[Editor’s Note: Mad Scientist tracks convergence trends that are changing the character of future warfare. The democratization of technologies and the global proliferation of information is one of these trends that has expanded the arena of high-end threat capabilities beyond nation-states to now include non-state actors and super-empowered individuals. Today’s post illustrates how the democratization of one such capability, biotechnology, affects the Future Operational Environment.]
As discussed during the Mad Scientist Bio Convergence and Soldier 2050 Conference, co-hosted with SRI International at Menlo Park, California last Spring, the broad advancement of biotechnologies will provide wide access to dangerous and powerful bioweapons and human enhancement. The low cost and low expertise entry point into gene editing, human performance enhancement, and bioweapon production has spurred a string of new explorations into this arena by countries with large defense budgets (e.g., China), non-state criminal and terrorist organizations (e.g., ISIS), and even super-empowered individuals willing to subject their bodies to experimental and risky treatments or augmentations.
China has invested billions of dollars into biotechnology – including in several U.S. biotechnology firms – and plans on focusing on their own bio revolution. Gene editing is one of the areas where China has sought to leapfrog the United States through ambitious Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) projects, editing the genes of 86 individuals, while the United States is just now approaching human trials. Additionally, Elsa Kania, an expert on Chinese emerging technology from the Center for the New American Security (CNAS), noted that China is now seeking to build its own innovation base rather than focusing on intellectual property theft and technology transfers.
Listen to Ms. Kania’s discussion addressing technological priorities and how they overlay on the Chinese government’s strategic objectives in the China’s Quest for Enhanced Military Technology podcast, hosted by our colleagues at Modern War Institute.
Non-state actors – mainly terrorist organizations – have focused more on weaponizing biotechnology. A personal laptop belonging to ISIS that was captured in Syria, was found to contain lessons on making bubonic plague 
bombs and the employment of various weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The possession of this dangerous information by the most notorious terrorist organization across the globe is a testament to the worldwide proliferation of information. This challenge of weaponized biotechnology is exacerbated by the relative ease of obtaining material to carry out such attacks.
Watch Dr. Gary Ackerman‘s presentation on Non-State Actors and their Uses of Technology from the Mad Scientist Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Autonomy: Visioning Mult-Domain Battle in 2030-2050 Conference at Georgetown University, 7-8 March 2017.
There is a growing community of individual biohackers and “do it yourselfers” (DIYers), super-empowered individuals pushing the boundaries of DNA editing, implants, embedded technologies (embeds), and unapproved chemical and biological injections. One of the most prominent biohackers, Josiah Zayner, a former NASA employee with a biophysics PhD, who livestreamed his self-injection of CRISPR and has even started a company selling DIY CRISPR kits ranging from several hundred to over 1000 dollars, effectively enabling biohackers to cheaply change their physiology, alter their appearance, and go beyond human biological norms. None of these treatments and augmentations are approved by regulatory agencies and DIYers run the serious risk of harming themselves or unleashing destructive and disruptive biological agents upon an unwitting population.
Read our Mad Scientist Laboratory blog post on the Emergent Threat Posed by Super-Empowered Individuals .
Biotechnology is just one example of how potentially game changing capabilities that were once only within the purview of our strategic competitors will be democratized via the global proliferation of information. In the Future Operational Environment, we can also expect to see artificial intelligence, multi-domain swarming, and space capabilities in the hands of non-state and super-empowered individuals.
The dramatic shift in the funding, driving, and demand signals of innovation from the U.S. Government to the commercial sector will lead to a critical need for agile prototyping and experimentation in the military, focusing on niche areas of interest to the Government.
• The employment of small aerial drones for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) will continue, making concealment difficult and eliminating distance from opposing forces as a means of counter-detection. This will require the development and use of decoy capabilities (also intelligent robotic devices). This counter-reconnaissance fight will feature prominently on future battlefields between autonomous sensors and countermeasures – “a robot-on-robot affair.”
