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“A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.” The characters in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? fine-tune their mental and emotional states with the “Penfield Mood Organ,” a device named after neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, known for his research on electrical brain stimulation. This fictional apparatus remarkably resembles modern non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation (neuromodulation) and its potential for cognitive enhancement. Although studies have demonstrated promising military applications, decades of experimentation have not yet translated laboratory discoveries into battlefield use.
The United States and its allies should accelerate research and development in neurostimulation to expedite its deployment. As China’s military brings biotechnology and AI together, and as “neurotech” products rapidly hit the market, democratic states risk ceding a critical advantage. The practical and ethical challenges in neuromodulation are real, but that is precisely why they demand a forward-looking and coordinated response rather than treading water.
To effectively leverage emerging neurotechnologies, U.S. policymakers should prioritize several key areas: targeted military research programs, real-world testing and standardization protocols, robust bioethical governance frameworks, integrated equipment prototyping, collaboration with the commercial sector and allied partners, and public engagement initiatives. Together, these measures would facilitate the responsible development, validation, and operational deployment of transcranial brain stimulation technologies.
Background: Tuning the Brain
Neuromodulation involves altering the activity of the nervous system, neurotransmitters, and hormones to affect cognition, emotions, and behavior by introducing energy into the central or peripheral nervous system. By identifying brain regions involved in specific mental states, one can attempt to manipulate these networks to engineer a desired cognitive outcome.
Transcranial brain stimulation takes several forms, including electrical (most commonly direct current stimulation), magnetic, and focused ultrasound. Cognitive functions can also be shaped by targeting peripheral cranial nerves, such as the vagus nerve.
Neuromodulation techniques have been successfully used to treat conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and addiction. When applied to healthy individuals, they can yield noticeable improvements, boosting a range of cognitive functions from learning and alertness to memory and mood.
Unsurprisingly, neurotechnologies have long interested the U.S. military, which has sought to harness warfighters’ minds to biotechnologically engineer “super soldiers.”
The Promise of Military Brain-Zapping
Studies indicate that neurostimulation could offer benefits across three stages of military life: before, during, and after combat.
In the training phase, direct current stimulation can accelerate skill acquisition, especially in motor tasks and operating equipment. In 2016, the Department of Defense partnered with Halo Neuroscience, prompting Navy units, including SEAL Team Six, to test Halo Sport headphones, demonstrating visible improvements in marksmanship. The Air Force Research Laboratory found that Halo also enhanced performance on multitasking attention tests. In addition, a 2010 study revealed that direct current stimulation-assisted training enabled the detection of concealed threats, such as camouflaged explosives, twice as fast and with fewer errors. Object recognition may also be heightened by vagus nerve stimulation, which has been shown to increase arousal in sleep-deprived Air Force personnel. Launched in 2017, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Targeted Neuroplasticity Training program explored this technique for personalized training in marksmanship, target detection, and intelligence analysis.
During operations, brain stimulation can boost alertness, as demonstrated by a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-sponsored study involving individuals who were deprived of sleep for 48 hours or more. It can also enhance attention, helping preserve decision-making capacity during prolonged operations. Other documented effects include gains in working and long-term memory, as well as sleep quality and duration.
Post-combat recovery might also benefit from neuromodulation, as it can improve mood and emotion regulation by normalizing disrupted brain activity. The technique has proven effective in easing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders. For instance, trials with magnetic stimulation among former Navy SEALs struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder reported significant improvements.
These examples illustrate neurostimulation’s opportunities, though the full range of skills that can be enhanced is broader.
The Challenge: Bringing Discovery to Practice
Despite a substantial body of research, neuroenhancement has not yet advanced to military applications. Given China’s pursuit of “military brain science” and Beijing’s concerted investment in fusing human and machine intelligence for the battlefield, the present stasis risks eroding America’s first-mover advantage over its peer competitor. China’s National University of Defense Technology has explored brain-computer interfaces for human-machine teaming. Launched in 2016, the China Brain Project encompasses dual-use neurotechnologies, while a parallel “military brain project” aims to translate neuroscience into applications for “intelligentized warfare” and “mind dominance.” These programs have likely not reached deployment, but this uncertainty and ambiguity itself justifies sustained Western engagement. Waiting for definitive proof of operational capabilities risks missing technological advances.
