Army tech seminar shows warfare’s future

Electromagnetic pulse guns, genetically designed killer diseases and swarms of miniature self-guided missiles — if these sound like the products of a mad scientist, they should. They are among the threats predicted during the U.S. Army’s 11th annual Mad Scientist Future Technology Seminar (no, really) in Newport News, Va.

The event, held at the end of January, brought together scientists, science-fiction writers, futurists, academics, students and U.S. officials to brainstorm on ways science and technology might combine in unexpected fashion to challenge U.S. military pre-eminence.

“It is only a matter of time before there is a significant high-tech surprise awaiting U.S. military forces,” according to a summary of the seminars conclusions supplied to The Washington Times.

“We were basically trying to work out how people could use new and emerging technologies … to do malicious things,” said Jim Bernheimer, 40, a science-fiction and fantasy author who attended the event.

One focus of the discussions was the rapidly expanding capabilities of non-state actors, such as terrorist groups, he said. “Right now, its only major nation states that are using drone technology” to build unmanned aircraft, Mr. Bernheimer said, giving one example. “But in 15 to 25 years … even small groups will have those capabilities.

“I personally find that alarming.”

Tom Pappas, director of intelligence analysis for the U.S. Armys Training and Doctrine Command, which organized the seminar, said in an interview that this “proliferation of information” was empowering individuals and small groups — not just well-known terrorist organizations.

“Imagine a technologically enabled Ted Kaczynski,” said Mr. Pappas, referring to the lone eco-extremist terrorist better known as the Unabomber, whose 17-year-long campaign with primitive parcel bombs killed three Americans and injured 24.

Mr. Pappas said 105 people — including five science-fiction authors, seven futurists and 14 academics — attended the three-day event.

The summary lists five “significant findings” of the seminar, concluding that “emerging biological technology … especially in the hands of non-state actors, has the greatest potential to catch the Army unprepared in the short term” by allowing the creation and delivery of new diseases for which there is no cure.

The summary states that this capability likely will be available to U.S. adversaries “as early as 2015.”

“A realistic example would be to alter a naturally mutating flu virus,” it said.

Other specific technologies highlighted as future threats at the event included devices that produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a huge surge of radiation like that produced by a nuclear explosion that destroys electrical circuits over wide areas. EMP devices can render useless communications and other electronic systems — like those used for high-tech weapons — leaving military units that are attacked by them blind, isolated and crippled.

The seminar concluded that “EMP weapons will become available to potential adversaries in mortar and artillery rounds soon,” and that “blending the technologies necessary to generate an EMP with advances in miniaturization could produce a hand-held EMP gun before 2020.”

The seminar also highlighted the dangers posed by advances in robotics, combined with those in nanotechnology — the science of creating molecule-sized machinery — and advanced computing and artificial intelligence.

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