent past,” by the editors, with additional reporting by Brock Colyar, Gabriel Debenedetti, Jane Drinkard, Bridget Read, and Matt Stieb, New York Magazine Intelligencer, The Future Issue, 13 November 2019.
“The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed” — novelist William Gibson
This article is a collection of news stories (rather than analyses) spanning 2019 that signal the emergence of future trends. All-inclusive social-credit scores blanketing Xi Jinping’s China, antibiotic-resistant superbugs cropping up in India before spreading as far as the Arctic, UAVs used in assassinations and infrastructure attacks, and advertisers knowing more about us than our own doctors.
As we advance in The Era of Accelerated Human Progress (now through 2035), the United States could face a true strategic competitor. These fast moving changes reflect the pace of human progress and its impact on the OE. This challenge is compounded by our reliance on coalition warfare with allies and partners who might not be able or willing to modernize at the same pace as the U.S., while our competitors might modernize at a faster pace than us. Advances in biotechnology and health will see major advances; yet competitors may not adopt the same legal regulations or ethics for enhancement as the U.S., resulting in asymmetry between us and those choosing to operate below our defined legal and ethical thresholds. Passive sensing, 
especially when combined with artificial intelligence and big-data techniques, may routinely outperform active sensors, leading to a counter-reconnaissance fight between autonomous sensors and countermeasures – “a robot-on-robot affair.” As the world becomes ever more digitized, states will share their strategic environments with networked societies. The articles mirror trends that the Mad Scientist Laboratory has been forecasting (i.e., robotics, quantum computing, space, and other disruptive technologies) through 2050.
If you read, watch, or listen to something this month that you think has the potential to inform or challenge our understanding of the Operational Environment, please forward it (along with a brief description of why its potential ramifications are noteworthy to the greater Mad Scientist Community of Action) to our attention at: usarmy.jble.tradoc.mbx.army-mad-scientist@mail.mil — we may select it for inclusion in our next edition of “The Queue”!
• Nonfiction only.
CRISPR may be the next Internet – in terms of the impact it will have on society. CRISPR only became approved for use on humans in 2015. However, its applications to gene editing have already become significant.
What was formerly only available at the cost of billions of dollars and years of research can now be achieved by a single individual at a nominal cost. The original human genome project took ten years, employed a large research team with state-of-the-art laboratories, and cost a billion dollars. Now, you can get your complete genome sequenced for about $10,000 in about six weeks. If you just want specific information, the cost is as little as $100.
Questions
The DPRK is extremely xenophobic. Their culture views North Koreans as the pinnacle of human development. All other cultures and races are, by definition inferior. In that sense, they are culturally akin to pre-World War II Japan or Germany. They are also materialists, in the sense that they ascribe a spiritual dimension to human affairs. With such underlying beliefs, the end justifies the means when dealing with inferiors.
To illustrate, in 2009 the Center for Disease Control (CDC) approached Google with a problem on catching flu outbreaks as early as possible. The new H1N1 strain had been identified and CDC was concerned the outbreak might be as severe as that of the 1918 Spanish Influenza. As things stood, CDC only received warning of a flu outbreak an average of one to two weeks after its onset. The reason was simple – the data the CDC used to determine an outbreak were hospital admissions and emergency room data. Although they understood flu had broken out, they were in a constant catchup mode – not the desired mode for a possible H1N1 pandemic.
A DoD BHPC study group surveyed a wide range of current and emerging technologies relevant to assisting and augmenting human performance in many domains. The team used this information to develop a series of vignettes as case studies for discussion and analysis including feasibility; military application; and ethical, legal, and social implication (ELSI) considerations.
ocular enhancements to imaging, sight, and situational awareness;
brain interactions. These interactions would allow warfighters direct communication with unmanned and autonomous systems, as well as with other humans, to optimize command and control systems and operations. The potential for direct data exchange between human neural networks and microelectronic systems could revolutionize tactical warfighter communications, speed the transfer of knowledge throughout the chain of command, and ultimately dispel the “fog” of war. Direct neural enhancement of the human brain through neuro-silica interfaces could improve target acquisition and engagement and accelerate defensive and offensive systems.
become widely available before the year 2050 and will steadily mature, largely driven by civilian demand and a robust bio-economy that is at its earliest stages of development in today’s global market. The global healthcare market will
because of ethical concerns. However, the attitudes of our adversaries toward these technologies have never been verified. Societal apprehension following the introduction of new technologies can lead to unanticipated political barriers and slow domestic adoption, irrespective of value or realistic risk. Assessment of global attitudes will predict where it may be difficult to introduce new technologies because of sociopolitical barriers to adoption and when adversarial adoption of offset technologies may likely be more readily accepted.
