Cyborg Humanity & Human Augmentation: The Engineered Species

"We have always been cyborgs... We have never been purely biological entities. We have always used tools that became part of our extended minds and bodies." — Andy Clark

Overview

Human augmentation refers to technologies that enhance human capabilities beyond the normal range—whether through external devices, implants, pharmaceuticals, or biological modifications. The term cyborg (cybernetic organism) describes beings that integrate technological and biological components, a condition that arguably already applies to millions of people with pacemakers, cochlear implants, and prosthetic limbs.1

Within conspiracy frameworks, human augmentation represents the planned obsolescence of natural humanity. From military super-soldier programs to Silicon Valley biohackers to corporate enhancement mandates, these technologies are seen as steps toward a posthuman future where unaugmented humans become economically irrelevant and socially marginalized—a transition managed by elites who will determine who gets enhanced and how.2

Military Human Augmentation

DARPA Programs

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency leads military enhancement research:7

Warrior Web (2011-present):

• Soft exosuit to reduce soldier fatigue
• Prevent musculoskeletal injuries
• Increase strength without bulk of rigid exoskeletons

TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit):

• "Iron Man suit" for special operations
• Liquid armor that hardens on impact
• Integrated weapons, sensors, communications
• Program cancelled 2019, technology continues in other forms

Revolutionizing Prosthetics:

• Created DEKA "Luke Arm" (named after Luke Skywalker)
• Mind-controlled prosthetics with sensory feedback
• Restored function to wounded veterans
• Technology transferring to civilian sector

Restoring Active Memory (RAM):

• Neural interface for memory enhancement
• Treat traumatic brain injury
• Potential for memory augmentation in healthy soldiers

Human-Machine Symbiosis:

• Broad program for human-AI teaming
• Cognitive augmentation
• Intuitive interfaces

Super Soldier Concepts

Military visions of augmented warriors:8

Enhanced Capabilities Sought:

• Extended endurance (days without sleep)
• Increased strength
• Accelerated healing
• Enhanced situational awareness
• Networked consciousness with unit members
• Pain suppression
• Fear reduction

Ethical Concerns:

• Coercion of service members
• Inequality between augmented and unaugmented soldiers
• Arms race in human enhancement
• Dehumanization of warfare
• Reintegration of enhanced veterans into civilian life

China and Russia:

• Reports of enhancement research programs
• Less transparency than US programs
• Potential enhancement arms race
• Specific capabilities classified/unknown

Intelligence Community Interest

Enhancement technologies for intelligence operations:9

• Cognitive enhancement for analysts
• Perfect memory drugs
• Lie detection resistance
• Enhanced interrogation through neural monitoring
• Field agents with enhanced capabilities
• Documented MKULTRA history of mind control research

The Biohacking Movement

DIY Enhancement

Grassroots augmentation outside institutional control:10

Grinders:

• Subculture implanting technology in their bodies
• Magnetic implants most common starting point
• NFC/RFID chips for access control, data storage
• More extreme: subdermal lights, sensors

Key Figures:

• Kevin Warwick: Early academic cyborg experiments
• Neil Harbisson: Color-blind artist with antenna implant perceiving color as sound
• Rich Lee: Implanted headphones, various experimental devices
• Lepht Anonym: Underground body modification advocate

Biohacker Spaces:

• Citizen science labs for biological experimentation
• Gene editing workshops
• Implant parties
• Legal gray areas and safety concerns

Commercial Enhancement

Consumer augmentation products:11

Wearables:

• Fitness trackers monitoring health metrics
• Smart watches with health features
• Continuous glucose monitors for diabetics (and biohackers)
• Sleep tracking devices

Implants:

• Dangerous Things, Biohax International sell consumer implants
• NFC chips for payments, access, data storage
• RFID pet identification repurposed for humans
• Estimated tens of thousands of people with elective implants

Nootropics Industry:

• Multi-billion dollar supplement market
• Varying evidence for efficacy
• Silicon Valley popularity
• Regulatory gaps

Body Modification Culture

Extreme augmentation for aesthetic/identity purposes:12

• Subdermal implants (horns, shapes)
• Eye implants changing appearance
• Pointed ears, split tongues
• Magnetic implants
• Integration with cyborg identity
• Overlap with transhumanist ideology

Corporate and Workplace Augmentation

Employee Enhancement

Augmentation in workplace contexts:13

Current Examples:

• Three Square Market (Wisconsin) offered employees microchip implants (2017)
• Swedish companies implanting workers for building access
• Warehouse workers wearing tracking and guidance devices
• Assembly workers with AR glasses

Efficiency Arguments:

• Reduce errors
• Increase productivity
• Better tracking and accountability
• Seamless authentication

Concerns:

• Coercion through competitive pressure
• Privacy implications
• Workers as monitored components
• Economic pressure to accept implants

Enhancement and Employment

How augmentation affects job markets:14

Competitive Advantage:

• Enhanced workers outperform unenhanced
• Pressure to enhance to remain employable
• Enhancement as job requirement

Inequality:

• Expensive enhancements favor wealthy
• Corporate-sponsored enhancement creates dependence
• Disability status of unenhanced?

