Pentagon Science & Technology: The Human Problem

Earlier this year,*Discover *magazine asked me to write a story on the state of Pentagon science and technology as part of a broader issue dedicated the state of science in America. The resulting article, "The Dark Side," is available in the October edition ofDiscover. It certainly doesn't detail every military technology, but I do profile a few -- for example lasers and hypersonics -- that are at the cutting edge of development.

But I also wanted to look at least one "novel" area, so I decided to focus on what I believe to be the most intriguing aspects of the Pentagon's current technology thrusts: the human problem; meaning, the idea of using technology to cope with individual people as the root of security threats.

Here's a snippet:

The Pentagon is also trying to expand its understanding of the brain in order to detect foes. In an interview, William Schneider, the chairman of the Defense Science Board, a panel that advises the Pentagon’s senior leadership, says that neuroscience can offer a window into the minds of terrorists. “By being able to collect and process a lot of information about individuals that can be leveraged with understanding how the brain operates, there may be things we can do that had not heretofore been possible.” This would include being better able to predict where an individual might be found or to anticipate his behavior.

The rest of the article is available here.