Advancements in Supersoldier Biotechnology, AI, and Neurotechnology by the US, China, and Russia

 

A new generation of biological weapons is being developed by modifying the genetic code of pathogenic microorganisms through gene editing technology. These weapons can attack the enemy at the genetic level (The Defense Horizon Journal)

Overview

The rapid advancement of biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), and neurotechnology represents a transformative trend that paves the way for developing “supersoldiers” with enhanced capabilities. This endeavor reflects a fundamental shift in military strategy, from emphasizing physical dominance to cognitive and technological superiority. 

Primarily driven by intense geopolitical competition, this bio-digital fusion creates a novel and complex battlefield where the soldier, augmented with integrated biological and digital systems, becomes a potentially ‘hackable’ target. This situation has far-reaching implications for the military and society, as explored in our previous article “The Sifting Trend of Digital Defense: From Traditional Encryption Keys to the Molecules of Life (DNA).” It also explains why investors are interested in startups and established firms to deal with this new frontier.

The threat landscape is multifaceted, extending beyond traditional cyberattacks to manipulating or exploiting the soldier’s biology and cognition. Key vulnerabilities include direct cyber intrusions targeting AI algorithms and neural interfaces, the theft and weaponization of sensitive genomic and real-time biometric data, biological sabotage aimed at degrading performance or health, and compromises within the intricate supply chains providing these advanced technologies. Effectively addressing this converged threat requires a paradigm shift towards integrated security approaches, embodied by the emerging field of cyberbiosecurity. 

Our paper examines the motivations behind investments in developing “supersoldiers,” global enhancement programs, and enabling technologies. It also discusses how such hacking could occur, the implications of integrating AI into military operations, and the far-reaching consequences for national security and beyond. Our next article will address the new field of cybersecurity.

Strategic Motivations

Military theses aim to gain a strategic edge by enhancing soldiers’ physical and cognitive abilities. Enhanced soldiers can potentially perform better in diverse and challenging environments, reduce casualty rates, and execute complex missions more efficiently. The pursuit of such capabilities is driven by the desire to maintain human superiority in an era where, until now, physical technological advancements, such as drones, are rapidly altering the battlefield landscape.

Global Enhancement Programs

China

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is reportedly advancing in developing genetically enhanced soldiers. Utilizing CRISPR technology, the PLA aims to augment physical strength, endurance, and cognitive functions. These efforts are part of China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, integrating civilian and military research to accelerate advancements [6]

United States

The United States has invested in programs like DARPA’s Metabolic Dominance, focusing on enhancing soldiers’ resilience and performance. Research includes gene editing to improve resistance to fatigue, stress, and environmental extremes. However, ethical and regulatory considerations have led to a more cautious approach than in other nations [3].

Russia

Russia has expressed interest in human enhancement technologies, exploring pharmacological and genetic methods to improve soldier performance. While specific programs are less transparent, the intent to develop capabilities that match or surpass global counterparts is evident.

Enabling Technologies: Hacking the DNA

The “enhanced soldier” vision presents a departure from traditional military augmentation. It envisions individuals whose capabilities are pushed beyond normal human limits by integrating converging technologies. This evolution is rooted in a broader strategic shift within modern militaries, moving away from reliance on numbers and physical prowess towards achieving dominance through cognitive superiority and technological advantage. It is essential, however, to distinguish between “optimization” – interventions aimed at restoring function or bringing capabilities up to biological limits (e.g., correcting vision, using prosthetics) – and “enhancement,” which encompasses measures extending performance beyond an individual’s maximum natural potential. Pursuing the enhanced soldier involves a multi-pronged approach, leveraging breakthroughs in biotechnology, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, and wearable sensor systems [1,2,3].   

Military hacking of DNA involves manipulating genetic code to enhance soldier capabilities or exploiting vulnerabilities in biotechnological systems. Below are the possible methods through which this could occur:

Biotechnological Foundations: The Genetic Frontier

Biotechnology forms a foundational pillar for soldier enhancement, offering tools to modify biological processes at the molecular level. Gene editing technologies, particularly CRISPR-Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), stand out due to their unprecedented precision in targeting and altering specific DNA sequences. CRISPR functions like molecular scissors guided by RNA molecules, allowing scientists to accurately cut, replace, or modify genes [4, 5, 6, 7].  