Job Displacement:

• Enhanced humans compete with AI
• Automation plus enhancement reduces need for workers
• Enhanced elite, unemployable masses

Theoretical Frameworks

The Extended Mind

Philosophical foundation for understanding human-technology integration:15

Clark and Chalmers (1998):

• Mind extends beyond brain into tools
• Notebook storing memories is part of cognitive system
• Phone, computer already extensions of mind

Implications:

• Augmentation is natural continuation of human cognition
• Technology has always been part of us
• No clear boundary between natural and artificial

Donna Haraway's Cyborg Theory

Feminist and political analysis of cyborg concept:16

"A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985):

• Cyborg as metaphor for hybrid identity
• Breaking down boundaries: human/animal, organism/machine, physical/non-physical
• Neither utopian nor dystopian—simply what we are becoming
• Tool for feminist politics and resistance

Influence:

• Foundation for posthuman theory
• Challenged biological essentialism
• Reframed cyborg from threat to opportunity
• Ironic that tech industry adopted without political content

Posthumanism

Philosophical movement beyond traditional humanism:17

Key Ideas:

• Human nature is not fixed
• Technology changes what humans are
• Enhancement is not deviation but development
• Human dignity not dependent on biological purity

Varieties:

• Transhumanism: Technology to transcend human limitations
• Critical Posthumanism: Examine power relations in human-technology integration
• Philosophical Posthumanism: Decentering the human

Two-Tier Humanity Scenario

The Enhancement Divide

How augmentation creates new forms of inequality:18

Economic Access:

• Advanced augmentation is expensive
• Insurance covers restoration, not enhancement
• Wealthy can afford cognitive, physical, longevity enhancements
• Gap widens over generations

The Unaugmented:

• Unable to compete for cognitively demanding jobs
• Physical labor augmented workers are more productive
• Social stigma of being "natural"
• Potential classification as disabled

Genetic Inheritance:

• Enhanced parents pass advantages to children
• Germline modifications create permanent castes
• Natural-born children of wealthy also enhanced
• Class becomes biology

Speciation Concerns

Could enhanced and unenhanced humans diverge?19

Biological Divergence:

• Genetic modifications accumulate
• Enhanced humans may become reproductively isolated
• Different lifespans create social separation
• Communication gaps through cognitive differences

Social Divergence:

• Segregated communities
• Different legal frameworks
• Incompatible value systems
• Contempt for "naturals"

Historical Precedent:

• Ruling classes always distinguished themselves
• Technology makes distinction more permanent
• Not unprecedented—unprecedented is the mechanism

Regulation and Governance

Current Regulatory Framework

How augmentation is currently governed:20

Medical Devices (FDA in US):

• Prosthetics, implants regulated as medical devices
• Enhancement uses often off-label
• Consumer devices less regulated
• DIY implants unregulated

Pharmaceuticals:

• Cognitive enhancers often prescription-only
• Off-label use widespread
• Supplement industry loosely regulated
• International variation significant

Genetic Modification:

• Germline editing effectively prohibited
• Somatic editing regulated as therapy
• Enhancement uses in gray area
• See CRISPR article

Governance Gaps

Areas where regulation is lacking:21

DIY Augmentation:

• Self-implantation legal (like tattoos)
• Quality and safety uncontrolled
• Infection, failure, removal issues
• No consumer protection

Workplace Enhancement:

• Can employers require augmentation?
• Can they forbid it?
• Discrimination based on enhancement status?
• Occupational safety for enhanced workers

Military Enhancement:

• Can soldiers refuse enhancement?
• What happens when they leave service?
• International law on enhanced combatants
• Arms control for enhancement technology

International Competition:

• Regulatory arbitrage to permissive jurisdictions
• Enhancement tourism
• Competitive pressure to reduce restrictions
• No international framework

Proposed Frameworks

Suggested approaches to governing augmentation:22

Enhancement Rights:

• Right to enhance vs. right to remain unenhanced
• Protection from coerced enhancement
• Equal access requirements

Precautionary Principle:

• Prove safety before deployment
• Restrict enhancement until consequences understood
• Critics say this blocks beneficial technology

Adaptive Governance:

• Flexible frameworks that evolve with technology
• Stakeholder participation
• Regular reassessment

The Conspiracy Framework Interpretation

Planned Obsolescence of Humanity

Within the Pax Judaica framework, augmentation represents:23

Controlled Evolution:

• Elite directing human development
• Deciding who gets enhanced, how, and when
• Creating designed populations

Dependency Creation:

