Brain weapons of the 21st century in service with the countries of the Earth

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Modern neural technology is helping to erase painful memories and read human thoughts. They could also be the new battleground of the 21st century.

It was a typical July day, with two rhesus monkeys sitting in two different rooms in the Duke University lab. Each looked at her own computer screen with a virtual hand in two-dimensional space. The monkeys' task was to guide their hand from the center of the screen towards the target. When they were successful in this business, scientists rewarded them with a sip of juice.

But there was a trick here. The monkeys did not have joysticks or any other devices to manipulate the screen hand. But in the part of the brain that is responsible for movement, electrodes were implanted into them. The electrodes captured and transmitted neural activity to computers via wired connections.

But something else is even more interesting. The primates jointly controlled the movement of the digital limb. So, in the course of one experiment, one of the monkeys could control only horizontal movements, and the second - only vertical. But the macaques began to learn by association, and a certain way of thinking led to them being able to move their hand. Having understood this causal pattern, they continued to adhere to this course of action, in fact, thinking together, and thus, bringing a hand to the goal and making juice.

The lead neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis (published this year) is known for his highly noteworthy collaboration, which he calls the brainet, or "brain network." Ultimately, he hopes that this collaboration of minds can be used to accelerate the rehabilitation of people affected by neurological disorders. More precisely, the brain of a healthy person will be able to work interactively with the brain of a patient who has suffered, say, a stroke, and then the patient will quickly learn to speak and move the paralyzed part of the body.

Nicolelis's work is just another success in a long line of victories for modern neurotechnology: interfaces to nerve cells, algorithms to decode or stimulate these nerve cells, brain maps that give a clearer picture of the complex circuits that govern cognition, emotions and actions. From a medical point of view, this can be of great benefit. Among other things, it will be possible to create more sophisticated and agile limb prostheses that can convey sensations to those who wear them; it will be possible to better understand some diseases such as Parkinson's disease, and even treat depression and many other mental disorders. This is why major research in this area is being carried out all over the world with the aim of moving forward.

But there may be a dark side to these groundbreaking advances. Neurotechnologies are “dual-use” tools, which means that they can be used not only for solving medical problems, but also for military purposes.

Those brain scanners that help diagnose Alzheimer's or autism can, in theory, be used to read other people's minds. Attached to the brain tissue, computer systems that allow a paralyzed patient to use the power of thought to control robotic appendages can also be used to control bionic soldiers and manned aircraft. And those devices that support a decrepit brain can be used to instill new memories or delete existing ones - both for allies and enemies.

Think back to Nicolelis's idea of a brain network. According to the University of Pennsylvania bioethics professor Jonathan Moreno, by fusing brain signals from two or more people, you can create an invincible super warrior. “Imagine if we could take intellectual knowledge from, say, Henry Kissinger, who knows all about the history of diplomacy and politics, and then get all the knowledge from a person who has studied military strategy, from an engineer from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and so on,”he says. "All this can be combined." Such a brain network will allow important military decisions to be made on the basis of practical omniscience, and this will have serious political and social consequences.

I must say that while these are ideas from the field of science fiction. But over time, some experts argue, they may become reality. Neurotechnologies are developing rapidly, which means that the time is not far off when we will acquire new revolutionary capabilities, and their industrial implementation will inevitably begin. The Office of Advanced Study, which is doing important research and development for the Department of Defense, is investing a lot of money in brain technology. So, in 2014, it began developing implants that detect and suppress urges and urges. The stated goal is to treat veterans suffering from addiction and depression. But one can imagine that this kind of technology will be used as a weapon - or that if it spreads, it may end up in the wrong hands. “The question is not whether or not non-state agents will be able to use certain neurobiological methods and technologies,” says James Giord, neuroethics specialist at Georgetown University Medical Center. “The question is when they will do it and what methods and technologies they will use.”

People have long been captivated and horrified by the thought of mind control. It is probably too early to fear the worst - for example, that the state will be able to penetrate the human brain using hacker methods. However, dual-use neurotechnologies have great potential, and their time is not far off. Some ethicists are concerned that in the absence of legal mechanisms to regulate such technologies, laboratory research will be able to move into the real world without much obstacle.

