Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew the
Speaker 4: try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, Guys,
Speaker 4: we always include, just for ourselves a little inspirational or
Speaker 4: tangential quote at the top of our notes, and usually
Speaker 4: this is you know, a thing just for us. But
Speaker 4: I suggest we read this quoteation allowed because it is
Speaker 4: astonishing for this conversation.
Speaker 3: Sure, should we go one word at a time? Round
Speaker 3: Robin And I'm just kidding. I think I think you
Speaker 3: should read it.
Speaker 4: Ben. You found you're back, You're back from your travels.
Speaker 3: I insist you should do it.
Speaker 4: Can you do it in German?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: No, almost anyway, this this quote is the following. My
Speaker 4: measure of success is that the International Olympic Committee bans
Speaker 4: everything we do.
Speaker 3: Cool cool understood.
Speaker 4: That is not from Dan Harmon, although that was a
Speaker 4: cool conversation. That is instead from a guy named Michael Goldblatt. Uh,
Speaker 4: the former head of DARPA's Defense Science's Office.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't understand what DARPA's activities has to do
Speaker 3: with the Olympic Committee.
Speaker 4: We'll see, we'll see. Shout out, shout out to our buddies. Uh,
Speaker 4: who oh, who is that guy who just proposed was
Speaker 4: the no holds barred Olympics a while back?
Speaker 3: Remember you mean the steroid Olympics Olympics?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like do whatever you want. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that feels like a billionaire move. It's no secret right
Speaker 4: that humanity is known for pushing the proverbial envelope, and
Speaker 4: we were thinking about this earlier. Right now, human and
Speaker 4: technically non human research is inventing technology that human civilization
Speaker 4: does not understand. Have we all seen the studies where
Speaker 4: a bunch of boffins come out with something that they
Speaker 4: are not fully cognizant of, like the AI figured it out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that. But I also saw some former tech
Speaker 3: magnate it was either Google or Twitter. I want to
Speaker 3: say it was a Google former Google person basically saying
Speaker 3: that technology AI is getting so advanced that it's going
Speaker 3: to eventually start inventing things and creating things that we
Speaker 3: fully cannot understand. Yes, and that is when it becomes
Speaker 3: majorly slippery slope and scary.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And then we'll get to a point where perhaps
Speaker 4: AGI starts inventing things that just help itself, right, quite
Speaker 4: a logical move. Humans increasingly not part of the conversation.
Speaker 4: But this is this is weird. We're on the precipice
Speaker 4: of great discovery as a society and civilization is at
Speaker 4: the same time leveraging new innovations, inventions, and discoveries to
Speaker 4: experiment on individual humans. And I think we've all heard this.
Speaker 4: You know, it always gets sold to the public in
Speaker 4: terms of social and scientific benefit. Right we're doing this, Oh,
Speaker 4: we're doing a gain of function research to eradicate disease,
Speaker 4: not to build new diseases.
Speaker 3: Right, well, I mean we certainly know even like you know,
Speaker 3: under the Third Rete, for example, they would have liked
Speaker 3: to think of their troops as super soldiers. And that
Speaker 3: was largely fueled by amphetamines, which was a technology of
Speaker 3: a kind.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, And then we'd say, oh, we're pursuing so
Speaker 4: called AI or quantum computing to create more efficient computational power. Oh,
Speaker 4: we're doing this other research to make sure that air
Speaker 4: and water and food stay clean. But to your point, Noel,
Speaker 4: there's a dirty secret, right, there's a badger in the
Speaker 4: bag and it needs a bath. A lot of this
Speaker 4: research is coming from military funding and for military purposes. However,
Speaker 4: it's sold to the public. That's often just a knock
Speaker 4: on side effect. That's a nice thing to have.
Speaker 3: It's often the case, right, we always seem to find
Speaker 3: out about this kind of tech way later, or once
Speaker 3: it has sort of either outlived its usefulness or become
Speaker 3: perhaps dated in the military circles. Only then do we
Speaker 3: start to see it sold to the public or the
Speaker 3: public union becomes aware of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we are talking about super soldiers. We have
Speaker 4: some stuff to explore about super soldiers this evening. Of course,
Speaker 4: the concept became popularized again in the West with the
Speaker 4: Rain and Fall of Marvel movies. Right, I think they're
Speaker 4: going to come back. I think Doomsday is going to
Speaker 4: be good.
Speaker 3: People say that that Thunderbolts one's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I liked it, And they said I'd sort of got
Speaker 3: that Guardians of the Galaxy vibe, which was the last
Speaker 3: franchise from that world that I found charming. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm happy to hear you know what. It makes me
Speaker 3: think of the ben As the movie, the Jean Claude
Speaker 3: van Damn.
Speaker 4: Movie Universal Soldier.
Speaker 3: Universal Soldier certainly was a golden age in the nineties
Speaker 3: where super soldier kind of stuff was very much floating
Speaker 3: around the zeitgeist. And that is the one. There's also
Speaker 3: a demolition Man another one with thes but that was
Speaker 3: sort of a super soldier kind of sitch, right.
Speaker 2: The Starship Troopers, like the Halo movie that was created
Speaker 2: this concept of an entire exoskeleton suit that makes each
Speaker 2: individual soldier and basically an army of their own.
Speaker 4: Arguably Iron Man biggest plot hole in Marvel Universe was
Speaker 4: that this guy can build suits whenever he wants, and
Speaker 4: he doesn't bother to give Hawkeye a suit, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, kind of a move a little bit.
Speaker 3: Guy's got his he's got skills, he doesn't need a suit.
Speaker 3: What is his power? Perfect aim something along most.
Speaker 4: It's not a power, it's just really good you guys.
Speaker 3: Remember there was a bit in the Fallout games. I
Speaker 3: want to say it was in maybe Fallout three was
Speaker 3: the one before New Vegas, which I forget what number
Speaker 3: it was, but there were these that's right, there were
Speaker 3: these basically like super soldiers that died in their supersuits,
Speaker 3: and when you encounter them in the world, they're skeletons
Speaker 3: that are continuing to walk around in their supersuits. Yes,
Speaker 3: very clever, very and dystopian and clever.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that's we'll see, not just clever and dystopian,
Speaker 4: but arguably prescient. Yeah, will super soldiers become a reality
Speaker 4: the things we see in fiction? If so, what will
Speaker 4: these future fighters look like? And what does that mean
Speaker 4: for the world ahead? This is our cold, open, icy
Speaker 4: icy cold, icye hot. Here are the facts. We've talked
Speaker 4: about this before. We have to be broken records here,
Speaker 4: but not broken arrows. All war creates an arms race,
Speaker 4: War and conflict are huge drivers of innovation.
Speaker 3: It's true. Well, yeah, another fall out line war war
Speaker 3: never changes. I think I've always dropped that one, But
Speaker 3: it's true because the fundamentals of war us versus them,
Speaker 3: and the nature of it needing to be an ongoing
Speaker 3: thing in order to fuel this military industrial complex and
Speaker 3: keep the money flowing definitely never changes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, We're talking physics, medicine, chemistry. You scroll through the
Speaker 4: book of human endeavors, and the odds are that whatever
Speaker 4: discipline you land your finger on, you will find that
Speaker 4: some of the greatest breakthroughs in that field came about
Speaker 4: as a direct result of war and the horrors involved.
