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Short abstract:

This paper presents the results of a sociotechological investigation into the publically accessible online archives of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It analyzes and categorizes the projects funded since 2010 and places them in the context of military doctrinal discourses.

Long abstract:

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive sociotechnological investigation into the publically accessible online archives of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research funding arm of the US military. It analyzes and categorizes the projects funded since 2010 and places them in the context of military doctrinal discourses. It argues that, despite the variety of projects and presentation of many of them as ethical and humanitarian, there are underlying ambitions in inlfuencing and controlling that brains of US soldiers, enemy combatants and civilians, consistent with longstanding tactical aims in US military doctrine. These ambitions link DARPA neuroscience research with projects vastly different in scale and scope but which all share an interest in creating what Paul Edwards described in the context of Cold War US military strategy as "a closed world," but which has more recently been termed "Full Spectrum Dominance" (FSD). FSD constructs a picture of the world as maleable, surveillance and controllable for US national security purposes at scales from the orbital to the molecular. Academia is deeply implicated in this project and research groups not just in American universities but across Five Eyes alliance nations and beyond have accepted DARPA funding to pursue projects that while technologically possible cannot be regarded as socially desirable, extended the possibility of "neurosurveillance" and control into the brain itself.