The potential military applications derived from this capability are extensive and diverse:

• Physical Enhancement: Gene editing could optimize traits related to physical performance, such as increasing muscle strength (potentially via myostatin inhibition, as demonstrated experimentally ), endurance, and agility, enabling soldiers to operate more efficiently and for longer durations under strenuous conditions. It might also confer resilience against harsh environmental stressors like extreme temperatures, radiation (with reports of Chinese research on radiation-resistant cells ), and low oxygen levels. Furthermore, accelerated wound healing and recovery from injuries could be promoted.   

• Cognitive Enhancement: Modifications could target genes associated with cognitive functions, improving memory, focus, decision-making speed and accuracy, and problem-solving skills, offering a crucial edge in high-pressure combat scenarios.   

• Sensory Augmentation: There is potential to enhance sensory abilities, such as vision, hearing, or proprioception (touch sensation), allowing soldiers to detect threats more effectively and navigate complex environments with greater awareness.   

• Psychological Resilience: Genetic modifications targeting stress response pathways might reduce susceptibility to stress-related disorders like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), thereby enhancing mental resilience and well-being.   

• Disease Resistance: Gene editing could bolster soldiers’ immune systems against infectious diseases or specific biological threats. Experiments involving the deletion of the CCR5 gene to confer HIV resistance in embryos illustrate the potential, though ethically contentious, possibilities.   

• Personnel Selection: Genomics and bioinformatics could refine personnel selection by identifying genetic markers associated with vulnerabilities, such as susceptibility to traumatic brain injury (TBI), allowing for risk mitigation.   

Beyond direct gene editing of soldiers, synthetic biology offers transformative potential by enabling the engineering of microorganisms to produce critical resources like fuel, materials (e.g., self-healing materials, advanced textiles), or even medical countermeasures directly in the field. This could drastically reduce logistical dependencies and vulnerabilities [8, 9].

US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) programs like ‘Living Foundries’ and the Transformational Synbio for Military Environments (TRANSFORME) initiative actively explore these possibilities, aiming to harness biology’s production capacity for military advantage. Microbiome engineering, altering the microbes within the human gut, is another avenue, potentially enhancing host metabolism or providing protective effects akin to biological body armor. 

Pharmacological interventions also play a role. Substances affecting alertness, concentration, and memory, such as Modafinil, methylphenidates (Ritalin), and amphetamine salts (Adderall), are already used or considered for promoting wakefulness and sustained attention during demanding tasks. However, differing national policies, such as the contrasting regulations for Modafinil use by US and German forces, highlight existing ethical and legal complexities. DARPA’s interest extends further, exploring bioconvergence, techniques to restore memory function, and even biohacking blood cells (e.g., the Red Blood Cell Factory program) to create internal drug delivery systems or mechanisms to control hemorrhaging [10,   

The convergence of these biotechnological approaches is notable. Gene editing might enhance cognitive function, pharmacological agents provide temporary boosts, and synthetic biology reduces the need for external supply lines. This layering of capabilities points towards a future where biological enhancement is multifaceted, aiming for soldiers who are physically stronger, cognitively sharper, more resilient, and less reliant on traditional logistics.

There are other technologies that “clear” the path since the pursuit of the enhanced soldier is not monolithic. It involves a synergistic approach, combining genetic tweaks for baseline improvements, neuro-interfaces for direct control, cognitive boosts, AI for decision support and automation, and wearables for real-time monitoring and feedback. This convergence creates a human-machine system of unprecedented potential, but as the following sections will explore, also unprecedented vulnerability. While physical enhancements remain relevant, the trajectory strongly suggests a future battlefield where cognitive superiority, resilience, and operational efficiency – enabled by this bio-digital fusion – are the ultimate prizes. Below is a table that summarizes those technologies.

Table compiled using Gemini

Hacking the Supersoldier: Threat Vectors in the Bio-Digital Domain

The technologies designed to enhance soldier capabilities paradoxically create novel and complex vulnerabilities. Integrating biological systems with digital networks, AI algorithms, and sophisticated sensors results in an expanded attack surface where the soldier becomes a potential target for disruption, manipulation, or exploitation. This “hacking” transcends traditional cyber warfare, extending into the biological, cognitive, and data realms. Understanding these multifaceted threat vectors is crucial for developing effective defenses for the future bio-digital battlefield.