Speaker 4: You know, like a lot of stuff would have languished
Speaker 4: in peacetime labs, but all of a sudden, your favorite
Speaker 4: military or your favorite government pulls out all the stops.
Speaker 4: They throw money at the problem. They push these things
Speaker 4: into service, even when they are unproven, so long as
Speaker 4: it gives a potential battlefield edge radar is a good example.
Speaker 4: Bayonets are an example, horses, But of course, you know,
Speaker 4: nukes for sure.
Speaker 3: I guess I've got the Cold War on my mind
Speaker 3: because I was just in Berlin, and I was I
Speaker 3: went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and they had a
Speaker 3: lot of weaponry on display there. I just found out
Speaker 3: for the first time that the Berlin Wall actually had
Speaker 3: like automatic, like unmissed weapons that would shoot people trying
Speaker 3: to escape, shoot to kill, and not to mention, I
Speaker 3: believe these things that were called cluster bombs that were
Speaker 3: very good at wiping out huge crowds, but also would
Speaker 3: leave behind unexploded ordinance that would cause problems for years
Speaker 3: and years to come. So it's a great example ben
Speaker 3: of technology that solves a problem but maybe isn't thought
Speaker 3: through in its entirety in terms of the knock on effects.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent, because especially in the sensitive time
Speaker 4: windows of war deployment, right, you don't have you don't
Speaker 4: have the privilege of saying, let's wait till this thing
Speaker 4: is one hundred percent and definitely good. You have to
Speaker 4: do your best to stem the tide, right of whatever
Speaker 4: the invading horde may be. And we also see with
Speaker 4: this in step to that point, we see a long
Speaker 4: long history of nations that push to provide their soldiers
Speaker 4: with individual advances weapons or new material for weapons, better
Speaker 4: and better armor horses of course shout out to the Khanates.
Speaker 4: Other modes of transport, and drugs. I recently re listened
Speaker 4: to our episode on the Viking Berserkers. Do you get
Speaker 4: from that? Yes, that was the one where the idea
Speaker 4: was that this somewhat elite fighting force got dosed up
Speaker 4: on psychoactive substances and such.
Speaker 3: The dude for whatever reason, just to freak people out right, right,
Speaker 3: they're beyond pain, right, They're like the urlu Kai.
Speaker 4: And this idea then of a super soldier, we could argue,
Speaker 4: is surprisingly ancient. We could even say we see it
Speaker 4: throughout literature in the form of Demi Gods, right, Hercules
Speaker 4: is a super soldier not even fully human. And then
Speaker 4: of course superheroes Captain America, Agent Walker, Bucky, the Flag Smashers,
Speaker 4: Isaiah Now, I'm just getting you lost me a Captain
Speaker 4: Isaiah Bradley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Achilles is a really good version of that,
Speaker 2: because it is kind of the pursuit of everyone out
Speaker 2: there attempting to create exoskeletons for you know, quote, super soldiers,
Speaker 2: to create different technologies that would be worn by a
Speaker 2: soldier that makes them better than human is to remove
Speaker 2: that one those tiny little places where a soldier is most.
Speaker 4: Vulnerable, the parable of Achilles. Heel, Yeah, I think I
Speaker 4: agree with that, you know, and we see real world
Speaker 4: examples too throughout history where better or superior training and
Speaker 4: equipment can wildly tip the scales between otherwise evenly matched
Speaker 4: fighting forces. Obviously, we've got a lot of veterans in
Speaker 4: the audience tonight, and thank you for tuning in. This
Speaker 4: trend never stopped. We could argue that the search for
Speaker 4: increasingly powerful super soldiers only accelerates in the modern day.
Speaker 4: And that's where we give our big shout out to DARPA.
Speaker 4: What of our first audio episodes, what are the early ones?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Nineteen fifty eight, the Defense Advanced Research
Speaker 3: Projects Agency, or DARPA was founded as the central research
Speaker 3: and development organization for the DoD Starting in the late
Speaker 3: eighties and early nineties, they started really focusing a lot
Speaker 3: of their energies on exactly what we're talking about today,
Speaker 3: the idea of giving that edge to good old uncle Sam. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Especially in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 4: they started, like you're saying, no, focusing on better in
Speaker 4: their minds, better preparing soldiers, sailors, folks in the Air
Speaker 4: Force four conflict, even if that meant in theory, upending
Speaker 4: established precedents for war right, or sometimes even theoretically transforming
Speaker 4: these individuals themselves. This is where we get this stuff
Speaker 4: like the much lauded Future Soldier twenty thirty projects.
Speaker 3: Have you guys heard the SoundBite from Trump where he's
Speaker 3: kind of bragging about like oh, you have no idea
Speaker 3: what weapons we have. We've got weapons that you wouldn't
Speaker 3: believe that you don't know anything about. It was a
Speaker 3: little bit of tip of the hand there, but I
Speaker 3: thought that was very interesting and telling oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's agreeable, right, like the public and the
Speaker 4: private thing that's a conflict.
Speaker 2: We'll get together and we I don't know if you
Speaker 2: guys remember seeing some of the video I was going
Speaker 2: to call it propaganda, the video presentations of the advancements
Speaker 2: for the Future Soldier twenty thirty projects that were things
Speaker 2: like headsets and heads up displays and other technologies displayed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was stuff for like controlling unmanned quote unquote
Speaker 3: weapons like drones and things like that, and this stuff
Speaker 3: that was sort of tried it out or that's sort
Speaker 3: of being you know, discussed. Here is more advanced kind
Speaker 3: of almost like vrfication, right, video gamification of these kinds
Speaker 3: of weapons.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, yeah, it's part of like the Talos project
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, where it well the new one
Speaker 2: is the ho project, but the Talos project that's trying
Speaker 2: to build a full on exoskeleton like that every soldier
Speaker 2: that goes out would where this lightweight thing, this tactical
Speaker 2: assault light operator.
Speaker 4: Suit that is cybernetic interface possibly aided by spark drugs,
Speaker 4: which we'll get into, the ability to translate languages in
Speaker 4: real time. And it is I think that point about
Speaker 4: gamification is really solid. It is eerily like what you
Speaker 4: may see in some of your favorite video games. Now,
Speaker 4: the specific initiative Future Soldier twenty thirty, it did get
Speaker 4: largely shelved by twenty fifteen, late twenty fifteen, but I
Speaker 4: would argue it instead sort of decentralized to other more
Speaker 4: discrete projects pursuing a narrow scope of the larger ambition.
Speaker 2: And before it's turned right into the tactical Assault light
Speaker 2: Operator suit project, and it got turned into the hyper
Speaker 2: enabled operator project, which is this whole new thing that
Speaker 2: is exactly what you're talking about, Ben. How do we
Speaker 2: make sure we are the dominant side that makes informed
Speaker 2: decisions faster And that's ultimately what SOCOM, what Special Operations Command,
Speaker 2: was looking for.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, I'd agree with that. Yeah. This is
Speaker 4: also not to say that the US is the only
Speaker 4: crew in the game here past or present. We already
Speaker 4: mentioned it. Nazi and Allied forces alike. World War two
Speaker 4: administered drugs to create what we could call temporary super soldiers. Germans,
Speaker 4: to your point, NOL proudly dosed their forces with pervetent,
Speaker 4: which is a terrible name and also an amphetamine with
Speaker 4: terrible effects over long term. Well, we got to talk
Speaker 4: about the one that may not be familiar with a
Speaker 4: lot of people in the West Russia and their heat pills.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one was new to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, tell us about it, man heat pills.