For better or worse, the brain is a "new battlefield," Giordano says.

The quest to better understand the brain, arguably the least understood human organ, has led to a surge in innovation in neurotechnology over the past 10 years. In 2005, a team of scientists announced that they were able to quite successfully read human thoughts using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures blood flow caused by brain activity. Subject, lying motionless in a growth scanner, looked at a small screen onto which simple visual arousal signals were projected - a random sequence of lines in different directions, partly vertical, partly horizontal, partly diagonal. The direction of each line produced slightly different bursts of brain function. By simply looking at this activity, scientists could determine which line the subject was looking at.

It took only six years to significantly develop this technology to decipher the brain - with the help of Silicon Valley. The University of California at Berkeley conducted a series of experiments. For example, in a 2011 study, participants were asked to watch movie previews on a functional magnetic resonance imager, and scientists used brain response data to create decryption algorithms for each subject. They then recorded the activity of nerve cells as the participants watched various scenes from new films, such as a passage in which Steve Martin walks around the room. Based on the algorithms of each subject, the researchers later managed to recreate this very scene, using exclusively data from brain activity. These supernatural results are not very visually realistic; they are like the creation of the Impressionists: the vague Steve Martin floats against a surreal, ever-changing background.

Based on these findings, South Carolina Medical University neuroscientist and co-author of the 2011 study, Thomas Naselaris, said, "We will be able to do things like mind reading sooner or later." And then he clarified: "It will be possible even during our lifetime."

This work is being accelerated by rapidly advancing brain-machine interface technology - neural implants and computers that read brain activity and translate it into real action, or vice versa. They stimulate neurons to create performances or physical movements. The first modern interface appeared in the control room in 2006, when neuroscientist John Donoghue and his team at Brown University implanted a square chip less than five millimeters in size with 100 electrodes into the brain of the famous 26-year-old football player Matthew Nagle, who received stabbed in the neck and was almost completely paralyzed. The electrodes were placed over the motor area of the cerebral cortex, which, among other things, controls the movements of the hands. A few days later, Nagle, using a device connected to a computer, learned to move the cursor and even open e-mail with the effort of thought.

Eight years later, the brain-machine interface has become much more sophisticated and sophisticated, as demonstrated by the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Juliano Pinto, 29, who was completely paralyzed in his lower body, donned a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton developed at Duke University to hit the ball at the opening ceremony in São Paulo. The helmet on Pinto's head received signals from his brain, indicating the man's intention to hit the ball. A computer attached to Pinto's back, receiving these signals, launched a robotic suit to execute the command of the brain.

Neurotechnology has gone even further, tackling such a complex thing as memory. Research has shown that one person is able to transmit their thoughts to another person's brain, as in the blockbuster Inception. In 2013, a team of scientists led by MIT Nobel Laureate Susumu Tonegawa conducted an experiment. The researchers implanted a so-called "false memory" in the mice. By observing the rodent's brain activity, they placed the mouse in a container and watched as it began to familiarize itself with its surroundings. Scientists were able to isolate a very specific set from a million cells in the hippocampus, which they stimulated while it formed spatial memory. The next day, the researchers placed the animal in another container that the mouse had never seen, and applied an electrical shock, while simultaneously activating the nerve cells that the mouse used to remember the first box. An association was formed. When they returned the rodent to the first container, he froze with fear, although he was never shocked there. Two years after the discovery of Tonegawa, a team at the Scripps Research Institute began giving experimental mice a drug that can remove some memories while leaving others. This technology of erasing memories can be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder by removing painful thoughts and thus improving the patient's condition.

It is likely that this kind of research work will gain momentum because revolutionary science in the brain is being generously funded. In 2013, the United States launched the BRAIN research program to study the brain through the development of innovative neurotechnology. It is planned to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars for the first three years of research alone; and the amount of appropriations for the future has not yet been determined. (The National Institutes of Health, which became one of five federal participants in the project, requested $ 4.5 billion over a 12-year period, and this is only for their own work under the program.) The European Union, for its part, has allocated approximately $ 1.34 billion for the Human Brain project, which began in 2013 and will last for 10 years. Both programs aim to create innovative tools for studying the structure of the brain, forming its multidimensional circuitry and eavesdropping on the electrical activity of its billions of neurons. In 2014, Japan launched a similar initiative, dubbed Brain / MINDS (Brain Structuring with Integrated Neurotechnology for Disease Research). Even Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is donating hundreds of millions of dollars to his Allen Institute for the Study of the Brain, which is doing massive work to create brain atlases and study the mechanisms of vision.

