Jonathan Moreno’s book is certainly timely, as military research into neuroscience and other brain and behavior-related research is certainly taking off. For instance, see this September 19 ExtremeTech article, “DARPA combines human brains and 120-megapixel cameras to create the ultimate military threat detection system.” (Readers will be glad to know Mind Wars has an entire chapter on the history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.)

Meanwhile Moreno asks the primary question: Is anyone minding the ethical store? Who is addressing the problems and dilemmas of subjugating science to national defense concerns?

I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion about the financial wisdom of the Empire in Star Wars building the Death Star. What all the analysis seems to miss, though, is how incredibly cheap such a device would be to build for an advanced civilization. People often forget how radically technology will change our ideas of cost.

So apparently, while sitting on record amounts of cash, industry is willing to invest in technology but not people.