Cyber Vulnerabilities: AI Systems and Digital Infrastructure

AI systems, integral to enhancing cognitive functions, supporting decisions, and enabling autonomous platforms, introduce significant cybersecurity risks. These systems are susceptible to adversarial AI attacks designed to deceive or compromise machine learning models.

• Evasion Attacks: Malicious actors can craft subtle perturbations to input data (such as sensor readings or imagery) that are imperceptible to humans but cause the AI model to misclassify information or make incorrect predictions [11].

• Data Poisoning involves deliberately corrupting the data used to train AI models. Attackers can insert malicious data points to introduce biases, create hidden backdoors triggered by specific inputs, or degrade the model’s overall performance and reliability [12].

• Model Stealing/Extraction: Adversaries may attempt to reconstruct or infer confidential information about an AI model, such as its parameters (weights) or the sensitive data it was trained on [13].

Beyond these specific adversarial techniques, AI systems present broader security challenges. Their inherent complexity makes finding, analyzing, and remediating vulnerabilities more difficult than traditional software. 

Furthermore, merging self-coding AI systems, capable of modifying their own code, introduces unprecedented challenges. These systems can evolve beyond human control, making their behavior unpredictable. In a military context, such autonomy could lead to unintended consequences, including developing or deploying unauthorized biological agents.

The digital infrastructure supporting enhanced soldiers, including command and control networks, logistics systems, and communication platforms, also becomes a target. Disrupting these AI-reliant systems through cyberattacks or denial-of-service (DoS) attacks could cripple operational capabilities. The real-world implications of credential leaks, as illustrated by the civilian xAI API key exposure, which granted access to private and potentially sensitive AI models, underscore the critical need for robust security around military AI systems and the potential for significant breaches if security practices are lax [14].   

Table 2 below presents a summary of possible hacking avenues

The table compiled by Gemini

The interconnectedness of these threat vectors is a defining characteristic of the bio-digital battlefield. A cyberattack could steal genomic data used to design a targeted bioweapon. A supply chain compromise could insert vulnerable AI software into a BCI system. Data poisoning could cause an AI-driven autonomous vehicle carrying enhanced soldiers to fall into an ambush. Effectively defending against the “hacking” of the supersoldier requires understanding and addressing this complex, converged threat landscape, where the lines between cyber, physical, and biological security are irrevocably blurred. The sheer volume and sensitivity of the data generated and consumed by these systems – genomic, biometric, operational – make data security a central pillar of this new security paradigm. 

Furthermore, AI’s dual role, serving as both a component to be secured and a tool wielded by attackers, creates an escalating cycle of offense and defense. Ultimately, successfully exploiting these vulnerabilities could lead to mission failure and a profound loss of control over enhanced personnel or the systems they operate, critically eroding trust in these powerful but fragile technologies.

Cyberbiosecurity

The novel and interconnected vulnerabilities inherent in bio-digitally enhanced soldiers necessitate a new, integrated security paradigm: cyberbiosecurity. This emerging discipline recognizes that traditional security approaches, siloed within cybersecurity, physical security, or biosecurity, cannot address threats that seamlessly cross these domains. Cyberbiosecurity aims to understand and mitigate the unique risks arising at the convergence of life sciences, digital technologies, cyber-physical systems, and their associated infrastructures and supply chains. Its fundamental goal is to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical biological data, research processes, and bio-related infrastructure from the full spectrum of cyber threats, including unauthorized surveillance, intrusion, manipulation, theft, or destruction [15].

Our next article will address the domain of cyberbiosecurity.

Finally

The convergence of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and neurotechnology in pursuing enhanced military personnel marks a radical shift in the character of warfare. Far beyond physical augmentation, the development of gene-edited and cognitively optimized “supersoldiers” represents the emergence of a new type of combatant: the bio-digital warfighter. As this evolution unfolds, it creates a battlefield not just of terrain and firepower, but of molecular data, neural networks, and programmable biology.