Crucially, China has proven remarkably adept at converting scientific discoveries into practical, large-scale applications, from 5G to high-speed rail to smart cities to solar energy. The United States, by contrast, has slowed considerably — a broader implementation decline manifest across multiple domains, as starkly illustrated by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their book Abundance. Invention, after all, is one thing — innovation is quite another.
The United States and its allies should fast-track neuromodulation research for clearly bounded military applications. This is essential both toward prospectively improving one’s forces’ operational edge and for developing capabilities to counter the adversary’s neuroenhancements. Equally important still, understanding how to safeguard one’s own neuro hardware and software confers more than resilience — it creates the opportunity to disrupt, degrade, or even reverse the enemy’s cognitive gains. The ability to enhance oneself may well become instrumental in de-enhancing the adversary, a dynamic crucial in the present age of cognitive warfare, where the mind itself has become a real battlefield.
At the same time, commercial neurodevices for wellness, entertainment, and productivity are bursting onto the open market. Large technology companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, as well as numerous start-ups, have invested heavily in neurotechnologies to accelerate their adoption for everyday use. These products will be increasingly embedded in consumer wearables — headbands, headphones, smart glasses, and more. This is no longer a speculative vision, as the menu is already extensive. For example, Somnee’s headband tracks brainwaves and modulates them for higher-quality sleep and Flow produces a wearable for treating depression. Similar devices come from Chinese vendors like BrainUp and PanBrain. The critical distinction, however, is that under civil-military fusion, the Chinese government has broad authority to repurpose commercial technologies for national security.
The civilian momentum creates both opportunity and urgency. Not only are consumer-grade neuro devices dual-use technologies that are easy to militarize, but the global surge in commercial research and development fueled by AI will also turbocharge their practical applications. The military should therefore keep pace, albeit with due attention to all concerns surrounding transcranial neuromodulation.
The Challenges of the “Unknown Unknowns”
Certainly, there are valid reasons for caution when enlisting emerging neurotech.
To begin with, the reported benefits derive from laboratory-based research involving small cohorts, with narrow participation by servicemembers and a limited number of military-relevant tasks. Experimental scenarios rely on computer simulations that loosely resemble a real-life battlefield environment. Yet, as Carl von Clausewitz reminds us, war is the realm of uncertainty, and military undertakings are the very antithesis of laboratory-controlled sterility. Warfighters operate in cognitively overwhelming conditions, facing multiple stressors and having to make quick decisions under pressure amid countless variables. Although the lab-battlefield gap is real, it remains surmountable — virtually all military technologies must make this transition.
Second, neuromodulation research suffers from a lack of standardization across device types, stimulation parameters, experimental protocols, and participant selection criteria. This makes corroboration of results notoriously difficult. Variations in experimental design can produce inconsistent outcomes, contributing to a “replication crisis” where experiments on the same task yield contradictory findings. For instance, one meta-analysis concludes that electrical stimulation improves working memory, while another reports no such effect. Similar inconsistencies are observed in multitasking, vigilance, and threat recognition. These heterogeneous outcomes pose barriers to large-scale validation, but a coordinated standardization strategy could help overcome these constraints.
Third, individual differences in brain architecture and neurochemistry can shape neuromodulatory effects, with some subjects reporting marked alterations while others exhibiting little or no change. Baseline cognitive performance also affects measured enhancements — and within the military, baselines for Army personnel differ from those of the Marine Corps and, more starkly, from Special Operations Forces.
Notably, the efficacy of neuromodulation for some cognitive learning skills appears inversely related to proficiency — it is most effective for novices but offers negligible effects among experts. For example, stimulation has been shown to boost the creativity of beginner jazz musicians, yet paradoxically to hinder performance among seasoned players. So, would neuromodulation offer any learning benefit to hyper-trained, highly skilled warfighters — Special Operations Forces operators or experienced snipers? Or might it, as with jazz players, actually impair their performance? In any case, neurotech holds considerable promise, as much of military service involves basic-to-intermediate skill levels, where performance gains are robust, particularly for junior personnel and specialists learning new tactics. Ultimately, the expertise paradox may not necessarily be constraining, as even elite warfighters lack universal expertise: An expert sniper who adopts AI-assisted aiming may still benefit from enhanced threat detection.
