Smart-blooded super soldiers: Coming soon from DARPA Look to science fiction and you'll find plenty of pathways to create super soldiers. There's cloning or genetic engineering. If that fails, you could try in-utero enhancements, or maybe some cybernetic augmentation. DARPA has a different idea for the real world: inject 'em up with super blood. Last week, the Pentagon's …
The issue with "super soldiers" is the same issue Billionaires with bunkers have, which for the Billionaires with bunkers, is if the apocalypse happens, their billions are gone, but the people with all or most of the guns are their security people. And the billionares have no useful skills in a post-apoliptic world. So guess who gets pushed out of the bunker by Security before the radioactive fallout has even hit settled to the ground?
In biology, every feature of an organism is a tradeoff within a limited resource budget.
"Improve" one aspect always has repercussions weakening another aspect. Improve oxygen carrying capacity of blood, get more trombose.
And bigger and stronger is not always better.
Neanderthalers were bigger, stronger humans who could thrive in colder climates. They were overrun by smaller, weaker Cro-Magnon humans when things warmed up a little.
Anyhow, "Better" soldiers will be beaten to pulp by robots and drones anyway. So what is the point?
But maybe I am missing something here?
> "Improve" one aspect always has repercussions weakening another aspect. Improve oxygen carrying capacity of blood, get more trombose.
I don't remember which book I read this in but a North Korean (who had defected) was explaining some unexpected effects of the famine there. IIRC, he said something to the effect of "the big, fit, muscly ones died first, because they needed more food (energy)".
Polar explorers found that out too. The big musclar ones died first.
In general, the obese survive longer in a famine. Which is one reason why for most of history and still in many parts of the world, "big" people are preferred.
The muscular giants get the girl(s). But the small obese ones survive the winter.
Lean people do not survive a failed harvest.
I'm not really sure that's quite how current science would express how that bit of prehistory happened, even if the end result mostly matches; ... at least according to the recent BBC TV doco "Human"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002fxm9
"I'm not really sure that's quite how current science would express how that bit of prehistory happened"
Actually, I suspect no one knows.
Neanderthals hunted big game, eg mammoth, Cro Magnon more hares and smaller animals. For the rest, I suspect little is known for sure. They did cross breed which made the Cro Magnon better adapted to the European climate and circumstances.
There was one strange observation. Both Neanderthals and Cro Magnon caught salmon when they swam up the rivers of Iberia, Portugal and Spain. But only Cro Magnon did this organized in large numbers and synchronized with the salmon migration. Why?
The best suggestion I heard about the end of the Neanderthals was that Cro Magnon simple could raise more kids (higher population density) than Neanderthals and the masses of Cro Magnons absorbed the Neanderthals.
But your guess is as good as mine.
Takes 20 years off your lifespan? That wouldn't become apparent for at least a decade, by which time they will tell recruits "don't worry about the scandals you're seeing reported in the media, that was SmartBlood 1.0. This is SmartBlood 2.0, which fixes those issues, pinky promise!"
And yes I agree by the time it is researched, tested on mice, tested on volunteer soldiers, and can be rolled out in en masse humans will have no place on the front lines any longer so it won't matter how many hours they can march with a 100 lb pack without rest. If they do they'll be in some sort of powered armor so again the strength and endurance of their biological bits won't matter too much.
If this research bears any fruit they probably won't even need to test it on humans. It will "escape" the lab (via bribery) and bodybuilders and athletes will be juicing with it and they will be the "test subjects". Many would happily give up decades of their lifespan if it means they can be the best of the best for a short time in their youth.
"Many would happily give up decades of their lifespan if it means they can be the best of the best for a short time in their youth."
It seems they asked this very question to Olympic athletes. And most seemed to be willing to trade years (decades?) of their lives for winning all contests for a few years.
Heard it on TV years ago so I don't vouch for this story.
You are correct ... you are missing something !!! :)
As is often the case the 'technology' is reused elsewhere in an unintended way ... the flow tends to be turn everything into a weapon, it sometimes goes the other way and the 'weapon tech' is used in general life to NOT kill !!!
The immediate thought is that this will be used/sold to the highest bidder as a means to enhance and/or improve the health of people with money.