Militaries invest in these capabilities to gain decisive advantages in endurance, decision-making, adaptability, and survivability. However, this pursuit also introduces unprecedented vulnerabilities. The technologies designed to expand human capability—gene editing, brain-computer interfaces, and AI-driven performance management—become targets for manipulation, exploitation, and sabotage. Once physically invulnerable on the battlefield, soldiers may now become biologically and cognitively ‘hackable.’

Our analysis has traced the motivations behind global enhancement programs, the technologies enabling them, and the expanding array of threat vectors these systems create, from adversarial AI attacks to genomic data theft and supply chain infiltration. What emerges is a picture of a radically transformed battlefield, where superiority depends not just on firepower or tactics, but on controlling the integrity of the bio-digital systems within and around each soldier.

To safeguard against these threats, nations must adopt the lens of **cyberbiosecurity**—a field specifically designed to protect the convergence of digital and biological systems. This means integrating security from the DNA sequence to the AI algorithms, across cloud infrastructure, hardware interfaces, and synthetic biology platforms. It also demands international coordination, robust regulation, and continuous surveillance of emerging technologies and their deployment contexts.

As the militarization of biology accelerates, one truth becomes increasingly clear: future conflicts may not only be fought over territory or ideology but also over the very building blocks of human performance. Ensuring control over these capabilities and defending them from subversion may determine tactical victories and preserve democratic values, ethical integrity, and human agency in an increasingly synthetic age. The battlefield of tomorrow is bio-digital, and the time to secure it is now.

Notes and References

Notes

1. US Confirms Terrifying Genetic Enhancements in Military Experiments:

• China aims to create a world-class military by 2049, focusing on “intelligent warfare” through biotechnology and AI.
• The development of genetically enhanced PLA soldiers represents a new era of warfare, melding biological augmentation with AI.
• The US must accelerate innovation and protect intellectual property to counter China’s rapid technological advancements.
• A federal investment of at least $15 billion is proposed to boost domestic biotech innovation and maintain global competitiveness.

2. The Strategic Imperative of Biotechnology: Implications for US National Security

• Short of ethical considerations, advances in protein engineering, drug discovery like AlphaFold, and gene and genomic editing, such as CRISPR-Cas-9, could transform wars and provide significant advantages on the battlefield.

3. Engineering Supersoldiers: Boost in Lethality May Come From Within

• The Army has even established the Mad Scientist Initiative to unite military and federal researchers, academicians, and industry to explore options for building a “supersoldier.”

4. Gene Editing In Soldiers: CRISPR And Human Chimeras

• By employing precision gene editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, specific genes associated with endurance, strength, and cognitive abilities can be modified to augment soldier capabilities while minimizing off-target effects and unintended mutations. 

5. Frontline Genomics: How Biotech is Becoming Integral to NatSec Strategy

• It can be argued that biotechnology today echoes Babel’s paradox. Humanity has been granted the ability to rewrite life through the universal ‘language’ of genomics, synthetic biology, and neurotechnology. Nowhere is this transformative potential more evident – or more fraught with peril – than in defence.

6. China: Leader in Military Application of Biological Human Performance Enhancement by 2030

• Gene editing could play a significant role in the execution of China’s Intelligentized warfare concept by enabling the country to create genetically modified soldiers with enhanced physical and cognitive abilities.

7. Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War

• “A complex, high-threat landscape is emerging in which future wars might be fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts; the military-industrial base is disturbed by synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues; and the future warfighter goes beyond the baseline genome to become an enhanced warfighter who is capable of survival in the harshest of combat environments.”

8. Innovation in Biotechnology

• “Biological Technologies Office (BTO) investment portfolio goes far beyond life sciences applications in medicine to include areas of research such as human-machine interfaces, microbes as production platforms, and deep exploration of the impact of evolving ecologies and environments on US readiness and capabilities. BTO’s programs operate across a wide range of scales, from individual cells to the warfighter to global ecosystems.”

9. Transformational Synbio for Military Environments (TRANSFORME)

• Synthetic Biology has the potential to tip the balance of combat power more than any other research domain. The biotechnical revolution will deliver a global bioeconomy worth $3.44 trillion by 2030. Our near-peer competitors recognize the promise of biotechnology and synthetic biology and are working to gain an advantage by developing and deploying biotechnological capability.