• Augmented humans depend on corporate maintenance
• Software updates required for biological function
• Kill switches and remote control possibilities

Surveillance Integration:

• Every implant is a tracking device
• Neural interfaces monitor thought
• No augmentation without surveillance component

Class Weapon:

• Enhancement for rulers
• Restriction for masses
• Permanent biological hierarchy

Mark of the Beast Narrative

Religious interpretation of mandatory augmentation:24

Biblical Parallel:

• Revelation 13:16-17: Mark required to buy or sell
• Implant chips enabling economic participation
• Refusal means economic exclusion
• Acceptance means spiritual corruption

Implementation Path:

Medical implants normalized

Convenience implants (payment, access)

Employment requires augmentation

Social participation requires augmentation

"Natural" humans marginalized

Counterargument:

• Similar claims made about credit cards, barcodes, social security numbers
• Technology itself morally neutral
• Choice and coercion are the issues, not technology per se

Current Cyborg Pioneers

Notable Augmented Individuals

People pushing boundaries of human-technology integration:25

Neil Harbisson:

• Color-blind artist with antenna implant
• Perceives color as sound frequencies
• First person with antenna in passport photo
• Founded Cyborg Foundation

Moon Ribas:

• Seismic sense implant—feels earthquakes worldwide
• Cyborg dancer and artist
• Explores non-human senses

Kevin Warwick:

• "Captain Cyborg"—early academic cyborg researcher
• Implanted neural interface connecting to his nervous system
• Pioneering work in 1990s-2000s

Hugh Herr (MIT):

• Double amputee, bionic leg pioneer
• Developed advanced prosthetics he wears himself
• "Bodies are not disabled; technologies are"

Steve Mann:

• Wearable computing pioneer since 1970s
• Continuous augmented vision for decades
• "Father of wearable computing"

Self-Experimenters

Researchers using themselves as subjects:26

Bryan Johnson:

• Extreme self-experimentation with anti-aging
• Continuous biometric monitoring
• Public data sharing
• See Life Extension

Josiah Zayner:

• Biohacker who injected himself with CRISPR
• DIY gene editing advocate
• Deliberately provocative approach
• Regulatory gray areas

Critical Analysis

What's Actually Available

Current reality vs. science fiction:27

Available Now:

• Medical prosthetics (excellent, improving)
• Exoskeletons (limited, heavy, expensive)
• Sensory implants (cochlear, retinal—limited)
• Cognitive enhancers (modest effects, side effects)
• Simple implants (RFID, magnets)

Near-Term (5-10 years):

• Better prosthetics with sensory feedback
• Lighter, more practical exoskeletons
• Improved brain-computer interfaces
• More effective cognitive enhancers

Speculative:

• Superhuman strength/speed
• Perfect memory
• Telepathy through neural link
• Full sensory replacement
• Superhuman intelligence

Limitations and Challenges

Why augmentation is harder than it looks:28

Power:

• Batteries limit what's possible
• Implants need power; wires or charging required
• Energy density improving slowly

Biocompatibility:

• Body rejects foreign materials
• Inflammation around implants
• Infection risk
• Long-term degradation

Interface:

• Connecting electronics to biology is hard
• Signal quality degrades over time
• Scarring around electrodes
• Movement causes problems

Complexity:

• Body is remarkably sophisticated
• Hard to match biological performance
• Integration with existing systems challenging
• Unintended consequences common

Future Trajectories

Optimistic Scenario

If augmentation develops beneficially:29

• Restoration of function to disabled individuals
• Healthy aging through gentle enhancement
• Expanded human capabilities and experiences
• Democratic access to beneficial technologies
• New forms of human flourishing

Dystopian Scenario

If augmentation is captured by power:30

• Enhancement divide creates permanent underclass
• Mandatory augmentation for employment
• Surveillance integrated into every device
• Corporate control of human bodies
• Loss of human autonomy and dignity

Middle Path

Most likely trajectory:31

• Gradual adoption of medical restoration
• Slow movement toward enhancement
• Significant inequality in access
• Ongoing regulatory struggle
• Mix of benefits and problems
• Neither utopia nor dystopia—complicated reality

Related Articles

• Neuralink & Brain-Computer Interfaces
• CRISPR & Genetic Engineering
• Life Extension & Longevity
• Digital Consciousness & Mind Uploading
• Two-Tier Humanity
• DARPA and Military Technology

Further Reading

• Philosophical: Clark and Haraway provide foundational frameworks
• Technical: Gray's Cyborg Handbook offers comprehensive overview
• Political: Singer's Wired for War covers military implications
• Critical: Fukuyama provides bioconservative perspective

This article is part of an educational encyclopedia examining conspiracy theories alongside documented developments. Human augmentation technologies are real and advancing; the conspiracy framework interpretation represents one analytical lens that should be evaluated critically alongside mainstream scientific, ethical, and political perspectives.