Speaker 3: I believe a substance called two four dina trophanol got that,
Speaker 3: which is actually used as an herbicide, a weight loss drug,
Speaker 3: and also an explosive. Yeah, but if you take it, it
Speaker 3: apparently keeps you from getting too chili in the brutal
Speaker 3: cold of the Russian tundra. Yeah, or at.
Speaker 4: Least feeling too cold right until until the effects wear off.
Speaker 4: And nowadays, the biggest other name in the superhero or
Speaker 4: soldier game, I should say, is China. And we'll see
Speaker 4: why in just a bit. I think maybe we end
Speaker 4: this here are the facts aspect by acknowledging something we
Speaker 4: alluded to earlier. The tricky thing with a lot of
Speaker 4: this research is that a significant amount of it remains
Speaker 4: classified until after it's been perfected or deployed in combat,
Speaker 4: because giving away the secrets also gives away the edge,
Speaker 4: that's their perspective on any side of a conflict. So,
Speaker 4: with the fact that we're working with publicly available information,
Speaker 4: what we found paints of fascinating and frightening picture. What
Speaker 4: will the next generations of super soldiers look like after
Speaker 4: a certain point? Will they still be considered humans?
Speaker 3: Or more human than human?
Speaker 4: More human? Where's that from?
Speaker 3: That is white zombie? But I believe that is I
Speaker 3: believe it is the catchphrase of the company in Blade
Speaker 3: Runner that refers to the replicants being more human as
Speaker 3: a selling point, not as something weird and creepy at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, oh my gosh. And we may not even
Speaker 4: need to get into cloning because there's a lot to
Speaker 4: cover here. Here's where it gets crazy, gentlemen, I suggest
Speaker 4: that we begin by grouping these potentialities into three rough
Speaker 4: categories technological augmentation, biochemical augmentation, true story, genetic modification. So
Speaker 4: we talked about exoskeletons, maybe we start there. I feel
Speaker 4: like that's the most plausible thing to see deployed in
Speaker 4: the near future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these you can see recent news even as of
Speaker 2: February of this year, where there are photos being taken
Speaker 2: by the US military specifically and the Chinese military as
Speaker 2: well as I believe it is UH in Taiwan.
Speaker 3: UH.
Speaker 2: The military there, they are all putting out these photographs
Speaker 2: for news stories of their soldiers in a version of
Speaker 2: an exo suit, different types of exo suits. Almost all
Speaker 2: of them though right now at least that are being
Speaker 2: shown in all of these different countries are exosuits that
Speaker 2: are they're used for moving heavy equipment, for loading howitzer shells,
Speaker 2: you know, giant heavy shells into other war machines.
Speaker 3: Is an alien right, sort of like that that loader
Speaker 3: thing in the Alien Zone.
Speaker 4: But less less of a footprint on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nothing like the big metal things or anything
Speaker 2: like that. These these are pieces of different materials that
Speaker 2: are like strapped to knees and to backs into arms
Speaker 2: to help lift. So you it's literally to take the
Speaker 2: load off of general logistics.
Speaker 4: I thought you were going to say, take a load off,
Speaker 4: Annie shout out.
Speaker 3: To the band. I mean, yeah, it's sort of like
Speaker 3: a plused up version of the kind of back races
Speaker 3: that you'll see like ups people wearing.
Speaker 4: It's in power yeah, it's imagine a suit of armor
Speaker 4: that literally gives you super strength. In addition, it can
Speaker 4: process or waste fluids, so no more having to stop
Speaker 4: and pop a squat. It can supply nutrition and water
Speaker 4: for limited time, and it can do a lot more stuff.
Speaker 4: We owe well. The initial United States experiments in this
Speaker 4: owe a lot to a four star general named Paul F. Gorman.
Speaker 4: He retired in nineteen eighty five, if generals could ever
Speaker 4: be said to retire, and he wrote this paper that
Speaker 4: was incredibly prescient. He pitched the idea of what he
Speaker 4: called a super true exoskeleton, and he said, this will
Speaker 4: protect you against well the re And he was inspired
Speaker 4: to look into this is because he found that battlefield
Speaker 4: fatigue was a leading cause of injury and death for soldiers.
Speaker 4: You know, think about it, You're carrying all this heavy stuff.
Speaker 4: You don't know what's going on. It's already heavy if
Speaker 4: you're on a regular walk, and now you're in conflict
Speaker 4: and you can't lose any of that gear ideally, but
Speaker 4: the wrong biochemical weapon, a fifty caliber bullet, it can
Speaker 4: end you very quickly, especially if you're tired and not alert.
Speaker 4: So his pitch was something that protects against all of this,
Speaker 4: along with audio visual sensors, touch sensitive sensors, haptic sensors,
Speaker 4: thermal imaging, classic predator sound suppression, internal climate control. Really
Speaker 4: cool stuff and incredibly, I think again, incredibly forward looking
Speaker 4: to describe all of this in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but none of that has been achieved yet. It
Speaker 2: sounds awesome, But he's describing the Iron Man suit, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, basically it's like an ultimate ultimate exoskeleton.
Speaker 4: But no flight. I don't think he ever proposed flight
Speaker 4: for these That might have been a bridge too far
Speaker 4: for him. The I mean, I love the point too
Speaker 4: about the research that was in the civilian world to
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, about helping people with mobility issues, right,
Speaker 4: helping people who cannot walk gain more agency in their lives.
Speaker 4: We're helping with conditions like multiple sclerosis. That's where that's
Speaker 4: where we see a lot of the research really germinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There certainly are like technological advancements in artificial limbs,
Speaker 3: for example, right like that that do use a lot
Speaker 3: of this haptic stuff in order to be a proper
Speaker 3: extension of an individual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what we are seeing is a lot of
Speaker 2: these companies that start out getting a grant to work
Speaker 2: on the Talos project, which ran from twenty thirteen to
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. They the company start trying to make prototypes
Speaker 2: for soldiers, but then they realize, oh, it actually works
Speaker 2: better for Amazon workers, or for people a USPS, or
Speaker 2: you know, people in car manufacturing. And so there they're
Speaker 2: prototype suits, you know that specifically are to support the
Speaker 2: back and the shoulders when you're lifting above your shoulders.
Speaker 2: They can sell way more to those industries than they
Speaker 2: can to the military, because the military ended up scrapping
Speaker 2: the Talos project in twenty nineteen and they realized, oh, well,
Speaker 2: actually these exoskeleton suits, they don't work the way we
Speaker 2: want them to. Because they realized, this is a quote,
Speaker 2: an exoskeleton requires power on par with a small motorcycle
Speaker 2: if you wanted to do it the kind of the way.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty five, yere is being described like a
Speaker 2: powered suit, you need some kind of battery that's super heavy, right,
Speaker 2: or an engine that's super loud. You don't want that. Also,
Speaker 2: if it's an engine, it's probably got explosive materials on it.
Speaker 2: So now your soldiers are walking around with a bomb
Speaker 2: strapped to them. A sentis.