Not only do you want to 'Own the world' BUT you want to 'Own it' for longer ... because 'I can afford it' !!!
The old Sci-Fi idea of using 'spare parts of a biological nature' to enhance your longevity has cropped up in the news recently.
This is related, the DARPA 'Super soldier' 'revisit' will boost the 'private medical industries' coffers by offering 'Bio-Boosts' to your failing system as a gain in its own right BUT also as a pre-conditioning of the system to facilitate transplanting organs that will NOT have the rejection problem because you 'tweaked' the system before hand.
The ultimate destination would be to enhance the functionality of the 'New Parts' by growing them with enhanced features that the 'Bio-boosts' would match/support.
You would then grow a population of the 'rich & deserving' who would need regular 'upgrades & top-ups' to keep going indefinitely ... or as near as possible !!!
[If this reads like a film plot ... It is !!! ... Almost the 'backstory' for the rich people who live in the space-station community in Elysium ]
:)
It's much older than the movies.
The story of Elizabeth Báthory is from 1600.
That "live mic" conversation between Putin and Xi the other week?
It was them planting a seed to make Trump spend money on unicorns because of FOMO?
> Q: ...To where humanity learned to control their militaries with drugs.
To be fair (or perhaps, to play devil's advocate), soldiers have been using various types of drugs for millennia, usually with the sanctioning - or even active encouragement - of their command structure.
From the modafinil currently in use by many airforces - including the US and UK, to the 35 million doses of methamphetamine distributed by Germany to its troops in the year 1940 alone, all the way down to khat and similar herbal drugs being used by child soldiers in various african countries, to barbarians and soldiers warring thousands of years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_drugs_in_warfare
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20240314-the-drug-pilots-take-to-stay-awake
https://www.discovermagazine.com/warriors-of-the-roman-period-may-have-used-narcotics-before-battle-47042
War is physically and mentally traumatising, and there's a high risk of death in that situation, most people will gladly leap on anything which gives them any form of edge and help to keep them alive.
No argument, but the way this tech can/will be used will mean it will be official and systematic, as implied in the Star Trek scene.
And that leads to an even uglier set of questions to ask: Shall we value life more or less when the biology of the soldier can be molded to the desire of the leadership? Shall officers grow more callous, seeing how easy it is to manipulate their soldiers by dialing up the good brain juice?
AFAICT red blood cells are too small for this — they need to be so that they can move through capillaries, and bend. They don't have the volume to be fitted with a nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum, or mitochondria. Good luck trying to make them synthesize anything, other than by pure magic.
While mammals' RBCs dump their nuclei etc, birds' RBCs retain theirs and both classes operate under similar metabolic constraints.
The question of "why the difference?" appears far from settled: "Revisiting the question of nucleated versus enucleated erythrocytes in birds and mammals "
The article mentions mucking about with the subject's stem cells which seems like a really good way of creating new forms of leukemia or polycythemia or legions of GIs with chicken blood.
If IT clowns have anything to do with this circus, I can imagine only after production production deployment someone notices ... "Chaps, we seem to have left out the hemoglobin. Is that important?"
The enhanced biology equivalent of Patch Tuesday could an existential challenge quite literally. After a fuck up in the style of the clownstrike fiasco, there is no unbricking in biology.
Good points! It does make that DARPA voodoo hybrid chicken-blood drinking supernatural powers seeking endeavor much more realistic, and low cholesterol to boot ...
The opportunities for convergent cross-species evolution will likely be endless indeed! %~O
To enable the drones to adapt to harsh environments. Assuming they last more than a week, what with the "enhanced hemostasis" giving them Deep Vein Thrombosis, strokes and heart blockages.
> Also left mysterious is how those SRBCs might get injected
Obviously, tubules extending from between the knuckles, duh (although these might get tangled with the Adamantium claws that other, equally sensible, DARPA proposals are working on).
But if you really want to know how well Smart Blood can turn out, have a look at
As it's doing a good job of being a timely promotion for the imminent new series of Gen V* on Prime
* A spin off of "The Boys" - loosely based on Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson comics, featuring compound V - a chemical that gives superhuman abilities & can be found in teh blood
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