As military technologies evolve toward enhanced and cyborg soldiers, ethical questions surrounding super-soldiers have become more urgent. This talk explores the development of performance-enhancing interventions in soldiers—ranging from stimulants and resilience boosters to brain-computer interfaces—and evaluates their use through the lens of just war theory and consequentialist ethics. Arguing that the legitimacy of supersoldier technologies depends less on their capabilities than on the political authority deploying them, I examine how consent, reversibility, proportionality, and restraint must frame their application. Ultimately, I propose that the most defensible future for military enhancement lies within a system of transnational governance, where lethal force is exercised in defense of human rights under democratic global authority.
James J. Hughes, PhD serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and as Associate Provost at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he also taught bioethics at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Hughes is the author of Citizen Cyborg and co-editor of Surviving the Machine Age.