• The continued proliferation of intelligent munitions, operating at greater distances, collaborating in teams to seek out and destroy designated targets, and able to defeat armored and other hardened targets, as well as defiladed and entrenched targets.
• Increasing reliance on unmanned systems, “with humans becoming a minority within the overall force, being further dispersed across the battlefield.”
• Intelligent munitions will be neutralized “primarily by missiles and only secondarily by armor and entrenchments. Specialized autonomous protection vehicles will be required that will use their extensive load of antimissiles to defeat the incoming intelligent munitions.”
• “To gain protection from intelligent munitions, extended subterranean tunnels and facilities will become important. This in turn will necessitate the tunnel-digging robotic machines, suitably equipped for battlefield mobility.”
• All of these autonomous, yet simultaneously integrated and networked battlefield systems will be vulnerable to Cyber-Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA). Consequently, the battle within the Cyber domain will “be fought largely by various autonomous cyber agents that will attack, defend, and manage the overall network of exceptional complexity and dynamics.”
• The “high volume and velocity of information produced and demanded by the robot-intensive force” will require an increasingly autonomous Command and Control (C2) system, with humans increasingly being on, rather than in, the loop.
The year was 2030. New weapons, doctrine, training, and individual readiness came together to make the US Army the most capable land force in the world. Fully prepared, the Army was ready to fight and win in the complex environments of multi domain operations. The Army Futures Command generated a series of innovations empowering the Army to overcome the lethargy and distractions of protracted counter-insurgency warfare.
The overseas contest unfolded along a fairly predictable pattern, one that was anticipated in multiple war games and exercises. A near-peer competitor engaged in a hybrid of operations against a partner nation. They first acted to destabilize the country, and then, within the confusion created, they invaded. In response to the partner’s request for assistance, the U.S authorized mobilization and deployment of active and reserve component forces to counter the invasion. The mission was straightforward: retake lost ground, expel the adversary, and restore local government control. This was a task the Army had trained for and was more than capable of successfully executing. It just had to get there. While the partner nation struggled with an actual invasion, a different struggle was taking place in the U.S. homeland. The adversary combined a series of relatively minor cyber, information, and physical disruptions, which taken together, overwhelmed the Army Enterprise. Each act focused on clogging individual systems or processes needed to execute the mobilization and deployment functions.
Cyber-mercenaries, paid in cryptocurrency, attacked the information environment and undermined the communication mechanisms essential for mobilizing the Army. Building on earlier trials in Korea and Europe, a range of false orders were sent to units and individuals. These false orders focused on early entry forces and reserve units needed to open ports and railheads in the United States. Compounding the situation, misleading information was simultaneously placed on social media and the news that indicated the mobilization had been cancelled. These efforts created so much uncertainty in the minds of individual Soldiers over their place of duty, initial musters for key reserve component units ran at less than 40% strength. Days were added to mobilization timelines as it took time for accurate information to be disseminated and formations to build to full strength.
Focused cyber attention was given to
and regaining their financial functionality competed for their time and attention. Time was lost as Soldiers were distracted and overwhelmed. Arms rooms remained locked, access to the motor pool was delayed, and deployments were disrupted.
The communities surrounding Army installations also came under attack. Systems below the threshold of “critical,” such as street lights, traffic lights, and railroad crossings, were all locked in the “off” position, making road travel hazardous. The dispatch systems of key civilian first-responders were overwhelmed with misleading calls reporting false accidents, overwhelming response mechanisms and diverting or delaying much needed assistance. Soldiers were prevented from getting to their duty stations or transitioning quickly from affected communities. In parallel, an information warfare campaign was waged with the aim of undermining trust between civilian and military personnel. False narratives about spills of hazardous military materials and soldiers being contaminated by exposure to diseases created by malfunctioning vaccines added to the chaos.