The current legal, security, and ethical frameworks are insufficient because of the speed at which these technologies are developing in the United States and other nations around the world (allied and adversarial). Therefore, the DOD should support the development of forward-leaning policies (internal and external) that protect individual privacy, sustain security, and manage personal and organizational risk, while maximizing defined benefits to the United States and its allies and assets. Because operationalization of technology for national security is at the core of the DOD mission, these frameworks should be structured to be agile and responsive to new technologies developed within the United States or elsewhere.
entertainment. A more realistic and balanced (if not more positive) narrative, along with transparency in the government’s approach to technology adoption, will serve to better educate the public, mitigate societal apprehensions, and remove barriers to productive adoption of these new technologies.
6. The U.S. Government should support efforts to establish a whole-of-nation approach to human/machine enhancement technologies versus a whole-of-government approach. Federal and commercial investments in these areas are uncoordinated and are being outpaced by Chinese research and development efforts, which could result in a loss of U.S. dominance in human/machine enhancement technologies within the projected timeframe of this study. Near-peer dominance in the commercial sector will place U.S. interests in the defense sector at a disadvantage and could lead to an offset disadvantage in the realm of human/machine enhancement by the year 2050. A national effort to sustain U.S. dominance in cyborg technologies is in the best interests of the DOD and the nation.
7. The DOD should support foundational research to validate human/ machine fusion technologies before fielding them and to track the long-term safety and impact on individuals and groups. The benefits afforded by human/machine fusions will be significant and will have positive quality-of-life impacts on humankind through the restoration of any functionality lost due to illness or injury. The military community will also see capability opportunities that will impact operations and training. As these technologies evolve, it is vital that the scientific and engineering communities move cautiously to maximize their potential and focus on the safety of our society. Commensurate investments in these areas will work to mitigate the misuse or unintended consequences of these technologies.
the requisite new Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviors (KSBs) that our Soldiers and leaders will need to compete and win, and then program and implement the associated policy changes, improvements to training facilities, development of leader programs, and the integration of required equipment into the Multi-Domain force.]
The 
capabilities with hybrid strategies to expand the battlefield across all domains and create hemispheric threats challenging us from home stations to the Close Area. They seek to achieve national objectives through competition short of conflict and synthesize emerging technologies with military doctrine and operations to deploy capabilities that create 
The 
will empower potential foes, enabling them to achieve effects at a fraction of the cost of conventional weapons, without risking armed conflict.
The Army’s recent experience building a 
The Army’s
already are, or soon will be very common – narrow AI, app development and general programming, and smart devices – will yield a variety of intrinsic skills that recruits will have prior to entering the Army. Just like we no longer train Soldiers on how to use a computer, games like
The
Ethnic Russian minorities’ agitation against their respective governments in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia spike. Simultaneously, the Russian Government ratchets up tensions, with inflammatory statements of support for these ethnic Russian minorities in the Baltic States; coordinated movements and exercises by Russian ground, naval, and air forces adjacent to the region; and clandestine support to ethnic Russians in these States. The Russian Government started a covert campaign to shape people’s views about the threats against the Russian diaspora. More than 200,000 twitter accounts send 3.6 million tweets trending #protectRussianseverywhere. This sprawling Russian disinformation campaign is focused on building internal support for the Russian President and a possible military action. The U.S. and NATO respond…
The 2nd Cav Regt is placed on alert; as it prepares to roll out of garrison for Poland, several videos surface across social media, purportedly showing the sexual assault of several underage German nationals by U.S. personnel. These disturbingly graphic 
the Regiment. German political and legal authorities call for an investigation and host nation protests erupt outside the gates of Rose Barracks, Vilseck, disrupting the unit’s deployment.
Social media accounts are hacked/hijacked, with false threats by dependents to execute mass/school shootings, accusations of sexual abuse, hate speech posts by Leaders about their minority troops, and revelations of adulterous affairs between unit spouses.
Russia’s GRU (Military Intelligence) employs AI Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to create fake persona injects that mimic select U.S. Active Army, ARNG, and USAR commanders making disparaging statements about their confidence in our allies’ forces, the legitimacy of the mission, and their faith in our political leadership. Sowing these injects across unit social media accounts, Russian Information Warfare specialists seed doubt and erode trust in the chain of command amongst a percentage of susceptible Soldiers, creating further friction in deployment preparations.
As these units load at railheads or begin their road march towards their respective ports of embarkation, 
navigation systems to cause sealift asset collisions and groundings at key maritime chokepoints. The fly-by-wire avionics are hacked on a departing C-17, causing a crash with the loss of all 134 Soldiers onboard. All C-17s are grounded, pending an investigation.
the alliance for the Multi-Domain Common Operating Picture. Spoofing of these systems leads to accidental air defense engagements, resulting in Blue-on-Blue fratricide or the downing of a commercial airliner, with additional civilian deaths on the ground from spent ordnance, providing more opportunities for Russian Information Operations to spread acrimony within the alliance and create dissent in public opinion back home.
across the net via bots, these instances further stoke anti-Baltic / anti-U.S. opinion amongst Russian-sympathetic and non-aligned populations alike.