Of course, as incredible as recent inventions seem, neurotechnology is currently in its infancy. They operate inside the brain for a short time, can read and stimulate only a limited number of neurons, and also require wired connections. "Brain-reading" machines, for example, require the use of expensive equipment that is only available in laboratories and hospitals to obtain even the most primitive results. However, the willingness of the researchers and their sponsors to continue to work in this direction ensures that these devices will be improved every year, become ubiquitous and more accessible.

Each new technology will create creative possibilities for its practical application. However, ethicists warn that one such area of practical application could be the development of neural weapons.

It seems that today there are no brain instruments that are used as weapons. However, it should be noted that their value for the battlefield is currently being evaluated and actively researched. So, this year, a woman with paralysis of four limbs flew on the F-35 simulator, using only the power of thought and a brain implant, the development of which was funded by DARPA. It seems that the use of neurotechnology as a weapon is not a very distant future. There are many precedents in the world when technologies from the sphere of fundamental science quickly turned into a practical plane, turning into a destructive global threat. After all, only 13 years have passed from the discovery of the neutron to the atomic explosions in the skies over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The stories of how states manipulate the brain could remain the lot of conspiracy theorists and science fiction writers, if world powers in the past had behaved more restrained and more honest in the field of neuroscience. But in the course of very strange and terrible experiments conducted from 1981 to 1990, Soviet scientists created equipment designed to disrupt the functioning of nerve cells in the body. To do this, they exposed people to high-frequency electromagnetic radiation of various levels. (The results of this work are still unknown.) Over the decades, the Soviet Union has spent more than one billion dollars on such mind control schemes.

The most scandalous cases of American neuroscience abuse occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, when Washington conducted an extensive research program to study methods of tracking and influencing human thoughts. The CIA carried out its own research, called MKUltra, with the aim of "finding, studying and developing chemical, biological and radioactive materials for use in covert operations to control human behavior," according to a 1963 CIA inspector general's report. Some 80 organizations, including 44 colleges and universities, were involved in this work, but it was financed most often under the guise of other scientific goals and objectives, so that the people participating in it remained in the dark that they were fulfilling Langley's orders. The most scandalous moment of this program is the administration of the drug LSD to the experimental, and often without their knowledge. One person in Kentucky was given the drug for 174 days in a row. But no less terrible are MKUltra's projects on the study of the mechanisms of extrasensory perception and on the electronic manipulation of the human brain, as well as attempts to collect, interpret and influence people's thoughts through hypnosis and psychotherapy.

To date, there is no evidence that the United States continues to use neurotechnology in the interests of national security. But the military is determined to go ahead in this area. According to Professor Margaret Kosal of Georgia Institute of Technology, the Army has allocated $ 55 million for neuroscience research, the Navy $ 34 million, and the Air Force $ 24 million. (It should be noted that the US military is the main sponsor of various fields of science, including engineering design, mechanical engineering and computer science.) In 2014, the US National Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA), which develops the most advanced technologies for US intelligence services, allocated $ 12 million to develop methods to improve results, including electrostimulation of the brain in order to "optimize human adaptive thinking" - that is, to make analysts smarter.

But the main driving force is DARPA, which is causing envy and intrigue around the world. At the same time, this department finances about 250 different projects, recruiting and managing expert teams from the scientific community and industry, who carry out ambitious and extremely difficult tasks. DARPA is unmatched in finding and funding fantastic projects that are changing the world: the Internet, GPS, stealth planes and so on. In 2011, this department, which has a modest (by the standards of the military department) annual budget of $ 3 billion, has planned appropriations in the amount of $ 240 million for neurobiological research alone. It also planned to commit approximately $ 225 million for the first few years of the BRAIN program. This is only 50 million less than the amount allocated for the same period by the main sponsor - the National Institutes of Health.

