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New Report Examines Impact of Science and Technology on National Security Over Next 25 Years

14 March, 2001

Arlington, Va. - Neurological interventions that make you brave or cowardly, happy or sad. Weather manipulation that enriches one region at the expense of others. Molecular machines that perform precision surgery on the battlefield. These are just a few possibilities addressed in Out of the Box and Into the Future: A National Security Forecast, a new report released today by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

The report is the result of a year-long project that examined the impacts of rapid advances in science and technology on military operations in the next quarter century. The project's goal was to gain an understanding of the future by gathering and integrating the perspectives of world-class scientists and warfighters.

The Out of the Box project was initiated by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Ct.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and Reps. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and Rob Andrews (D-N.J.). The project's co-chairmen were Weldon, Adm. Harold Gehman, then commander-in-chief of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, and Dr. Charles Vest, president of MIT. The project included a seminar series, conclusions from 15 recent futures studies, literature reviews, and a two-day conference featuring renowned scientists and authors, general officers of the armed forces, and members of Congress and staff.

The report integrated three categories of perspectives on the impact of science and technology over the next 25 years from all phases of the project.

The first category concluded that powerful trends must be addresses through a unique national structure:

Conflict will continue in increasingly diverse forms. The U.S. must be prepared to handle diplomatic issues, homeland threats, terrorism and other asymmetric attacks, limited armed conflict, and the possibility of war against a peer competitor. The challenge is preparing for the full spectrum of possibilities rather than for any single eventuality.

The proliferation and use of weapons technologies, many of which we will develop for our own military use, will grow alarmingly. This includes weapons of mass destruction.

Advancements in science and technology will yield both beneficial and devastating consequences with potential policy and ethical repercussions. In addition to thermonuclear weapons, we may add three more approaches to Armageddon as a result of inadvertent or intentional misapplication of the fruits of research in biology, nanotechnology, and weather manipulation. Research in neuroscience will yield neurological interventions in the form of pharmaceuticals and implanted devices capable of changing mental capabilities and emotional responses.

The second category recognized that science and technology will dramatically affect military operations. Through nanotechnology, active defense and advanced camouflage, there will be new ways to project power and maneuver. Firepower will range from unprecedented destructive levels to less-than-lethal effects. Many conventional platforms and operations will be threatened. New approaches will be needed to protect troops and populations from increasingly deadly weapons and diseases, which will be spread both naturally and intentionally. Technologists also will develop information systems involving ubiquitous sensors across broad spectrums that will dramatically reduce privacy to civilians and sanctuary to warfighters.

The third category of perspectives concludes that capturing emerging science and technology to serve our military will be a challenge, given our inefficient defense acquisition process. The report recommends that we must fix it or risk losing our technological lead in critical areas.

"We as a nation are in danger of jeopardizing the technological advantage enjoyed by our armed services right at the point in history when we need it the most," stated Sen. Lieberman in support of the report's conclusions. "We must speed the process of moving ideas and technologies through the system in a more efficient and responsive way so we can field the most capable force in the future. And we must reconnect the military to the best science and technology that has brought us to where we are today. That is the only way we’re going to maintain our position in the future."

For further information or a copy of the report, please contact Erin O'Connell at 703-525-0770, ext. 241.

The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies is an independent 501(c)(3) not-for-profit policy research institute that provides nonpartisan analysis of technology and technology policy to leaders in government, industry and academia. With a reputation for fierce objectivity, the Institute has conducted studies on a wide range of technology and technology policy topics, including defense acquisition reform, dual use technology, space commercialization, cyber-terrorism and biological terrorism.