Speaker 4: It's the battery weight problem. You know, you have to
Speaker 4: find the cost benefit of what or the tipping point, right,
Speaker 4: the inflection point, at what point does the efficacy of
Speaker 4: an exoskeleton outweigh I'm choosing the word perfectly. They're outweigh
Speaker 4: the expensive weight of the battery, right, because it would
Speaker 4: almost certainly have to be a battery, and solar power
Speaker 4: is not to the point where it could be dependable
Speaker 4: in that regard. So even if you are US soldier
Speaker 4: in a war zone now, as Reuter's notes and a
Speaker 4: fantastic article in twenty eighteen, you're deployed in a war zone,
Speaker 4: you're bogged down by heavy gear that again you can't
Speaker 4: get rid of body armor, night vision goggles already. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: this could weigh anywhere from ninety to one hundred and
Speaker 4: forty pounds, which is well over the recommended limit of
Speaker 4: fifty pounds, and a battery is going to be heavy
Speaker 4: at this point. That's again, that's so much to carry
Speaker 4: on a normal hike, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: But theoretically, if you are even you know, if you
Speaker 2: are wearing that huge battery and you are carrying one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty pounds around with you. Theoretically, what that
Speaker 2: exoskeleton suit would do is take all of that weight
Speaker 2: off of you basically, and it would be lifting it
Speaker 2: for you. But the best that they were able to
Speaker 2: come up with all the way up until twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: was they reduce the effects of that weight on your body.
Speaker 4: Right to mitigate, now to completely solve, And that's going
Speaker 4: to be an important concept later on too. I mean,
Speaker 4: this leads logically to the next step, the possible partial
Speaker 4: autumn of an exoskeleton. What if your exoskeleton has a
Speaker 4: limited degree of autotomy. What if we solve for the
Speaker 4: weed issue and you are now wearing a battle suit
Speaker 4: that automatically removes you from harm's wave if you're wounded
Speaker 4: or immobilized. Now it turns into just a running version
Speaker 4: of a car. How far does that go?
Speaker 2: Would you know?
Speaker 4: What I mean?
Speaker 3: Which is sort of what those super soldiers in the
Speaker 3: Fallout universe are all about. Basically, people have died inside
Speaker 3: the suits and the automaton elements of the suit just
Speaker 3: kind of keep on going exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then for the what is the it's the US Armies.
Speaker 2: There's another organization that was looking at this combat capabilities
Speaker 2: Development Command or devcom is the name of it. They're
Speaker 2: looking at all that stuff, trying to figure out all
Speaker 2: those things, and guess what they found.
Speaker 4: Guys, where did they find that?
Speaker 2: Why would we do all of this to out the
Speaker 2: soldiers when we could just have a machine in the
Speaker 2: first place?
Speaker 3: Exactly, Yeah, that's a question that comes to mind.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, that's the immediate question. Would this automation
Speaker 4: lead to a world where you don't actually need a
Speaker 4: person in the suit. And this gets us to another
Speaker 4: aspect of it. We talked about HID or a HUT,
Speaker 4: a heads up display AI partnership implants. So much of
Speaker 4: recent warfare research and breakthroughs center on you know, not
Speaker 4: bayonets proverbially, but communications, surveillance intelligence. If you were a
Speaker 4: soldier in say the eighteen hundreds, were in the Civil War,
Speaker 4: you would be astonished with the sophistication of wireless communication,
Speaker 4: the info that can be transmitted to an individual in
Speaker 4: real time, automated targeting assistance, which is only going to
Speaker 4: become increasingly sophisticated. I mean, there's the realm of biohazard protection.
Speaker 4: You've got fall out of my head now, little imagine
Speaker 4: a helmet that's a gas mask, a command center, a
Speaker 4: homing beacon, a GPS, a multi spectrum light laser and
Speaker 4: thermal sensor, and like a pit boys, like a pit
Speaker 4: boy in your head all at once. And I know
Speaker 4: I sound like I'm doing a made for TV commercial,
Speaker 4: But wait, there's more. As Billy Mays was wont to say,
Speaker 4: what if this also gives you control of a drone swarp?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's potential. So the hyper Enabled Operator,
Speaker 2: which is a thing that is happening right now, that
Speaker 2: is a program that SOCOM is operating for soft operators,
Speaker 2: guys special operations forces. They want to have a soldier
Speaker 2: that has all the things we're describing here, but they
Speaker 2: want to do it with technology, and they don't want
Speaker 2: to do it with like a suit to the wearing.
Speaker 2: They just want like little sensors and stuff that you wear,
Speaker 2: like bracelets and stuff across your chest that give you
Speaker 2: all of those things you're talking about, Ben.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's still part of a suit. It's still
Speaker 4: part of the uniform. The battle dress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it's a battle dress, but it's not
Speaker 2: this kind of exoskeleton like the way we've been talking
Speaker 2: about it before. Right, that helps with movement and all
Speaker 2: those things. It's just it's simply to make the soldier
Speaker 2: be able to sense everything. So like if somebody in
Speaker 2: a let's say a squad, what do you call this, guys,
Speaker 2: a group of soldiers operating together.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I think I think squad's appropriate.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Somebody on your team gets shot, right
Speaker 2: who's operating with you? You would get a heads up
Speaker 2: display that the team member X got shot, and here
Speaker 2: is where they are on the map, like where you are,
Speaker 2: and you'd have a look down they call a look
Speaker 2: down display where you actually look down and you can
Speaker 2: see it, or you can look up and you can
Speaker 2: see it on your display. Like that kind of stuff
Speaker 2: is insane. And to be able to sense actual enemy
Speaker 2: combatants on the field as you look out with these
Speaker 2: kinds of things that again it fallout is the best
Speaker 2: way to imagine it if you've been inside one of
Speaker 2: those suits, because it looks to me like that.
Speaker 3: What are the suits called in the game? Power Power,
Speaker 3: Power Power? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So then imagine if you have all that stuff that
Speaker 2: is in development right now in a real project, and
Speaker 2: as Ben says, you've also got drones you've also got
Speaker 2: the little robot dogs that are carrying equipment behind you.
Speaker 2: You've also you know, you've got all this stuff and
Speaker 2: you can control it all from your suit. That would
Speaker 2: be astounding.
Speaker 3: Well, and to the point about some of this stuff
Speaker 3: sort of trickling out into the public, you certainly see
Speaker 3: in safety systems of modern cars sort of like a
Speaker 3: lower tech version of some of this stuff with like haptics,
Speaker 3: like your steering wheel will vibrate if someone's about to
Speaker 3: pass you on the left, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, one hundred percent. Now imagine now and if
Speaker 4: you are a cyber truck or you're Tesla Model three
Speaker 4: also had a swarm of drones. This is where we
Speaker 4: see that hyper real time information loop right now, we
Speaker 4: could probably, I would argue, we should record an entire
Speaker 4: episode about the ongoing drone arms race. A soldier of
Speaker 4: the future ideally never really travels alone. Instead, this future
Speaker 4: soldier theoretically would be orbited by a small crowd of
Speaker 4: network drones, all reporting in real time and all linked
Speaker 4: to the other soldiers. Swarm of drones maybe even capable
Speaker 4: of launching remote attacks. It's kind of like how in
Speaker 4: Marvel Comics falcon has his drone on his back. You
Speaker 4: know what's it called red Wing? He launches. He launches
Speaker 4: red Wing when he's flying around. So a future super
Speaker 4: soldier could integrate drones in an unprecedented fashion, making each
Speaker 4: fighter an actual quote one man me get this though,
Speaker 4: what if all that did happen Despite the nasaers and
Speaker 4: the people, the soldiers active, there were also invisible. I
Speaker 4: feel like I have to say it in the silly ways.