10. Human enhancement from a military perspective – WHY, WHAT, and HOW?

• “Military operations under international bodies such as the UN, NATO or the EU involve varied conditions. Enhancements, such as the use of Modafinil® by US personnel, raise ethical and legal issues due to potential adverse effects such as prolonged recovery and aggression. Alternatives like training or meditation and competing technologies like robotics also necessitate careful evaluation. For example, US military personnel use Modafinil® to promote wakefulness during tasks requiring sustained attention, while German forces can only use it with a prescription for specific medical reasons.”

11. Adversarial Attacks: The Hidden Risk in AI Security

• Adversarial attacks specifically target the vulnerabilities in AI/ML systems. At a high level, these attacks involve inputting carefully crafted data into an AI model to trick it into an incorrect decision or classification.

12. Risks and Mitigation Strategies for Adversarial Artificial Intelligence Threats: A DHS S&T Study

• As the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape evolves, the pursuit of more innovative algorithms has given rise to an AI-based sub-discipline that blurs the lines between innovation and deception: adversarial AI (AAI), where AI systems not only make predictions and take actions but can also engage in a strategic dance of deceit and counter-deception.

13. https://youtu.be/qyH3NxFz3Aw?si=iEV2ymyT_KgknBQz

• Full interview: “Godfather of AI” shares predictions for the future of AI and issues warnings (Weights are the most critical aspects of the architecture of large language models).

14. xAI Dev Leaks API Key for Private SpaceX, Tesla LLMs

• “An employee at Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI leaked a private key on GitHub that for the past two months could have allowed anyone to query private xAI large language models (LLMs) which appear to have been custom made for working with internal data from Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter/X, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.”

15. Cyberbiosecurity: An Emerging New Discipline to Help Safeguard the Bioeconomy

• Cyberbiosecurity is being proposed as a new enterprise encompassing cybersecurity, cyber-physical security, and biosecurity as applied to biological and biomedical-based systems.

References

Allen, G. (2019). Understanding China’s AI Strategy. Center for a New American Security.

Army Futures Command. (2020). Engineering Supersoldiers: Boost in Lethality May Come From Within. Association of the United States Army.

Brundage, M., et al. (2018). The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation. Future of Humanity Institute.

Cave, S., & Dignum, V. (2019). Algorithms and the Future of Warfare: The Importance of Responsible AI. NATO Review.

Drexel, B., & Withers, C. (2024). AI and the evolution of biological national security risks: Capabilities, thresholds, and interventions. Center for a New American Security. Published on August 13, 2024. https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/ai-and-the-evolution-of-biological-national-security-risks?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Galliott, J. (2015). Military Enhancement: A Philosophical Overview. Routledge.

Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, “A Programmable Dual-RNA-Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity”, Science, August 17, 2012, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/816

Lin, P., et al. (2012). Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design. California Polytechnic State University.

National Defense University. (2020). Minds at War: China’s Pursuit of Military Advantage through Cognitive Science and Biotechnology.

National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. (2021). Final Report.

Regalado Antonio, “Everything You Need to Know About CRISPR Gene Editing’s Monster Year”, MIT Technology Review, December 1, 2015, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/543941/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crispr-gene-editings-monster-year/

Senate Armed Services Committee, “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the UC Intelligence Community”, http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/SASC_Unclassified_2016_ATA_SFR_FINAL.pdf

Singer, P. W. (2009). Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. Penguin.

US Department of Defense. (2018). Summary of the 2018 Department of Defense Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

Final Remarks  

A group of friends from “Organizational DNA Labs” (a private group) compiled references and notes from our theses and various authors, media, and academics for this article and analysis. We also utilized AI platforms such as Gemini, Storm, Grok, Open-Source ChatGPT, and Grammarly as research assistants to save time and ensure the structural and logical coherence of our expressions. Using these platforms, we seek to verify information from multiple sources and validate it through academic databases and equity firm analysts with whom we have collaborated. The references and notes in this work provide a comprehensive list of our sources. As a researcher and editor, I have taken great care to ensure that all sources are correctly cited and that the authors receive recognition for their contributions. The content is primarily based on our compilation, analysis, and synthesis of these sources. The summaries and inferences reflect our dedication and motivation to expand and share knowledge. While we have drawn from high-quality sources to inform our perspective, the conclusion represents our views and understanding of the topics covered, which evolve through ongoing learning and literature reviews in this business field.