Dave Farber
2018-10-15 10:48:12 UTC
Date: October 15, 2018 at 7:42:41 PM GMT+9
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Pentagon's Push to Program Soldiers' Brains
The Pentagonâs Push to Program Soldiersâ Brains
The military wants future super-soldiers to control robots with their thoughts.
By MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS
Nov 2018 Issue
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/the-pentagon-wants-to-weaponize-the-brain-what-could-go-wrong/570841/>
I. Who Could Object?
âTonight I would like to share with you an idea that I am extremely passionate about,â the young man said. His long black hair was swept back like a rock starâs, or a gangsterâs. âThink about this,â he continued. âThroughout all human history, the way that we have expressed our intent, the way we have expressed our goals, the way we have expressed our desires, has been limited by our bodies.â When he inhaled, his rib cage expanded and filled out the fabric of his shirt. Gesturing toward his body, he said, âWe are born into this world with this. Whatever nature or luck has given us.â
His speech then took a turn: âNow, weâve had a lot of interesting tools over the years, but fundamentally the way that we work with those tools is through our bodies.â Then a further turn: âHereâs a situation that I know all of you know very wellâyour frustration with your smartphones, right? This is another tool, right? And we are still communicating with these tools through our bodies.â
And then it made a leap: âI would claim to you that these tools are not so smart. And maybe one of the reasons why theyâre not so smart is because theyâre not connected to our brains. Maybe if we could hook those devices into our brains, they could have some idea of what our goals are, what our intent is, and what our frustration is.â
So began âBeyond Bionics,â a talk by Justin C. Sanchez, then an associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience at the University of Miami, and a faculty member of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. He was speaking at a tedx conference in Florida in 2012. What lies beyond bionics? Sanchez described his work as trying to âunderstand the neural code,â which would involve putting âvery fine microwire electrodesââthe diameter of a human hairââinto the brain.â When we do that, he said, we would be able to âlisten in to the music of the brainâ and âlisten in to what somebodyâs motor intent might beâ and get a glimpse of âyour goals and your rewardsâ and then âstart to understand how the brain encodes behavior.â
He explained, âWith all of this knowledge, what weâre trying to do is build new medical devices, new implantable chips for the body that can be encoded or programmed with all of these different aspects. Now, you may be wondering, what are we going to do with those chips? Well, the first recipients of these kinds of technologies will be the paralyzed. It would make me so happy by the end of my career if I could help get somebody out of their wheelchair.â
Sanchez went on, âThe people that we are trying to help should never be imprisoned by their bodies. And today we can design technologies that can help liberate them from that. Iâm truly inspired by that. It drives me every day when I wake up and get out of bed. Thank you so much.â He blew a kiss to the audience.
A year later, Justin Sanchez went to work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagonâs R&D department. At DARPA, he now oversees all research on the healing and enhancement of the human mind and body. And his ambition involves more than helping get disabled people out of their wheelchairâmuch more.
DARPA has dreamed for decades of merging human beings and machines. Some years ago, when the prospect of mind-controlled weapons became a public-relations liability for the agency, officials resorted to characteristic ingenuity. They recast the stated purpose of their neurotechnology research to focus ostensibly on the narrow goal of healing injury and curing illness. The work wasnât about weaponry or warfare, agency officials claimed. It was about therapy and health care. Who could object? But even if this claim were true, such changes would have extensive ethical, social, and metaphysical implications. Within decades, neurotechnology could cause social disruption on a scale that would make smartphones and the internet look like gentle ripples on the pond of history.
Most unsettling, neurotechnology confounds age-old answers to this question: What is a human being?
II. High Risk, High Reward
In his 1958 State of the Union address, President Dwight Eisenhower declared that the United States of America âmust be forward-looking in our research and development to anticipate the unimagined weapons of the future.â A few weeks later, his administration created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a bureaucratically independent body that reported to the secretary of defense. This move had been prompted by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite. The agencyâs original remit was to hasten Americaâs entry into space.
During the next few years, arpaâs mission grew to encompass research into âman-computer symbiosisâ and a classified program of experiments in mind control that was code-named Project Pandora. There were bizarre efforts that involved trying to move objects at a distance by means of thought alone. In 1972, with an increment of candor, the word Defense was added to the name, and the agency became DARPA. Pursuing its mission, DARPA funded researchers who helped invent technologies that changed the nature of battle (stealth aircraft, drones) and shaped daily life for billions (voice-recognition technology, GPS devices). Its best-known creation is the internet.
The agencyâs penchant for what it calls âhigh-risk, high-rewardâ research ensured that it would also fund a cavalcade of folly. Project Seesaw, a quintessential Cold War boondoggle, envisioned a âparticle-beam weaponâ that could be deployed in the event of a Soviet attack. The idea was to set off a series of nuclear explosions beneath the Great Lakes, creating a giant underground chamber. Then the lakes would be drained, in a period of 15 minutes, to generate the electricity needed to set off a particle beam. The beam would accelerate through tunnels hundreds of miles long (also carved out by underground nuclear explosions) in order to muster enough force to shoot up into the atmosphere and knock incoming Soviet missiles out of the sky. During the Vietnam War, DARPA tried to build a Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine, a jungle vehicle that officials called a âmechanical elephant.â
[snip]
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-------------------------------------------Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Pentagon's Push to Program Soldiers' Brains
The Pentagonâs Push to Program Soldiersâ Brains
The military wants future super-soldiers to control robots with their thoughts.
By MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS
Nov 2018 Issue
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/the-pentagon-wants-to-weaponize-the-brain-what-could-go-wrong/570841/>
I. Who Could Object?
âTonight I would like to share with you an idea that I am extremely passionate about,â the young man said. His long black hair was swept back like a rock starâs, or a gangsterâs. âThink about this,â he continued. âThroughout all human history, the way that we have expressed our intent, the way we have expressed our goals, the way we have expressed our desires, has been limited by our bodies.â When he inhaled, his rib cage expanded and filled out the fabric of his shirt. Gesturing toward his body, he said, âWe are born into this world with this. Whatever nature or luck has given us.â
His speech then took a turn: âNow, weâve had a lot of interesting tools over the years, but fundamentally the way that we work with those tools is through our bodies.â Then a further turn: âHereâs a situation that I know all of you know very wellâyour frustration with your smartphones, right? This is another tool, right? And we are still communicating with these tools through our bodies.â
And then it made a leap: âI would claim to you that these tools are not so smart. And maybe one of the reasons why theyâre not so smart is because theyâre not connected to our brains. Maybe if we could hook those devices into our brains, they could have some idea of what our goals are, what our intent is, and what our frustration is.â
So began âBeyond Bionics,â a talk by Justin C. Sanchez, then an associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience at the University of Miami, and a faculty member of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. He was speaking at a tedx conference in Florida in 2012. What lies beyond bionics? Sanchez described his work as trying to âunderstand the neural code,â which would involve putting âvery fine microwire electrodesââthe diameter of a human hairââinto the brain.â When we do that, he said, we would be able to âlisten in to the music of the brainâ and âlisten in to what somebodyâs motor intent might beâ and get a glimpse of âyour goals and your rewardsâ and then âstart to understand how the brain encodes behavior.â
He explained, âWith all of this knowledge, what weâre trying to do is build new medical devices, new implantable chips for the body that can be encoded or programmed with all of these different aspects. Now, you may be wondering, what are we going to do with those chips? Well, the first recipients of these kinds of technologies will be the paralyzed. It would make me so happy by the end of my career if I could help get somebody out of their wheelchair.â
Sanchez went on, âThe people that we are trying to help should never be imprisoned by their bodies. And today we can design technologies that can help liberate them from that. Iâm truly inspired by that. It drives me every day when I wake up and get out of bed. Thank you so much.â He blew a kiss to the audience.
A year later, Justin Sanchez went to work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagonâs R&D department. At DARPA, he now oversees all research on the healing and enhancement of the human mind and body. And his ambition involves more than helping get disabled people out of their wheelchairâmuch more.
DARPA has dreamed for decades of merging human beings and machines. Some years ago, when the prospect of mind-controlled weapons became a public-relations liability for the agency, officials resorted to characteristic ingenuity. They recast the stated purpose of their neurotechnology research to focus ostensibly on the narrow goal of healing injury and curing illness. The work wasnât about weaponry or warfare, agency officials claimed. It was about therapy and health care. Who could object? But even if this claim were true, such changes would have extensive ethical, social, and metaphysical implications. Within decades, neurotechnology could cause social disruption on a scale that would make smartphones and the internet look like gentle ripples on the pond of history.
Most unsettling, neurotechnology confounds age-old answers to this question: What is a human being?
II. High Risk, High Reward
In his 1958 State of the Union address, President Dwight Eisenhower declared that the United States of America âmust be forward-looking in our research and development to anticipate the unimagined weapons of the future.â A few weeks later, his administration created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a bureaucratically independent body that reported to the secretary of defense. This move had been prompted by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite. The agencyâs original remit was to hasten Americaâs entry into space.
During the next few years, arpaâs mission grew to encompass research into âman-computer symbiosisâ and a classified program of experiments in mind control that was code-named Project Pandora. There were bizarre efforts that involved trying to move objects at a distance by means of thought alone. In 1972, with an increment of candor, the word Defense was added to the name, and the agency became DARPA. Pursuing its mission, DARPA funded researchers who helped invent technologies that changed the nature of battle (stealth aircraft, drones) and shaped daily life for billions (voice-recognition technology, GPS devices). Its best-known creation is the internet.
The agencyâs penchant for what it calls âhigh-risk, high-rewardâ research ensured that it would also fund a cavalcade of folly. Project Seesaw, a quintessential Cold War boondoggle, envisioned a âparticle-beam weaponâ that could be deployed in the event of a Soviet attack. The idea was to set off a series of nuclear explosions beneath the Great Lakes, creating a giant underground chamber. Then the lakes would be drained, in a period of 15 minutes, to generate the electricity needed to set off a particle beam. The beam would accelerate through tunnels hundreds of miles long (also carved out by underground nuclear explosions) in order to muster enough force to shoot up into the atmosphere and knock incoming Soviet missiles out of the sky. During the Vietnam War, DARPA tried to build a Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine, a jungle vehicle that officials called a âmechanical elephant.â
[snip]
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