Speaker 4: It's so weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's way better than just commanding a murder of
Speaker 3: crows like you're able to bend.
Speaker 4: Uh, it's too too kind. That's too kind and too weird.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick ad break and we'll come back
Speaker 3: and talk all about it.
Speaker 2: And we've returned, guys, before we jump in, just one
Speaker 2: last thing on the suit, because I think the invisibility
Speaker 2: thing ties into it. Have you seen images of the
Speaker 2: rat Nick three combat suit?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Search that up really quick.
Speaker 3: Ooh looks like it looks a lot like Power Armour
Speaker 3: Russian military combat suit and incorporates powered exo skeleton designed
Speaker 3: to enhance strength, speed and endurance. Oh, it's got some
Speaker 3: sort of like nano material hexagonal armor plating. And webbing
Speaker 3: actuators little mini motors between the pieces of armor. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is Russia's counter to the Tallos program
Speaker 2: in the US, and these images are mostly from twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: when there was a huge publicity push for this, again
Speaker 2: probably as a response to the Taalos program which ended
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. It's just interesting to look at these,
Speaker 2: specifically this version because of the way the hexagonal plate
Speaker 2: armor plating looks. I think it's designed to look futuristic
Speaker 2: rather than actually be operational and to function in the
Speaker 2: way we want it to or like as a you know,
Speaker 2: as a military mind. This may not function the way
Speaker 2: we want it to, but for these pictures, for this announcement,
Speaker 2: it looks like it does. It sures heck does.
Speaker 3: It's not that far off from like Tesla and their
Speaker 3: robots that look away but in actuality are controlled remotely,
Speaker 3: you know, in their current state. It's more about optics
Speaker 3: than it is about actual function. There's an article I
Speaker 3: think you're probably referring to, you mount on Forbes, the
Speaker 3: Hype and Reality of Russian exoskeleton technology for the Russia
Speaker 3: Ukraine War by vikrum Mittal, again from Forbes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a defense one article I was looking at
Speaker 2: that's just really interesting. It talks about the arms race
Speaker 2: that the US and Russia are in, or we're in
Speaker 2: back in twenty eighteen there, and it is just it's
Speaker 2: one of those things. So you just imagine a lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff we're encountering is pr and it is
Speaker 2: meant to send a message to everybody, Hey, we've got
Speaker 2: this brand new, amazing tech. But what if there really
Speaker 2: is stuff that both DARPA and every other research agency
Speaker 2: for every other country is developing that has potentially the
Speaker 2: ability to cloak in some way.
Speaker 3: And we're talking cloak like visually, not just from radar
Speaker 3: and certain sensors, or we're talking like predator style cloaking.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's a great analogy. All this sounds positively sci
Speaker 4: fi or Harry Potter fantasy land, But when we think
Speaker 4: about it, true invisibility or the attempt to achieve that
Speaker 4: is only the next logical progression of camouflage itself already
Speaker 4: in ancient art. Please check out our Ridiculous History episodes
Speaker 4: on those zebra stripes. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, ztellar just
Speaker 4: a zebra.
Speaker 3: It's pulled from nature. It's these particular patterns that from
Speaker 3: a distance create an optical illusion wherein like warships kind
Speaker 3: of blend in to the horizon. It's not high tech
Speaker 3: at all, it's literally paint.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And now research into this concept of invisibility is
Speaker 4: made Bonker strides in recent years in public and private initiatives.
Speaker 4: The everything we see in the public sphere with invisibility
Speaker 4: is right now in what we could more or less
Speaker 4: call the proof of concept stage, meaning you can see
Speaker 4: the principle or the principle at play. You could go
Speaker 4: to places like Canada's hyper Stealth Biotechnology. In twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: they filed a patent for what they call quantum stealth materials.
Speaker 4: It's bending light around a target to make it seemingly disappear.
Speaker 4: And yes to the predator question, this solves the problem
Speaker 4: Arnold Schwarzenegger has when he faces the predator. Memory covers
Speaker 4: himself in mud to mask his thermal sake.
Speaker 3: That's right to click his the heats the hates s
Speaker 3: hture exactly.
Speaker 4: And then the predator is confused for a moment and says, whatever,
Speaker 4: my guy, and switches his sensors. I can't remember if
Speaker 4: it's the same film. He switches his sensors to ultraviolet
Speaker 4: or some other spectrum of light. This quantum stealth stuff
Speaker 4: and other related proof of concept ideas. They can also
Speaker 4: bend ultraviolet infrared, shortwave infrared and if it works. Now
Speaker 4: again to that earlier point made about propaganda and press release.
Speaker 4: If it works, these companies argue they have created what
Speaker 4: they call a broad band invisibility cloak. I don't know
Speaker 4: if we have time to think about this, but I
Speaker 4: it feels important for all of us listening at home
Speaker 4: to consider what happens.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 4: We give the National Invention Secrecy Act a hard time,
Speaker 4: rightly so because it is a violation of inventor rights.
Speaker 4: But if you were the people in charge, would you
Speaker 4: want a world where anybody can buy a true visibility cloak?
Speaker 4: How would you regulate that?
Speaker 3: Definitely one of the top wish for superpowers. You can
Speaker 3: do a lot with that one.
Speaker 4: In visit crime.
Speaker 2: You know, it'll have to be military grade kind of thing, right.
Speaker 2: It would have to be like with certain firearms in
Speaker 2: the US that you just can't buy them if they
Speaker 2: have certain specs, or you can't you can't own them
Speaker 2: unless you meet certain requirements.
Speaker 4: Kind of have to be yeah, regulated heavily right until
Speaker 4: someone figures out how to do their own homemade versions,
Speaker 4: you know, and there's a new era of terrorism. It's
Speaker 4: it's weird, and it's a pickle that I think we'll
Speaker 4: return to again and again. But to maybe you could
Speaker 4: make the argument for us to really understand that we
Speaker 4: would need to do new tropics and cognitive enhancing substances,
Speaker 4: just like the mentats in the Dune series. Drugs. Drugs
Speaker 4: are still so big. We're not talking about snarfing and
Speaker 4: edible and chilling. I can't remember if we talked about this,
Speaker 4: but you guys probably heard. Vietnam is often called the
Speaker 4: first pharmacological war or the Vietnam War, not the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's what because of certain substances that the
Speaker 3: US military was consuming. But were they were they actually
Speaker 3: given these by the government or was okay, yeah, they
Speaker 3: were given some.
Speaker 4: And then of course people were you know, hitting a
Speaker 4: tie stick and other more dangerous substances were being consumed.
Speaker 3: But then say that gives you much of an edge,
Speaker 3: I'm curious that.
Speaker 4: I mean, it makes you graded appreciating music.
Speaker 2: Sure, And next, there was so much testing in that
Speaker 2: era of military personnel that had no idea what they
Speaker 2: were doing, and they would just sign you signed up,
Speaker 2: and you signed away your rights to not be tested on.
Speaker 4: So kind of gross and not great shadows of World
Speaker 4: War two. You know, painkillers, methamphetamine. In almost every historical
Speaker 4: case of state sanctioned drug use for soldiers, the individuals
Speaker 4: experimented on or dosed with this stuff, they encountered debilitating
Speaker 4: consequences to their physical and mental health down.
