Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain
NSA TORTURE TECHNOLOGY, NEWS and RESEARCH
Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain
a.. By Brandon Keim
b.. August 13, 2008 |
c.. 1:16 pm |
d.. Categories: Brains and Behavior
Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their
controllers' brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects
as they cross U.S. borders.
These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science -
and if it's not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military
is certainly taking them very seriously.
"It's way too early to know which - if any - of these technologies is going
to be practical," said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress
bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense.
"But it's important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on
the cutting edge of new technologies."
Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the
Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science.
Their report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies,"
was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are
potentially powerful - and, perhaps, powerfully troubling.
Here are the report's main areas of focus:
a.. Mind reading. The development of psychological models and neurological
imaging has made it possible to see what people are thinking and whether
they're lying. The science is, however, still in its infancy: Challenges
remain in accounting for variations between individual brains, and the
tendency of our brains to change over time.
One important application is lie detection - though one hopes that the
lesson of traditional lie detectors, predicated on the now-disproven idea
that the physiological basis of lying can be separated from processes such
as anxiety, has been learned.
Mind readers could be used to interrogate captured enemies, as well as
"terrorist suspects" passing through customs. But does this mean, for
example, that travelers placed on the bloated, mistake-laden watchlist would
have their minds scanned, just as their computers will be?
The report notes that "In situations where it is important to win the
hearts and minds of the local populace, it would be useful to know if they
understand the information being given them."
b.. Cognitive enhancement. Arguably the most developed area of cognitive
neuroscience, with drugs already allowing soldiers to stay awake and alert
for days at a time, and brain-altering drugs in widespread use among
civilians diagnosed with mental and behavioral problems.
Improved drug delivery systems and improved neurological understanding
could make today's drugs seem rudimentary, giving soldiers a superhuman
strength and awareness - but if a drug can be designed to increase an
ability, a drug can also be designed to destroy it.
"It's also important to develop antidotes and protective agents against
various classes of drugs," says the report. This echoes the motivation of
much federal biodefense research, in which designing defenses against
potential bioterror agents requires those agents to be made - and that
raises the possibility of our own weapons being turned against us, as with
the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, which used a military developed strain.
c.. Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural
outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If
we can alter the brain, why not control it?
One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely,
"How can we disrupt the enemy's motivation to fight? [...] How can we make
people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or
pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?"
d.. Brain-Machine Interfaces. The report focuses on direct
brain-to-machine systems (rather than, for example, systems that are
controlled by visual movements, which are already in limited use by
paraplegics.) Among these are robotic prostheses that replace or extend body
parts; cognitive and sensory prostheses, which make it possible to think and
to perceive in entirely new ways; and robotic or software assistants, which
would do the same thing, but from a distance.
Many questions surrounding the safety of current brain-machine interfaces:
The union of metal and flesh only lasts so long before things break down.
But assuming those can be overcome, questions of plasticity arise: What
happens when a soldier leaves the service? How might their brains be
reshaped by their experience?
Like Moreno said, it's too early to say what will work. The report documents
in great detail the practical obstacles to these aims - not least the
failure of reductionist neuroscientific models, in which a few firing
neurons can be easily mapped to a psychological state, and brains can be
analyzed in one-map-fits-all fashion.
But given the rapid progress of cognitive science, it's foolish to assume
that obstacles won't be overcome. Hugh Gusterson, a George Mason University
anthropologist and critic of the military's sponsorship of social science
research, says their attempt to crack the cultural code is unlikely to
work -
"but my sense with neuroscience," he said, "is a far more realistic
ambition."
Gusterson is deeply pessimistic about military neuroscience, which will not
be limited to the United States.
"I think most reasonable people, if they imagine a world in which all sides
have figured out how to control brains, they'd rather not go there," he
said. "Most rational human beings would believe that if we could have a
world where nobody does military neuroscience, we'll all be better off. But
for some people in the Pentagon, it's too delicious to ignore."
Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies [National Academies
Press
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MagneticEnergy
it in a movie and then some dork barely out of puberty lets them
experiment on them?
If they solve the economic paradigms they will be more profitable than
trying to come up with weapon systems that will just be defeated by
the competition?
Which is easier, redesigning and M16, or creating financial models
that solve international currency and labor problems, and leave the
private capitalism system intact enough to provide for a free market
that creates, rather than "spreads" wealth?
God opens the ears of the oppressed -- and he doesn't depend on lie
detectors. LOL.
No drug is a substitute for baptism by fire?