The release of deepfake videos showing Baltic security forces massacring ethnic Russians creates further division and causes some NATO partners to hesitate, question, and withhold their support, as required under Article 5. The alliance is rent asunder — Checkmate!
At some point during The Era of Accelerated Human Progress (now through 2035), and really for the first time since the Second World War, it is likely that the United States could face a 
The revolution in connected devices and virtual power projection will increase the potential for adversaries to target our installations. Hyper-connectivity increases the 
The
Passive sensing, especially when combined with artificial intelligence and big-data techniques may routinely outperform active sensors, leading to a counter-reconnaissance fight between autonomous sensors and countermeasures – “a robot-on-robot affair.” These capabilities will be augmented by increasingly sophisticated civilian capabilities, where commercial 
imagery services, a robust and mature Internet of Things, and near unlimited processing power generate a battlespace that is more transparent than ever before. This
The proliferation of intelligent munitions will enable strikers to engage targets at greater distances, collaborate in teams to seek out and destroy designated targets, and defeat armored and other hardened targets, as well as defiladed and entrenched targets.
Swarms of small, cheap, scalable, and disposable unmanned systems will be used both offensively and defensively, creating
extreme weather impacting installations, increased resource scarcity and food insecurity, climate migration increasing the number of refugees and internally displaced peoples, and the Arctic as a 
Quantum Computing: The expansion of
Power: Proliferation of electric/battery powered vehicles, laser charging, 
Information Environment: Instantaneous recall, sensor-saturated environment, unmanned asset intelligence collection, algorithmic processing of high volumes of information, and 
timeframe. Similarly, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that costs will steadily climb after 2023. Their base budget in 2033 is projected to be approximately $735 billion — that is an 11% increase over ten years. This is due to rising compensation rates, growing costs of operations and maintenance, and the purchasing of new weapons systems.
decisions for less exquisite weapons systems. A smaller active force might also drive changes to Multi-Domain Operations and how the Army describes the way it will fight in the future.
The weakest link in a chain determines the chain’s strength. Right now the weakest links in the extended American chain of national defense capabilities are not its physical weapons of war. They are its diminishing numbers of students pursuing STEM degrees.
One does need copious amounts of specialized higher education and training in Science and Technology (S&T) to design and build advanced equipment and realize technological innovation, however. This requirement will only increase as we continue to gain new knowledge about how to make matter and energy do our bidding and how to harness “
No other activity in human history except the pursuit of science has led to actual advances, and many advances were in support of the security of a tribe or nation. Note that science includes not only advancements in the hardware and software of implements for both destruction and deterrence, but also the sciences of diplomacy, economics, political and military affairs, and indeed every other endeavor that affects or informs the dynamics of human life and group interaction.
The last time our nation awoke to the national significance of STEM was in 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 and the collective American heart stopped. Rightly seeing this as a leading indicator of a potential existential threat to America,
the U.S. went into a frenzy of scientific revivalism. This flurry of activity and resourcing led to a massive improvement in the national S&T infrastructure and capability, and uncountable technological spinoffs from the space and other programs which benefited human well-being and improved our defense capabilities.
Battle lines are no longer linear and on foreign soil; our adversaries operate in the light of day through cyber lines of communication and are even now reaching into governments, businesses, homes, and devices right here in our homeland. Smart bombs can attack single buildings, but weaponized information can facilitate
1. Aggressively identify and groom high-achieving/high-potential students while they are in middle and high school. Facilitate their movement into higher education, and then on into the professional or academic worlds. Have them be the foundation for the next great generation of (government?) scientists and engineers. Some of these people will be born in extremely depressed socioeconomic areas; we must leverage the schools and communities across the nation to identify these students as well.
2. Once onboard and contributing, reward and recognize these people in public for their work and contributions. Work to make intellectual achievement as publicly desirable as possible. Our future S&T and cyber warriors are going to help us win these fights, especially when the field of battle has now been extended through virtual tentacles into our own homes.
4. Every S&T professional and every S&T organization should either lead or support activities, both organized and large-scale down to individual efforts, to promote S&T and its acceptance. Do outreach with kids and local groups. Guest-lecture at schools from elementary to graduate levels. Volunteer to support local S&T and scholastic improvement events. Find people who will be the next generation of patent producers, researchers and developers, and discovers of new technologies and new solutions. Bring them onto the right teams and help them to pay this forward until it is the organization’s business model.
5. Work with the Department of Education and school boards to introduce critical thinking as a stand-alone skill and subject, introduced no later than the middle school years, then fold it into all subsequent student evaluation.
8. Finally, have DoD work with the federal, state, and local governments to identify the threats and the actions all citizens need to take to be part of the collective national defense, then educate the population on them and hold periodic drills to ensure horizontal and vertical readiness.