Speaker 3: The line, not to mention addiction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's one of the dangerous ones. Yeah, the vast
Speaker 4: majority of these drug based initiatives, they weren't seeking to
Speaker 4: cure things. There were temporary band aid solutions. Let's give
Speaker 4: someone enough speed to keep them running, to keep them awake,
Speaker 4: Let's give them enough painkillers to fight through an injury.
Speaker 4: And that's like giving insulin to a diabetic. It mitigates
Speaker 4: a symptom, it does not cure the underlying condition.
Speaker 3: Well, there's also diminishing returns, especially with the speed stuff,
Speaker 3: where you know you do need the sleep. It is
Speaker 3: a fact. So if you're staying up for days or whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, on amphetamines, you are eventually going to lose
Speaker 3: your ability to make rational decisions.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why you take the sleeping pills so you
Speaker 2: can get four.
Speaker 4: That's how Elvis did it. Yeah, that's how Elvis did it.
Speaker 2: That's what remember we heard, we heard from several people
Speaker 2: who've written in the.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, Yes, exactly, And this I think gives
Speaker 4: us another another look into the very dangerous side effects.
Speaker 4: Your body then becomes pushed past its natural limits. An
Speaker 4: injury you encounter me indeed be worsened because you kept going.
Speaker 4: And then on the horizon the ever present threat of addiction,
Speaker 4: which haunts people even today. And we know sanctioned drug
Speaker 4: use will inevitably continue for now in some form. There
Speaker 4: will be increasingly sophisticated, more efficient or more efficacious, less
Speaker 4: dangerous drugs, but they'll still be temporary. It's going to
Speaker 4: be like taking a potion in a video game, right
Speaker 4: that improves your speed or your strength for whatever the
Speaker 4: window of time is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get a temporary buff.
Speaker 4: I think, a temporary buff. That's it. That's you nailed
Speaker 4: it all. And that means that the real golden goose here,
Speaker 4: the holy Grail is not band aid solutions. It's not
Speaker 4: changing what that warfighter in jest. It's changing the body
Speaker 4: of the soldier themselves. Genetic manipulation proponents argue this can
Speaker 4: solve problems beyond the scope of drugs and technology. And
Speaker 4: before we continue, I gotta say this creeps me out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, I mean just thinking about instead of
Speaker 2: making tech to improve things like a soldier's hearing. So
Speaker 2: one of the things in the Tealis project, which I
Speaker 2: thought you guys would find really funny, is that they
Speaker 2: wanted to give soldiers three D audio, like basically enhanced
Speaker 2: binurmal audio. But ultimately that's just human ears. So it's
Speaker 2: like having hearing aids of some sort. But but imagine
Speaker 2: if you could just give somebody at their genetic level
Speaker 2: superhering or super psite.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or like the ability to breathe underwater, you know,
Speaker 3: let's take.
Speaker 4: It, yeah yeah, or the ability to pee through your skin,
Speaker 4: which shuts and skates do. Just you know, hear me out,
Speaker 4: We're gonna do it at breaking. We've returned genetic improvements,
Speaker 4: all right. As you can tell, this is one of
Speaker 4: the most exciting and perhaps disturbing possibilities, and it is
Speaker 4: way less sci fi, way less comic book than it
Speaker 4: might sound. At first, guys, I was thinking about our
Speaker 4: series on real life superpowers, which I look back on
Speaker 4: with such fondness because we found We went into it skeptical,
Speaker 4: yet we found multiple instances of proven genetic abnormalities that
Speaker 4: I don't love that word that granted some individual's abilities
Speaker 4: beyond that mortal kid. You know, these were like rare
Speaker 4: lottery winds of evolution. I remember seeing the study about
Speaker 4: this anonymous three or four year old who was absolutely jacked,
Speaker 4: and they had to, you know, hide the kid's identity
Speaker 4: because a three or four year old can't consent to
Speaker 4: being you know, displayed as kind of a freak show
Speaker 4: little buff boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much so. But
Speaker 4: without the body suit, this kid was just ready for
Speaker 4: a goose suit. Y.
Speaker 2: Yeah not you you come on, you know it.
Speaker 4: You know it can't be you, right?
Speaker 3: You know? It also makes me think of uh, that
Speaker 3: was like I win huff. We talked about, yes, regulate
Speaker 3: his body. A lot of this stuff can be achieved
Speaker 3: without genetic mutation, just by like crazy amounts of discipline
Speaker 3: and mental manipulation of oneself and meditative kind of properties. Again,
Speaker 3: I think people are skeptical about that. But if I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken, that guy kind of did do the thing,
Speaker 3: you know with his mind he did.
Speaker 4: Yes, he is genetically not uh.
Speaker 3: He is not.
Speaker 4: Manifesting or exhibiting any sort of rare percessive trait. It
Speaker 4: is training and as you said, meditation, self regulation, sort
Speaker 4: of the way that black cab drivers in the UK
Speaker 4: have managed to increase their spatial memory and indeed the
Speaker 4: physical size.
Speaker 3: It can unity champus with brain scans, right, mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's why the knowledge is a crazy hard test.
Speaker 4: If you happen to have taken the knowledge, let us know.
Speaker 4: We'd love to pick your brain. We also know. Okay.
Speaker 4: For a long time, these were considered sort of genetic
Speaker 4: lottery winners, these one offs, right, these people have these limited,
Speaker 4: often narrow scoped, extraordinary abilities. But then the rise of
Speaker 4: Crisper came and as it like before, it went to
Speaker 4: the public sphere. Honestly, militaries already began saying, well, you know,
Speaker 4: what if we found some of these this league of
Speaker 4: extraordinary people, and what if we could transmit or translate
Speaker 4: some of those abilities to other people? Question one? Would
Speaker 4: these people?
Speaker 3: One?
Speaker 4: Would it work too? Would these people have to be
Speaker 4: biologically related? Right? Would be a matter of turning a
Speaker 4: recessive gene into like expressing it. The goal was to
Speaker 4: create this in non biologically related organisms, in this case
Speaker 4: human beings one of the favorites. All right, we know
Speaker 4: this lowering sleep requirements makes sense. You know you're a pilot,
Speaker 4: you're a flying a spy plane for a long time,
Speaker 4: you're behind enemy territory. You know you're running and gunning.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't it be awesome if you only had to sleep
Speaker 4: three hours?
Speaker 3: I just saw a thing. I think it was a study. Basically,
Speaker 3: there are genetic mutations that allow certain individuals to function
Speaker 3: highly with very, very very limited sleep.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking specifically of some work published by the National
Speaker 4: Institutes of Health. Multiple studies have confirmed that there is
Speaker 4: a gene that causes people to naturally sleep less than
Speaker 4: about six hours per twenty four hour cycle, importantly, with
Speaker 4: no negati of side effects, nothing. You know, the world
Speaker 4: record for sleep days without sleep or time without sleep
Speaker 4: is something no one should attempt. It will give you hallucinations,
Speaker 4: it will have damaging health effects. But these folks, some
Speaker 4: of them with this gene, they need even less sleep
Speaker 4: per twenty four hour cycle.
Speaker 3: And this was a new study that was published in
Speaker 3: the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences genetic variant
Speaker 3: is one of a handful that have been identified in
Speaker 3: people who don't need a lot of sleep. They're able
Speaker 3: to mutation link to thriving.
