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[Grim Portent]

You can't generally clone psykers. Clones already don't work well in 40k because they follow dystopian sci fi cloning rules, they tend to be duller, mutated or otherwise wrong. Psykers then add having warp altered genetics into the mix and it all goes wrong.

[wierd]

Then just mass produce them with IVF, and intervene in the gestation.  If they can reliably have psyker babies, then IVF would work too.

[Trekkin]

You can't generally clone psykers. Clones already don't work well in 40k because they follow dystopian sci fi cloning rules, they tend to be duller, mutated or otherwise wrong. Psykers then add having warp altered genetics into the mix and it all goes wrong.

You also can't generally isolate psykers from the influence of the Warp and still have them be psykers, since that connection to the Warp is what makes them psykers. Putting them in a state of sensory deprivation just tunes out everything except the corrupting influences.

Then just mass produce them with IVF, and intervene in the gestation.  If they can reliably have psyker babies, then IVF would work too.

They can't. That's why the Black Ships are a thing.

[wierd]

Then do the Imperial thing(tm), and just mass produce zygotes, test them for the right properties, and destroy 99+% of them.



Who says they need to be sensory deprived?  I just said that they COULD be, not that they MUST be.  Giving them a highly ordered simulated universe would strongly encourage ordered thinking. The idea is not to cut them off from the universe; that would be self-defeating.  You WANT them to interact with the warp.  You want them to bleed so much order into the warp that the chaos gods get very bad belly aches, and die from leaky bowel syndrome.

Even if significant numbers of them dont function correctly, the mechanism to terminate them, combined with releasing them ONLY in already highly ordered areas (making possesions VERY VERY unlikely to begin with!), will ensure that functional ones do what they are intended to; Reinforce reality with their own perceptions of order, that "Just so happen" (ahem) to correspond with the physics of the normal universe, thanks to the imposed conditioning. 

If anything, they should radiate a very strong gellar field.

[GiglameshDespair]

good luck with that

[Grim Portent]

Then just mass produce them with IVF, and intervene in the gestation.  If they can reliably have psyker babies, then IVF would work too.

That would work if they could reliably find psyker positive (there's no fixed gene for psykers) gametes to use and control for how powerful a given embryo would be when it's powers manifested and also how strong willed the child would be. They'd also need to be raised as humans until they were about 13 for their powers to manifest at all, and there's not really any way to identify them beforehand. They're not like navigators, which were made by genetic tampering that is no longer replicable, psykers are spiritual conduits to the warp and poorly understood. They're a walking hole into the warp and can hear daemons whispering to them from the moment their powers begin to manifest.

Hell, if the gods actually felt threatened they can teleport agents through time and space. The events that lead to 40k being what they are include a time loop where the gods sent a marine from a corrupted legion back in time to destroy the wards protecting the primarchs when they were still in their pods so the gods could scatter them, in turn leading to a legion being corrupt and the marine being sent back in time.


After a certain point you have to assume the in universe actors are pursuing the most optimal strategy they can with the knowledge and resources available. The Emperor was the smartest human ever to exist, could see the future, was a master scientist, a psyker and a sorcerer and nigh invulnerable. The best he could come up with* was establishing a galactic hegemony that enforced atheism to starve the gods of worship to try and weaken them. If there's a better way to fight chaos, it's probably beyond the resources the Imperium has ever had the opportunity to use.

*based on what we see of his actions during the Great Crusade.

[Rolan7]

You can't generally clone psykers. Clones already don't work well in 40k because they follow dystopian sci fi cloning rules, they tend to be duller, mutated or otherwise wrong. Psykers then add having warp altered genetics into the mix and it all goes wrong.

You also can't generally isolate psykers from the influence of the Warp and still have them be psykers, since that connection to the Warp is what makes them psykers. Putting them in a state of sensory deprivation just tunes out everything except the corrupting influences.

Then just mass produce them with IVF, and intervene in the gestation.  If they can reliably have psyker babies, then IVF would work too.

They can't. That's why the Black Ships are a thing.

Heh I was going to suggest that the only way to reliably acquire psykers would be to devote entire planets to reproduction and screening.  And then most of that "product" would only really be useful as fodder for some incorruptible psyker somewhere

As for chaos infection in general, my understanding is that it can creep in anywhere, but it requires substantial local corruption for daemons to really start manifesting stuff.  Hence cults form, worship in secret, eventually manage to pull some lesser daemon through, things potentially snowball from there.

Machine spirits and their potential for corruption are definitely interesting to think about though.  The Imperium's reliance on Geiger-esque biomechanical control systems (brain in jars) rather than Abominable Intelligence seems to explain why chaos can get in.  Which makes me wonder if it CAN get into pure AI systems.  I have little basis for this, but here's what I like to believe:  The Men of Iron incident was unrelated to Chaos, more a Skynet situation.  An AI singularity which, for one of countless reasons, became hostile to humankind.  It could easily have been another Necron computer virus, particularly with that C'tan on Mars, but I prefer to think we just created something unique that got away from us (and was repulsed by us, or us by it).