Fourth, neuromodulation has a strong overall safety profile. Compared with psychotropics, it not only produces negligible side effects, like itching and headaches, but also affords far greater precision by triggering specific brain regions, rather than activating the entire central nervous system. However, since most experiments are limited to a few sessions, the long-term consequences of regular use remain unclear. Might extended stimulation induce changes in synaptic connectivity or alter neurobiochemical balance? The concern, as with many medications, is that it may become a two-edged sword, with unintended consequences emerging only after prolonged use. The lack of longitudinal studies is one problem — their limited scope is another. Because most experiments concentrate on a single cognitive trait, our understanding of neuromodulation’s broader impact remains fragmented at best.
In this context, a zero-sum model suggests that upregulating one mental function may diminish another by inadvertently reducing available metabolic resources. Consider decision-making, which involves an interplay between empathic and analytic neural networks that suppress each other. The ability to switch between these circuits is imperative for sound judgment. However, regular stimulation of the analytic network may, over time, reduce the dexterity to cycle between them. Thus, boosting skills like marksmanship could diminish empathy, thereby affecting moral judgment. The model is not merely speculative. A study involving active-duty soldiers found that electrical stimulation improved executive functions, such as attention, reaction time, and accuracy, but it also increased risk-taking behavior. Warfighters must take risks, certainly — but calculated ones. An unintended escalation in risk-taking may jeopardize troop safety. Even so, concerns about potential trade-offs should be weighed against the substantial risks military personnel already face. Consider sleep deprivation, which causes impairments that can lead to errors and fatal accidents — harms that neuromodulation could potentially mitigate.
The Way Ahead
Perhaps the technology is not yet ripe for operational use. Perhaps its overall benefits will not justify deployment. Perhaps military necessity does not outweigh the associated risks. Or perhaps not. We do not yet know. And this is exactly why the promise and peril of neuromodulation demand rigorous scrutiny and authoritative assessment. Fragmented research, piecemeal efforts, and the absence of a future-oriented approach remain pressing obstacles. What is needed is a carefully designed, systematically implemented framework for military research and experimentation — one that ensures neurotechnologies are employed judiciously once they have been proven safe and effective. Here is the proposed path forward.
First, the military should set realistic expectations for the applications of neuroenhancements and establish a step-by-step, time-framed roadmap. Current evidence supports prioritizing three implementations: accelerated military training, recovery from mental health conditions, and performance enhancement in specialized non-kinetic roles, such as image recognition, data analysis, or cyber operations. Direct warfighting enhancement, given its higher stakes, should be approached with greater caution and deferred to later phases, while remaining a legitimate objective. At the same time, skepticism toward interventions that affect cognition warrants scrutiny, given the U.S. military’s longstanding history of performance enhancement. Since World War II, U.S. forces have employed amphetamines, and some aircrews continue to access “go-pills” for fatigue management, though dextroamphetamine was replaced by modafinil in 2017. If psychopharmaceuticals remain institutionally acceptable, non-invasive neuromodulation need not be treated as more controversial — indeed, it may offer a safer and more precise alternative.
Second, a dedicated research design grounded in realistic military scenarios is required. This should include wide-scale, longer-term studies conducted in field settings, involving large, representative cohorts drawn from active-duty personnel, and focused on military tasks where optimization and enhancement would be most beneficial.
Next, standardizing experimental parameters for military-specific settings is essential for ensuring replicability and verification. The generalizability of neuromodulation effects depends on variables that differ across services, roles, and ranks, such as assignment type, proximity to combat zones, and workload. Therefore, uniform protocols for brain stimulation research are necessary to enable meticulous calibration of parameters for particular scenarios. Establishing a platform for cross-service coordination would help institutionalize such guidelines. Here, the Army’s standardization initiative, aimed at tailoring parameters to defined contexts and tasks, can serve as a valuable precedent.