Speaker 4: With little rest ad RB one gene correct and there's
Speaker 4: a lot of research on this because it sounds too
Speaker 4: crazy to be true, but it is solid. So what
Speaker 4: if we could take crisper precise gene editing techniques and say, oh,
Speaker 4: let's find someone who naturally doesn't sleep that well or
Speaker 4: doesn't need to sleep that much at all, and then
Speaker 4: let's find someone who also has increased bone density, right,
Speaker 4: and then let's find one of those jacked toddlers, someone
Speaker 4: who has increased muscle mass, and we'll pick and choose,
Speaker 4: you know, just like a buffet or just like picking
Speaker 4: the ingredients of your burrito at Chipotle, and then we'll
Speaker 4: put them into you know, the flower tortilla skin of
Speaker 4: another person.
Speaker 2: Sounds delicious, I mean.
Speaker 4: It means, for better or worse, we're not that far
Speaker 4: away from a real life Captain America. But this gets
Speaker 4: us to the weirdest one. And Matt, I know you
Speaker 4: have read up on this as well. It's the tartar
Speaker 4: grade question. As far back as twenty twenty, US intelligence
Speaker 4: officials said, look, they went public. There's propaganda, there's signaling here.
Speaker 4: They went public and they said, look, everyone, fellow folks
Speaker 4: in the United States, the world entire the nation of
Speaker 4: China is conducting human testing on members of the PLA,
Speaker 4: the People's Liberation Army. You can read the full op
Speaker 4: ed in Wall Street Journal. It's John Ratcliffe, who was
Speaker 4: the Director of National Intelligence at the time. He didn't
Speaker 4: disclose specifics, so maybe it was saber rattling until about
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two, when the PLA Academy of Military Sciences
Speaker 4: announced that they had successfully inserted a gene from tartar
Speaker 4: grades into human embryonic stem cells. They did it. They
Speaker 4: pulled a chimera and it worked.
Speaker 2: That's I yeah, yeah, okay, okay, I'm going to say that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say it. Okay, sure you did, sure
Speaker 2: you did.
Speaker 4: So you don't think it happened.
Speaker 2: I think they did it maybe and it didn't go well,
Speaker 2: but they still put it out because it sounds scary
Speaker 2: to anybody who would oppose them.
Speaker 4: Now, and the ethical argument, which we'll get to, is
Speaker 4: they said, look, we synthetically created these stem cells. Therefore,
Speaker 4: it's not a problem everybody all other scientists, but maybe
Speaker 4: we talked about why the tartar grade is such a
Speaker 4: big deal. What were they trying to do well?
Speaker 2: Tartar grades can exist in places where most biological life cannot.
Speaker 2: But one of the reasons they can is because they're
Speaker 2: so dang teeny and tiny, which you know. They they
Speaker 2: can exist under pressures like in outer space, like like
Speaker 2: the zero pressure kind of thing where humans, you know,
Speaker 2: and other biological things just kind of go pop if
Speaker 2: you're out there in space. They can also exist way
Speaker 2: down at the bondo of the ocean where there's tremendous pressures.
Speaker 2: If a human could somehow transfer those properties into their
Speaker 2: skin and tissues and organs and all that stuff, then yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that would be crazy. You could have humans
Speaker 2: flying around in space you just need oxygen.
Speaker 4: Then, also known as the water bear or get this,
Speaker 4: the moss piglet. That was a new one for me.
Speaker 4: It's a cute little fellas.
Speaker 3: When I toil boy and they're so powerful, they're like godlike,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's crazy. Do you think that they are?
Speaker 3: They like the closest thing to alien species with their
Speaker 3: abilities that we kind of have a little bit of
Speaker 3: a line on.
Speaker 4: It's wild.
Speaker 3: And I know that they are organically generated in sure
Speaker 3: on Earth, but man, oh man, the way they can
Speaker 3: live in those dormant states out in space and stuff,
Speaker 3: it's fascinating.
Speaker 4: Smaller than a one millimeter, right, so small that the
Speaker 4: English measurement system had to go metric to explain that
Speaker 4: takes a lot. So for a tiny guy, he is mighty.
Speaker 4: There have been years of testing on this reproducible results.
Speaker 4: You can play along at home with the right equipment.
Speaker 4: We're talking surviving negative two hundred degrees celsius. Throw them
Speaker 4: in boiling water and they're fine. It's just a jacuzzi
Speaker 4: to them the vacuum of space. So the goal of
Speaker 4: the side, explicitly stated was to evaluate whether you could
Speaker 4: take a specific gene from a tartar grade and use
Speaker 4: it to create soldiers resistant to radiation. In other words,
Speaker 4: folks who could survive nuclear fallout important note not a
Speaker 4: direct nuclear blast. They could still get mushroom cloud vaporized. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but if they came in afterwards they would not suffer
Speaker 4: or they would have mitigated consequences for acute radiation poisoning.
Speaker 4: And exposure.
Speaker 3: And this is actually gene therapy, right, This isn't gene
Speaker 3: manipulce is not just like like a vaccine or some
Speaker 3: kind of drug that people could be. It's not bandaid
Speaker 3: to your point, pen and this is like change. But
Speaker 3: have we talked about the ethical ramifications of this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. I know we sort of hinted at it
Speaker 3: as we've been going along, but it seems like it's
Speaker 3: real slippery once you get into changing people's entire kind
Speaker 3: of genetic makeup. And to the point earlier too, about
Speaker 3: trotting out this technology before fully understanding the big rushures.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great point, and I think that's where
Speaker 4: we start to end. Because this transplanted gene, per these studies,
Speaker 4: if these studies can be believed, the transplanted gene, when
Speaker 4: it exists naturally in the tartar grade, it allows that
Speaker 4: life form that moss Pilot, to create shielding proteins that
Speaker 4: harden it against dangerous emissions like radiation. The team claims
Speaker 4: that this was successful that after transplanting this gene, the
Speaker 4: human embryonic cells showed a vast improvement toward radiation exposure,
Speaker 4: and they found a bonus power. They found a combo
Speaker 4: meal at this Chipotle. Not only did the new cells
Speaker 4: behave normally so no self destruction, no cancer, et cetera,
Speaker 4: but they also demonstrated accelerated cell growth. So if you
Speaker 4: put these water bear man cells or whatever in new
Speaker 4: blood cells, you could achieve something amazing, a clean transfer
Speaker 4: of that ability to a human subject, so long as
Speaker 4: you don't worry about the ethics, because just like military drugs,
Speaker 4: this is a minefield. Dude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but when I hear the expression accelerated cell growth,
Speaker 3: doesn't that scream kind of cancer in.
