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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how military biometrics reformulates medical capitals for warfare logics, shifting biometric questions from identification and health toward bodily eligibility for operations.

Paper long abstract

In a recent monograph, Andrew Bickford notes the following: "Control the body and you control the future" (2021: 19). In his view, US military needs to promote sustained investment in biotechnology and military medicine aimed at producing stronger, more lethal, and better-protected soldiers for the global battlefields of the twenty-first century. Among these initiatives, biometric projects hold a central role. Whereas in the medical field per se biometrics' main aim is either to help functions of the body get better and maintain health, in military medicine such technologies may blur boundaries and open the way to other perspectives. Although, as noted by Shoshana Magnet some time ago, "biometric scientists imagine these technologies as more highly evolved, efficient, and accurate versions of older techniques of identification" (2011: 19), what is at stake between the medical and the military invites us to rethink that whoever identifies the body may engineer what is yet to come. How medically intimate we are may therefore serve specific purposes for warfare operations. The aim of this presentation is to show how warfare logics reformulate medical capitals for the purpose of being mission-ready (Thormann, Bize & Hajak 2024) moving beyond such questions as "Who are you?" and "How are you?" that commonly relate to biometrics. It shall question how biometrics shapes what kinds of bodies are in/eligible for operations while using healthcare terrains.