Fourth, the military should develop a firm bioethical playbook for responsible human experimentation and the deployment of neuromodulation. Grounded in existing ethical and legal frameworks, it should incorporate principles from neuroethics and bioethics scholarship on performance enhancement. This framework should address critical issues: procedures that ensure informed consent and genuine voluntariness; clear opt-out mechanisms that protect individual autonomy without career penalties; liability allocation for potential long-term effects; and protocols for monitoring adverse effects. While neuromodulation for therapeutic and training poses limited ethical controversy, combat deployment presents more serious dilemmas. Nevertheless, rigorous bioethical scrutiny that balances military necessity against potential risks could enable responsible application while protecting soldiers’ autonomy, dignity, and safety. Thus, bioethicists ought to be integral to research teams, providing oversight and meaningful decision authority when military benefits do not outweigh potential trade-offs. Still, their role should facilitate responsible research and development rather than serve as a procedural bottleneck.
Fifth, military research should prioritize prototyping. Neuromodulation appears most effective when delivered during task performance — thus, for genuine operational value, its apparatus should be integrated with tactical gear. As early as 2010, engineers on a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency built a prototype helmet integrated with ultrasound stimulation to enhance alertness, relieve pain, and mitigate stress in soldiers. Yet, despite this and other promising designs, none have moved to development. This needs to change, particularly as the ongoing miniaturization of brain-scanning and brain-stimulation hardware creates fresh opportunities to embed it with training and combat equipment.
Sixth, the military community should partner closely with the commercial sector to evaluate both medicinal and consumer-grade products for their dual-use applications. Adapted versions of off-the-shelf hardware and software, customized to meet specific military needs, offer a faster, more cost-effective alternative to developing military-grade systems from the ground up.
Seventh, efforts to field neuroengineering technologies ought to be complemented by comparative analyses of alternative performance-enhancing measures — psychopharmaceuticals, cognitive training, neurofeedback, and the like — to identify the most effective and safe options. Moreover, the convergence of neuromodulation with other techniques might produce novel synergistic effects.
Eight, although the United States leads in neuroenhancement research and development, it should cooperate with allies and partners. In this context, NATO offers a suitable platform, particularly given its adoption of the Biotechnology and Human Enhancement Technologies Strategy and its ongoing monitoring of advancements in neurotech. Coordinated initiatives through such frameworks could help shape global norms for military neuroenhancement.
Finally, strategic, evidence-based communication is essential for informing the public and shaping societal perceptions. Given that human enhancement raises social concerns and that military neuroenhancement will be politically sensitive, experts have rightly recommended that the Department of Defense develop narratives to counter negative attitudes, often shaped by Terminator-like dystopian representations. Such efforts should foster informed public debate while mitigating the risk of misinformation and disinformation.
Coda
Institutional conservatism has drawn persistent criticism from defense experts advocating a bolder, more innovative, and visionary mindset. Militaries often resist innovation, favoring reliability and field-tested durability over novel technologies while preserving traditional roles and identities. History suggests this caution is often misplaced when emerging technologies prove transformative. During the Crimean War, for example, the British military deemed anesthetics incompatible with ideals of masculinity and the warrior ethos.
The stakes of this traditional suspicion to innovation are now rising sharply as progress in science challenges longstanding assumptions about the limits of influencing human cognition. In 1960, Wilder Penfield observed that “It is fair to say that science provides no method of controlling the mind.” Rapid advancements in neuroscience and neurotechnologies may soon render that dictum obsolete, making the once-fictional “Penfield Mood Organ” practically feasible. Should that materialize, Western militaries can ill afford to remain on the sidelines.
Łukasz Kamieński is Professor of Security Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and a 2025–2026 Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. He is the author of Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War (also published in French, Spanish, and Italian). His research focuses on emerging military technologies, particularly biotechnologies for human enhancement and, most recently, cognitive warfare in the age of disruptive technologies.
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Image: Richard A Eldridge via DVIDS.
