Scientists Warn Brain-Targeting Weapons Could Become a Reality
Researchers are raising alarms about technologies that could directly alter perception, memory, and behaviour, turning neuroscience into a national security issue. Dr Michael Crowley and Professor Malcolm Dando argue in a new book that scientific progress demands urgent policy attention. Their warning frames a growing debate over where medical research ends and weaponisation begins.
Decades of convergent research set the stage for this concern: NBIC (2000) and the US BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, 2013) aimed to improve health but also produced tools that can be repurposed. Scientists and defence organisations have tracked neural interfaces, chemical modulators, and other mind-influencing techniques for years. Those historical facts complicate the line between therapy and coercion.
Experts say mind-control weapons no longer belong only in fiction; they are an emerging real-world risk. The book’s authors emphasise the possibility of devices or substances designed to change behaviour without a person’s consent. That shift from theory to plausibility is what alarms ethicists and policymakers.
Professor Dando says: ‘The same knowledge that helps us treat neurological disorders could be used to disrupt cognition, induce compliance, or even in the future turn people into unwitting agents.’
Research into central nervous system acting weapons is not new: since the 1950s, major powers such as the United States, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom explored ways to incapacitate or disorient opponents. Early Cold War programs focused on chemicals, sensory manipulation, and interrogation technologies. The long shadow of those projects now intersects with far more precise neuroscience.
One historical example is the US compound known as BZ, which causes delirium, hallucinations, and cognitive dysfunction. The US produced roughly 60,000 kilograms of BZ and built a 340-kilogram cluster munition around it. Although tested on soldiers, there is no verified combat deployment of that weapon.
Non-chemical delivery concepts have also appeared, such as reported Chinese development of a narcosis-gun that fires incapacitating syringes. The only documented combat use of a CNS-targeting incapacitating agent occurred during the 2002 Moscow theatre siege, when a fentanyl-derived agent was used. That intervention stopped the attackers but resulted in 120 hostage fatalities and long-term harm to others.
“The same scientific research that is helping to treat neurological disorders can also be used to build weapons which target specific brain functions.”
Researchers studying the brain’s so-called survival circuits—networks governing fear, sleep, aggression, and decision-making—say the dual-use risk is obvious. Understanding these pathways is vital for treating disorders, yet that same understanding could enable targeting of discrete functions. “That’s the dual-use dilemma we face,” says Professor Dando.
The legal picture muddying response options is the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans harmful chemicals in war but allows some uses, such as certain law-enforcement applications. That carve-out creates a grey area where CNS-targeting tools could be justified under existing rules. The loophole is a central focus for those urging treaty updates and clearer norms.
Professor Dando says: ‘There are dangerous regulatory gaps within and between these treaties. Unless they are closed, we fear certain States may be emboldened to exploit them in dedicated CNS and broader incapacitating agent weapons programmes.
‘We must act now to protect the integrity of science and the sanctity of the human mind.’
Crowley and Dando plan to present their case in The Hague, urging states to confront these gaps before more capable, cheaper, and more accessible tools appear. Their appeal is for legal clarity and international cooperation to prevent medical advances from becoming instruments of coercion. The conversation now sits at the crossroads of ethics, law, and rapidly advancing neuroscience.