Key utility, water, and energy control systems on or adjacent to Army installations, understandably a “hard” target from the cyber context, were of such importance that they came under near constant attack across all their operations from transmission to customer billing. Only those few installations that had invested in advanced micro-grids, on-site power generation, and storage were able to maintain coherent operations beyond 72 hours. For most installations, backup generators that worked singularly when the maintenance teams were present for annual servicing, cascaded into collective failure when they all operated at once. For the Army, only the 10th and 24th Infantry Divisions were able to deploy, thanks to onsite energy resilience.
Small, but significant physical attacks occurred as well. Standard shipping containers, pieces of luggage, and Amazon Prime boxes were “weaponized” as drone transports, with their cargo activated on command. In the key out-loading ports of Savannah and Galveston, shore cranes were disabled by homemade thermite charges placed on gears and cables by such drones using photo recognition and artificial intelligence. Repairing and verifying the safety of these cranes
added days to timelines and disrupted shipping schedules. Other drones deployed, having been “trained” with thousands of photo’s to fly into the air intakes of jet engines, either military or civilian. Only two downed airliners and a few near misses were sufficient to shut down air transportation across the country and initiate a multi-month inspection of all truck stops, docks, airports, and rail yards trying to find the “last” possible container. Perhaps the most effective drone attacks occurred when such drones dispersed chemical agents in municipal water supplies for those communities adjacent to installations or along lines of communication. The effects of these later attacks were compounded by shrewd
Roads were clogged with evacuees, out-loading operations were curtailed, and key military assets that should have been supporting the deployment were diverted to provide support to civil authorities.
The Army was gradually overwhelmed and immobilized. In the end, the war for the partner country in Eurasia was lost. The adversary’s attacks on the homeland had given it sufficient time to complete all of its military objectives. The most lethal Army in history was “stuck,” unable to arrive in time. US command authorities now faced a much more difficult military problem and the dilemma of choosing between all out war, or accepting a limited defeat.
That was the US Army in 2030. Ignoring its infrastructure and its vulnerabilities at home, it got caught in a Mainah Scenario. This was a classic “
It is now undeniable that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary. America is a target, whether from terrorists seeking to attack our citizens; malicious cyber activity against personal, commercial, or government infrastructure; or political and information subversion. New threats to commercial and military uses of space are emerging, while increasing digital connectivity of all aspects of life, business, government, and military creates significant vulnerabilities. During conflict, attacks against our critical defense, government, and economic infrastructure must be anticipated.
We will seek to use multi-fuel platforms and infrastructure that can provide flexible operations during energy and water shortages at fixed installations and forward locations. If a subsystem fails or is temporarily unavailable, other parts of the system will continue to operate at an acceptable level until full functionality is restored…. Implement integrated and distributed technologies and procedures to ensure critical systems remain operational in the face of disruptive events…. Advance the capability for systems, installations, personnel, and units to respond to unforeseen disruptions and quickly recover while continuing critical activities.
Installations are a flock of 156 pink flamingos wading around the beach of national security. They are vulnerable to disruption that would have a very real impact on readiness and the timely application of combat power. With the advance of technology-applications, these threats are not for the Army of tomorrow—they affect the Army today. Let us not get stranded in a Mainah Scenario.
There’s a debate underway about the 
Admiral Wylie opined “the ultimate determinant in war is a man on the scene with a gun.”
Secondly, Phillip Meilinger makes a strong case that drone crews firing missiles at insurgents from 3,000 miles away or navies blockading countries and staving their people into submission do not experience war the same as those hoplite infantry did years ago.
If so, the second aspect of war’s changing nature comes into play. If a nation’s borders cannot be penetrated and its critical centers of gravity attacked using kinetic means, perhaps
The application of 
Dr. Peter Layton is a Visiting Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University. A former RAAF Group Captain, he has extensive defense experience, including in the Pentagon and at National Defense University. He holds a doctorate in grand strategy. He is the author of the book ‘