As DARPA is known for its revolutionary developments and became famous throughout the world, other powers soon followed suit. In January of this year, India announced that it would restructure its Defense Research and Development Organization in the image of DARPA. Last year, the Russian military announced a $ 100 million commitment to a new Advanced Research Fund. In 2013, Japan announced the creation of an agency "similar to the US DARPA", as announced by the Minister of Science and Technology Ichita Yamamoto (Ichita Yamamoto). In 2001, the European Defense Agency was created in response to calls for the formation of a "European DARPA". There are even attempts to apply the DARPA model to corporations like Google.

It has not yet been determined what role neuroscience will play in these research centers. But given the recent advances in brain technology, DARPA's interest in these issues and the desire of new centers to follow the Pentagon's footsteps, it is likely that this area of science will attract a certain amount of attention, which will only increase over time. Former State Department official Robert McCreight, who has specialized in arms control and other security issues for more than twenty years, says such a competitive environment could lead to a scientific race in neuroscience to manipulate nerve cells and turn them into a commodity. But there is a danger that this kind of research will spill over into the military realm to make the brain a tool for more effective warfare.

It’s hard to imagine what it would look like. Today, a helmet equipped with electrodes collects electroencephalographic signals from the brain for only a limited and well-defined purpose, such as kicking a ball. And tomorrow, these electrodes will be able to secretly collect access codes to weapons. Likewise, the brain-machine interface can become a tool for downloading data and used, for example, to infiltrate the thoughts of enemy spies. It will be even worse if terrorists, hackers and other criminals gain access to such neurotechnologies. They will be able to use such tools to control targeted assassins and to steal personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers.

It is alarming that today there are no mechanisms preventing the implementation of such scenarios. There are very few international treaties and national laws that effectively protect privacy, and none that are directly related to neurotechnology. But if we talk about dual-use technologies and work on the creation of weapons, the barriers here are even less, in connection with which the human brain turns into a vast territory of lawlessness.

Neurobiology has become a kind of gap in the norms of international law. The neuroweapons that use the brain are "not biological or chemical, but electronic," says Marie Chevrier, professor of public policy at Rutgers University. This is a very important difference because two existing UN treaties, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, which in theory could be used to combat neurotechnological abuse, do not have provisions on electronic devices. In fact, these treaties were written in such a way that they do not apply to new trends and discoveries; which means that restrictions for certain types of weapons can be introduced only after they appear.

Chevrier says that because neural weapons will affect the brain, the Biological Weapons Convention, which prohibits the use of harmful and deadly biological organisms or their toxins, could be amended to include provisions for such weapons. She is not alone with her point of view: many ethicists insist on more active involvement of neuroscientists in the regular revisions of this convention and its implementation, at which member countries decide to amend it. Chevrier says the process currently lacks an academic advisory board. (At the August meeting on this convention, one of the main proposals was precisely to create such a body with the inclusion of neuroscientists. The result of the discussion at the time of publication of the article is unknown.) Technical information can speed up the practical actions of the convention participants. “Politicians just don't understand how serious this threat is,” Chevrier said.

But even with an academic council in place, the UN bureaucracy acting like a tortoise can create a lot of problems. Biological Weapons Convention revision conferences, where states report on new technologies that can be used to create such weapons, only take place every five years, which ensures that treaty amendments will be considered much later than the latest scientific discoveries. “The general trend is always that science and technology are moving forward by leaps and bounds, and ethics and politics are lagging behind,” says a neuroethics specialist at Georgetown University Medical Center Giordano. "They usually only react, not proactively." Ethicists have already named this lag: the Collingridge dilemma (named after David Collingridge, who wrote in his 1980 book The Social Control of Technology that it is very difficult to predict the possible consequences of new technologies), which makes it impossible to take action proactively.)