Speaker 4: A way as well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I mean in terms of like what is
Speaker 3: how accelerated and what happens is over a long enough timeline,
Speaker 3: you know, is it going to cause really really negative
Speaker 3: you know, impacts on the human on human cell growth,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: That would be freaking crazy. If you could grow and
Speaker 2: train the human in a third of the time that
Speaker 2: generally it takes to build a soldier, right to have
Speaker 2: a from birth to soldier timeline or something like that,
Speaker 2: and especially if you could clone them right.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, truly, Again, all of that stuff ends up
Speaker 2: getting kind of it's super useful. But when there are
Speaker 2: machines that do the same thing. They're really expensive, right,
Speaker 2: and you know, special operations forces have this saying like
Speaker 2: the human is more important than the hardware at all times. Sure,
Speaker 2: but ultimately, if you take the human out of the situation,
Speaker 2: then almost everything we've talked about today is possible because
Speaker 2: you just need integrated sensor systems and then you can
Speaker 2: do all of these things, including the cloaking, including you know,
Speaker 2: existing in and operating in other spaces to be resistant
Speaker 2: to radiation, all of that stuff. It's freaky to me
Speaker 2: to think that we It feels like the militaries across
Speaker 2: the world wanted this stuff because that was the most
Speaker 2: viable way to have an edge when you're talking about
Speaker 2: a singular soldier on a battlefield. But now, how with
Speaker 2: the way tech has moved, it just becomes who's got
Speaker 2: the best mech which feels even more sci fi to me.
Speaker 3: Noah, it really is. The stuff of it is, you know,
Speaker 3: that's why sci fi is so important. They tend to
Speaker 3: nail stuff way, way way beforehand. And I'm sorry, just
Speaker 3: really quickly because I think I just I thought maybe
Speaker 3: I was tripping. But cancer is about accelerating cell growth
Speaker 3: it's just has accelerated beyond control. So to me, this
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, okay, that sounds cool when you're describing MAD.
Speaker 3: This whole like accelerated growth, you know, period. But it
Speaker 3: also seems like unchecked. Maybe there's some future ramifications that
Speaker 3: we don't know about yet.
Speaker 4: This is why I argue it's mission critical to walk
Speaker 4: through everything else aside, it's mission critical to walk through
Speaker 4: the ethical concerns about this. That's what I meant when
Speaker 4: I said ethical minefield. First, your point, noal society and
Speaker 4: humans don't know what those consequences will be. It's primarily because,
Speaker 4: as you know, when you flip a gene, right, you're
Speaker 4: not flipping one light switch, You're flipping a light switch
Speaker 4: that affects a bunch of other light switches in unpredictable ways.
Speaker 4: So improving bone density may lead to other less desirable mutations.
Speaker 4: We don't know. If it just turns everybody's eyes green
Speaker 4: and their hair blue, right, we don't know what will happen.
Speaker 4: We don't know if it leads to chronic medical conditions
Speaker 4: or of course, to cancer, which could take time to spot. Second,
Speaker 4: this is something people need to think about more often.
Speaker 4: We don't know whether these modifications result inheritable traits. If
Speaker 4: a gene like this or you know, tartar grade gene,
Speaker 4: for example, if it could be inherited, then the children
Speaker 4: born with those genes have no right to consent to
Speaker 4: this purposeful human experimentation. Their soldier parents signed up for it.
Speaker 4: They did not. We see similar arguments alleging that medical
Speaker 4: conditions have already been inherited due to exposure to toxic substances,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So there's a heavy question there.
Speaker 3: I guess. I guess with all of this in the
Speaker 3: sci fi angle of it, my mind immediately pictures like
Speaker 3: server farm sized facilities with just like fetuses, you know,
Speaker 3: in tanks, like breeding you know, humans for soldiering purposes.
Speaker 3: You know, that's sort of the most dystopian version of this, right.
Speaker 4: And we don't have any understanding of how this tactic
Speaker 4: or this methodology would affect a soldier's reintegration into peacetime society.
Speaker 4: Can superhumans have the same rights as non modified people?
Speaker 4: What happens when some inevitable social media lunatic activists starts saying, hey,
Speaker 4: these are not people at all. One of the brutal
Speaker 4: sort of USSR Soviet answers to this would be to
Speaker 4: also program in a limited time window of life for
Speaker 4: these people totally, which is you know, evil. But I
Speaker 4: don't know, there's so much more to the story, guys.
Speaker 4: Do we have any concluding statements here? I feel like
Speaker 4: we're going to hear a lot about this one, and
Speaker 4: I look forward to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Same now. I think this is a fascinating topic and
Speaker 3: certainly ongoing.
Speaker 4: Well, folks, we have decided to consider this the beginning
Speaker 4: of a conversation that can go in many directions. We're
Speaker 4: sort of at the point of Schrodinger's soldier with this research,
Speaker 4: and we again, we have a lot of veterans in
Speaker 4: the audience. We are grateful for your time. As so
Speaker 4: many of us know, a lot of new technology gets
Speaker 4: rolled out before it's perfected, sometimes with disastrous consequence. We
Speaker 4: would love to hear your experiences with any of the
Speaker 4: concepts we explored today, and we would especially love to
Speaker 4: hear your thoughts, your objective, honest thoughts on which of
Speaker 4: these things may actually become reality and how they may
Speaker 4: roll out. So that's it for us tonight. We're often
Speaker 4: the doctific. The trickiest thing here is the public cannot
Speaker 4: tell how far the real research has gone to the
Speaker 4: earlier point about propaganda, to the point about national security,
Speaker 4: to the point of classic military paranoia. Whether it's due
Speaker 4: to what or more of these factors. The truth is
Speaker 4: that a lot of super soldier research is still the
Speaker 4: stuff they don't want you to know. So tell us
Speaker 4: your thoughts. You can give us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: You can call us on a telephonic device, or you
Speaker 4: can hit us up on the lines and the social
Speaker 4: needs thou might sip.
Speaker 3: Indeed, you can find this at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
Speaker 3: where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group here's
Speaker 3: where it gets crazy, on YouTube where we have video
Speaker 3: content glor for you to enjoy, and on xfka, Twitter,
Speaker 3: on Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 4: I missed you on this one, man, because when you
Speaker 4: were out I would just try to like sum it
Speaker 4: up real quick. But you know you're nailing it. I
Speaker 4: think you're a choice sum on it. I summon demons
Speaker 4: with that with those words.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, shout out to Colonel Alex McCalman. McCalman, I
Speaker 2: believe is how you would say it. He was the
Speaker 2: chief engineer of the Tealis project, and you can watch
Speaker 2: a YouTube presentation that he put out on June sixteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, titled Tealos Project Transition to the Hyper Enabled
Speaker 2: Operator SOFIK twenty nineteen. It is fascinating. If you want
Speaker 2: to call us about anything we talked about today, our
Speaker 2: number is one eight three three std WYTK. It's a
Speaker 2: three minute voicemail. You can say whatever you want. We
Speaker 2: do appreciate it if you give yourself a cool nickname
Speaker 2: and let us know within the message, if we can
Speaker 2: use your name and message on the air. If you
Speaker 2: want to send us an email, we are the entities.
Speaker 4: That read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware,
Speaker 4: yet's unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back. Give us your thoughts,
Speaker 4: however brief, however long. Identify yourself as you wish given
Speaker 4: the content of this episode. Please let us know if
Speaker 4: you need to remain anonymous, and we will do our
Speaker 4: best to make it so. We also want to recommend
Speaker 4: in the ethics conversation we had at the end here
Speaker 4: the following conference report, look it up the ethical and
Speaker 4: legal significance of super Soldiers. This was presented by the
Speaker 4: Center for Ethics and Rule of Law, Annenberg Public Policy Center,
Speaker 4: University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Shout out to Major Kyle Brown.
Speaker 4: This is an excellent summation of the serious questions at play.
Speaker 4: Let us know your thoughts, and hey, man, if you
Speaker 4: think screw it, no holds barred, Let's just roll the
Speaker 4: dice and see what happens to civilization. Tell us that too.
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