CENTER FOR STRATEGIC DETERRENCE AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION STUDIES 

The United States and its allies and partners face a rapidly expanding array of biothreats, to include the potential employment of increasingly sophisticated and lethal biological weapons (BW).

Research into consideration and possible utility of employing marine mammals in military support operations is nothing new. During the Cold War, the United States (U.S.) and Soviet Union employed dolphins and sea lions for detection, retrieval, and harbor defense. Those programs operated within defined operational parameters and structured oversight. However, recent reports alleging that Russia is employing advanced neurotechnologies to modulate and direct the behavior of orcas for military purposes, if validated, represent an ethical inflection point.

Military identity emerges through the lived, imaginative, and moral experience of service. This paper introduces enchantment—the cognitive, narrative, and symbolic structuring of meaning—as a foundational dimension of military life that sustains commitment, moral coherence, and disciplined action under conditions of risk, ambiguity, and existential strain.

President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to the United Nations General Assembly regarding the use of artificial intelligence systems to support oversight and enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention represents a significant milestone in focusing emergent technological approaches to international biosecurity.

The tools of modern biology such as state-of-the-art gene editing, modular DNA assembly, cell-free systems, benchtop automation, and AI-enabled formulation have distributed bioweapon capability beyond the skillcraft of traditional state laboratories. Although specialized methods and equipment are required for bioagent manufacture, the relative ease of acquiring and using these means is such that more actors can gain access to such agents and can do so without the need for bespoke facilities.

The public acknowledgement of the increasing use of decision-based artificial intelligence (AI) in U.S. defense provides a backdrop to a structural reordering of how military missions will be generated, exercised, and contested.