However, Moreno, a bioethics expert at the University of Pennsylvania, says this is no excuse for inaction. Ethics experts have a responsibility to ensure that policymakers fully understand the nature of scientific discoveries and the potential threats they pose. In his opinion, the National Institutes of Health could create an ongoing research program in neuroethics. The Royal Society of Great Britain took a step in this direction five years ago by convening a steering committee composed of neuroscientists and ethicists. Over the years, the committee has published four reports on advances in neuroscience, including one on implications for national security and conflict. This document calls for a focus on neuroscience at conferences to revise the Biological Weapons Convention and requires a body such as the World Medical Association to conduct research on military applications of technologies that affect the nervous system, including those not covered. norms of international law, for example, the brain-machine interface.

At the same time, neuroethics is a fairly young branch of knowledge. Even the name of this discipline appeared only in 2002. Since then, it has grown significantly and now includes the Stanford University Neuroethics Program, the Oxford Center for Neuroethics, the European Neuroscience and Society Initiative, and so on. These activities are funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Dana Foundation. Nevertheless, the influence of these institutions is still insignificant. “They defined the space for action,” says Giordano. "Now we have to start work."

It is also of great concern that scientists do not have information about the dual purpose of neurotechnology. More specifically, there is a gap between research and ethics. Malcolm Dando, professor of international security at the University of Bradford in England, recalls organizing several seminars for the science departments of British universities in 2005, in the year before the conference on the revision of the Biological Weapons Convention. inform specialists about possible misuse of biological agents and neurobiological instruments. He was amazed at how little his colleagues in the scientific community knew about this topic. For example, one scientist denied that the germs he kept in his refrigerator had dual-use potential and could be used for military purposes. Dando recalls that it was a "dialogue of the deaf." Since then, little has changed. A lack of awareness among neuroscientists “definitely does exist,” Dando explains.

On a positive note, the moral issues of neuroscience are now finding acceptance in government, Dando notes. Barack Obama instructed the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethics to prepare a report on ethical and legal issues related to the advanced technologies of the BRAIN initiative, and within the framework of the EU Human Brain project, the Ethics and Society program was created to coordinate the actions of state authorities in this direction. …

But all of these efforts can steer away from the very specific issue of neuroweapons. For example, the 200-page report on the ethical implications of the BRAIN initiative, which was published in full in March this year, does not include terms such as "dual-use" and "weapon development." Dando says that such silence, and even in materials on neuroscience, where, it would seem, this topic should be revealed very broadly, is the rule, not the exception.

When the neuroscientist Nicolelis in 1999 created the first brain-machine interface (a rat with the power of thought pressed a lever to get water), he could not even imagine that his invention would one day be used to rehabilitate paralyzed people. But now his patients can kick a soccer ball on the World Cup with a brain-controlled exoskeleton. And in the world there are more and more areas of practical application of such an interface. Nicolelis is working on a non-invasive version of the therapy, creating an encephalographic helmet that patients wear in hospitals. The doctor, by tuning in to their brain wave, helps traumatized people to walk. “The physical therapist uses his brain 90 percent of the time and the patient 10 percent of the time, and thus the patient is likely to learn faster,” Nicolelis says.

However, he is worried that as innovations develop, someone may use them for unseemly purposes. In the mid-2000s, he participated in the work of DARPA, helping to restore mobility to veterans using the brain-machine interface. Now he refuses the money of this management. Nicolelis senses that he is in the minority, at least in the US. “It seems to me that some neuroscientists in their meetings foolishly brag about how much money they got from DARPA for their research, but they don’t even think about what DARPA really wants from them,” he says.

It hurts him to think that the brain-machine interface, which is the fruit of his life's labor, can turn into a weapon. "For the past 20 years," Nicolelis says, "I have been trying to do something that will bring intellectual benefits from cognition of the brain and ultimately benefit medicine."

But the fact remains: together with neurotechnologies, neuroweapons are being created for medicine. This is undeniable. It is not yet known what kind of weapon it will be, when it will appear, and in whose hands it will find itself. Of course, people do not need to be afraid that their consciousness is about to be under someone's control. Today, a nightmarish scenario seems to be a pipe fantasy, in which new technologies are turning the human brain into an instrument more sensitive than an explosive sniffing search dog, controlled like a drone, and unprotected as wide open safe. However, we must ask ourselves the question: Is enough being done to bring this new generation of deadly weapons under control before it's too late?