I like how the article did its best to bury the lede that the crux of the discussion was how to better understand and manage these new technologies. To quote the panel prompt "[T]here are some real-world fears and ethical questions that need to be asked. Just because we can, should we?"
Isn't this exactly the type of discussion we want happening in a public forum?
There's a perverse incentive here where the military industrial complex is constantly pursuing more profits/contracts. That almost always means inventing new, terrible weapons. So the ethics end up taking a back seat to corporate greed.
Why not? I'd imagine they're still a subdivision of human. Each super soldier probably has different augmentations/mutations to their different genetics, the same way different races do.
Edit: Maybe it's just easier for me to think about it in video game terms, where race/class is very common. Race can be anything from cyborg to cat person, and class would be "soldier" instead of "martial artist" or "cook" or whatever.
In the real world, IMO it'd be weird to think of them as a different species altogether, at least at first. Eventually they may evolve to something better.
Conflating “genetic” to “race” is bizarre. Race in real life is based on a tiny subset of possible genetic differences, mostly focused on appearance. Down syndrome or other noticeable genetic mutations aren’t a race.
It's worth noting that NONE of the objectives of this group are defensive, like detecting or disabling 'the enemy'. They're entirely offensive. Big red flag.
> It's worth noting that NONE of the objectives of this group are defensive, like detecting or disabling 'the enemy'. They're entirely offensive.
Detecting and disabling the enemy are also entirely offensive objectives. They are useful defensively for the same reason that every other offensive capability is useful defensively.
Isn't this exactly the type of discussion we want happening in a public forum?