Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

The Pentagon’s Plans to Program Soldiers’ Brains (engineering, design)

#1
C C Offline
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ng/570841/

EXCERPT (intro): . . . So began “Beyond Bionics,” 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 “understand the neural code,” which would involve putting “very fine microwire electrodes”—the diameter of a human hair—“into the brain.” When we do that, he said, we would be able to “listen in to the music of the brain” and “listen in to what somebody’s motor intent might be” and get a glimpse of “your goals and your rewards” and then “start to understand how the brain encodes behavior.”

He explained, “With all of this knowledge, what we’re 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.”

Sanchez went on, “The 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. I’m truly inspired by that. It drives me every day when I wake up and get out of bed. Thank you so much.” He blew a kiss to the audience.

A year later, Justin Sanchez went to work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s 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 wheelchair—much 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 wasn’t 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...

MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ng/570841/
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article Will renewables break the power grid or save it? (design & engineering) C C 1 24 Mar 19, 2024 10:56 PM
Last Post: confused2
  Article The brain-implant company going for Neuralink’s jugular (design, engineering) C C 2 127 Feb 8, 2024 09:09 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Research DNA origami folded into tiny motor (engineering, design) C C 0 57 Jan 19, 2024 06:56 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Can we fit the universe in a box? (container design & engineering challenges) C C 0 75 Nov 8, 2023 09:55 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Synchronized phenomena (design, knowledge gaps in engineering) C C 0 91 Sep 9, 2023 05:18 PM
Last Post: C C
  New nuclear rocket design to send missions to Mars in just 45 days (engineering) C C 2 103 Jan 24, 2023 08:16 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Engineering duckweed to produce oil for biofuels, bioproducts (bio design) C C 0 172 Oct 12, 2022 02:12 AM
Last Post: C C
  Secrecy: A demon of gene therapy’s past bedevils its future (design, engineering) C C 0 155 Jul 12, 2022 08:23 PM
Last Post: C C
  Why Elon Musk’s Hyperloop won’t work for humans (engineering, design) C C 0 92 May 27, 2022 07:51 PM
Last Post: C C
  Developing an ultra-small, color-sensing camera for microbots (design, engineering) C C 0 51 Apr 19, 2022 06:56 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)