Warrior Geeks

Book excerpt: Warrior Geeks examines how technology is transforming the way we think about and fight war, focusing on three major changes driving the process: the technologies aiming to incorporate soldiers into a cybernetic system through which the military can read their thoughts and mold them accordingly; the anticipated coexistence of men and robots on the battlefields of tomorrow; and the extent to which armies may one day be able to reengineer warriors through pharmacological manipulation. Harking back to the Greeks and Aristotle's original conception of virtue ethics and the proper contours of war, Christopher Coker believes modern humans are on the verge of losing touch with their humanity. War can only be rendered more humane if we recall the wisdom of our ancestors, he claims. Unfortunately, modern society is about to subcontract its ethical self to machines. In revaluing technology, we devalue our humanity, or the posthuman condition, and by changing our functional and performative relationship to technology, we irrevocably alter our subjectivity and the existential dimensions of war.