End result: An outright ban on inorganic AI, and resounding technophobia (whatever happened, the incident was *devastating* for humanity).  If I'm right, a daemon would have an easier time possessing a bed than a pure AI.  Sure belief-magic would give it a soul, but it would be a soul/expectation of cold logic.  Hence resistant to emotional manipulation.  I suppose Tzeentch's line would have the easiest time understanding and working with such a thing...

But in any case it wouldn't matter, because true AI is inherently malicious to Humanity in this setting.  Just one of the defining aspects, it'd be pointless to question it.
_...probably

[Grim Portent]

Tau drones, which are purely mechanical AI are more warp sensitive than the tau themselves, being able to hear the voices of ghosts and daemons when the veil between reality and the warp is thin. So yes, pure AI can be corrupted.

[wierd]

The apocalypse that caused the dark age of technology (EG, caused the loss of records and such) came from rogue AIs that were chaotic.

See also, "Men of iron"

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Men_of_Iron


So YES- Pure AI can be chaos infected.

[wierd]

good luck with that

No joke! The imperium would perform an exterminatus on such a science experiment faster than you could say "CHEESE!"

They have an entire order dedicated to detecting changes in the warp, and they would notice this RIGHT AWAY.  They would perceive it as an immediate threat, and would dispatch heavenly cleansing on it, you, and your lab, in very short order.

Again, the problem is that the imperium DOES THAT-- instead of doing the science experiment.

[Digital Hellhound]

The Men of Iron were probably not Chaos-tainted. They rebelled on their own.

I think you're severely overestimating the Imperium's control and capability to organize large-scale projects like psyker cloning. We're talking about a fragmented and essentially feudal state where whole worlds can be lost in the bureaucracy and the only means of interstellar communication is screaming psychic dreams through the Warp.

People asking why the Imperium doesn't do this or that 'rational' thing tends to irritate me. It's not a rational place. It's a bloated, inefficient, corrupt mess of squabbling factions weighed down by millenia of superstition and fanaticism. It doesn't have the ability or will to make a true unified effort at something. Nobody has the whole picture - the High Lords and Guilliman probably have the best idea, but that doesn't mean they can effectively act on it.

[wierd]

We are capable of producing epic fucktons of IVF zygotes right now. (In fact, it's a sticky point for the pro-life people, because there are so many produced, because of how prone to having problems the resultant embryos are. The solution is to make so many that at least a handfull are potentially viable, implant a pretty large number of them, and hope at least one makes it.)

Given that this setting can successfully cultivate tissue systems in tanks, doing a collection of reproductive materials and mass producing random zygotes is well within the capabilities of some of the noteworthy rogue scientists in the setting.

This kind of project would be less costly (in terms of total man hours, raw resources, and energy investments) than the mass production of battleships, battle armor, weapons, and other systems that are hallmarks of the setting.  You just need to make a tank about the size of a small propane tank, with the necessary goodies inside it, and jettison it into interstellar space.

The catch is that you have to do this on the scale of hundreds of billions of units.

If the infrastructure used to make all those damned marines was redirected, it would certainly be possible.

[ArchAIngel]

They DO mass produce zygotes, a chunk of Servitors are based on it. AdMech tech levels are BULLSHIT. Fucking Torsion Cannons.


It's just that trying to mass produce psykers or anything important results in Afriel Strain nonsense.


For some reason or another, the Warp HATES that kind of thing.


Also, Psykers tend to 'eadbang themselves. A lot. And let Daemons out. So the whole idea is pretty much Chaos bait.

[wierd]

Here's the deal though;  You aren't meddling with the fertilization process.  You are just producing RANDOM zygotes, similar to the non-purposeful wild breeding happening on imperial worlds.

The secret sauce is that you do nondestructive testing, looking for a handful of known markers.  The ones that have the markers, you keep. You destroy all the rest.

You then incubate the zygotes, looking for defects.  You cull again.

The final products MAY or MAY NOT become psykers.  You really dont care.  Nonfunctioning (not psyker active) units are just an expected outcome for a certain percentage of each batch. You don't care. You make up for this statistic with more numbers.

This is about abusing statistics, with a rampant disregard for ethics.

[Trekkin]

If the infrastructure used to make all those damned marines was redirected, it would certainly be possible.

Until Tyranids decided to eat the big shiny psychic thing. Or Orks come and loot it. Or the Dark Eldar come to have fun with the canned psykers.

After a certain point you have to assume the in universe actors are pursuing the most optimal strategy they can with the knowledge and resources available.

This is also true. 40k is, after all, a story (well, a collection of mostly-compatible stories, but most of the same rules apply.). It would be a deeply unsatisfying story if all the problems were caused by everyone in the ten-thousand year history of a galactic empire just not being as smart as one random Internet guy so they're just one patently obvious idea away from certain victory, so it's safe to assume that any simple, obvious scheme to dramatically change the status quo probably won't work. Authors do tend to think about these things.