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Brain Will Be Battlefield of the Future, Warns US
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Aug 15, 2008 05:52 PM
from the encrypt-all-mental-notes dept.
from the encrypt-all-mental-notes dept.
Anti-Globalism sends this except from the Guardian:
"In a report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading scientists were asked to examine how a greater understanding of the brain over the next 20 years is likely to drive the development of new medicines and technologies. They found several areas in which progress could have a profound impact, including behaviour-altering drugs, scanners that can interpret a person's state of mind and devices capable of boosting senses such as hearing and vision. ...The report highlights one electronic technique, called transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves using electrical pulses to interfere with the firing of neurons in the brain and has been shown to delay a person's ability to tell a lie."
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Brain battle (Score:5, Funny)
So George Bush has lost that one already.
Re:Brain battle (Score:5, Funny)
You are missing the point: W is the perfect soldier of the future.
Parent
Re:Brain battle (Score:5, Funny)
it seems neither do you, bitch ass cunt.
Home alone on a Friday night slamming back several, eh? Either that, you're the first person that types with Tourette's syndrome.
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Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet it also puts a hurting on your ability to tell the truth. Or tell anything.
This stuff promises to get ugly, but any contractors that claim enough info to disriminate between connections firing during lies vs truth is overselling their tech.
Re:Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
If the product works, then he tells the truth and you think the product works great. If the product doesn't work, then he lies and says the product works great.
Hooking the salesman up proves nothing.
Parent
Re:Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun Tzu argued that you have to know your enemy in detail, but prevent your enemy from knowing you: pretend that you are weak where you are strong, and pretend that you are strong where you are weak. Information and deception have always been integral to warfare, and always will be. More modern examples include the Allies managing to trick Hitler into believing that they will invade at Calais, rather than Normandy, and Saddam Hussein pretending that his WMD programs are much stronger than they are (a ploy that backfired, in his case). But I'm not sure technology really changes this that much. It changes how we can collect and disseminate information, but at the end of the day, you need to have smart, educated, capable guys sifting through this information with their brains and giving good advice to their Commander-in-Chief... and a Commander-in-Chief with the brains to listen.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Brains which produce honour and integrity is what makes real humans. Blind obedient thugs are just animals. The best soldiers are what they always have been, those with the courage to overcome their fear, those with the discipline to control their emotions and those who really do believe that honour and integrity is what you take with you onto the battlefield and keep with you afterwards, not just a empty motto to hide torture, murder and rape.
Drugs or other devices will achieve none of these, they will
Re:Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Delaying a person's ability to tell a lie is only part of it. My wife, a neuropsychologist and former med school instructor tells me it has been shown that application of a magnetic field to one particular part of the brain makes the subject "aware of the presence of God", or gives him or her the experience of God's presence. Pardon the pun, but this is heady stuff.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it also work to detect when people lie about failing to recall or remember something? Congress would love-fear that.
Yes, I meant a hyphen, not a slash.
A new tech field just opened up (Score:4, Funny)
We'll make millions!
Re:A new tech field just opened up (Score:4, Interesting)
Amusing, but for the fact that the brain has been the "battlefield", at least in the US, for the last few decades.
Go read the Wikipedia entry on Frank Luskin, the Republican pollster, to see what I mean.
The people Luskin works for, and the people they work for, and the media that works for them, are the enemy on this battlefield. It's taken a while for us to realize that. And the playing field is anything but even, but when I read about things like TED, I find that we've got a few good minds on our side, too.
The biggest weapon they're pointing at us right now could be neutralized if we would just pass a fucking Net Neutrality law.
Parent
Re:A new tech field just opened up (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:A new tech field just opened up (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please. The media is patriotic, sensationalistic, and irresponsible, but it's not some secret cabal trying to keep the poor proles in line.
It's no surprise, then, then you would totally get Frank Luntz' name wrong, and even less of a surprise that you somehow managed to segue into net neutrality (which has almost nothing to do with the media being crap, no matter what you want to think).
Parent
The system is mine! (Score:3, Funny)
AC-tivate it!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Semper Psi (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, we've already got our own homegrown versions of the Nightwatch, so why not go the rest of the way?
electricuted = hard to speak, let alone lie (Score:4, Funny)
"called transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves using electrical pulses to interfere with the firing of neurons in the brain and has been shown to delay a person's ability to tell a lie"
Why yes, if I'm being electrocuted, I 'm pretty sure it will delay the ability to think coherently, let alone lie.
Sheesh, why don't they just call it electrocution and call it a day here? I'm sure it was just accidental that they only tested the lie part.
Re:electricuted = hard to speak, let alone lie (Score:4, Insightful)
It uses very small currents compared to what most people would consider to be electrocution. It may find theraputic uses, but like so many other technologies apparantly we're going to use it for evil as well.
Parent
Re:electricuted = hard to speak, let alone lie (Score:5, Funny)
Transcranial direct current stimulation is to electrocution as enhanced interrogation is to:
a. massage therapy
b. breakfast
c. job interview
d. toture
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Damn it! I picked (c) Job Interview because I didn't know what "toture" was.
You ass, now I'm not going to get into Harvard because of your typo!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I should also add that tDCS has been experimentally shown to boost working memory [nih.gov], memory consolidation during sleep [nih.gov], and verbal fluency [nih.gov]. Is that what you would expect from outright electrocution?
Ah (Score:2)
Re:Ah (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Once we've gotten their minds, it's their sweet, delicious human hearts that we'll be after.
Parent
Some battlefields ... (Score:2)
Used for war, they'll be used for "peace" control (Score:5, Insightful)
The temptation will be too great. Crowd control? Voter control? Don't like the price of fuel? Easy. A way will be found to change your mind.
At what price? Chemical weapons developed in the 1950s-1980s cost billions to destroy. Are mind-control weapons going to be equally as horrible? Historical trends would say so.
Re:Used for war, they'll be used for "peace" contr (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Used for war, they'll be used for "peace" contr (Score:3, Insightful)
What bothers me most is that the figure of speach, "changing your mind", will become quite literally.
Freedom of speech? Our problem will be freedom of will.
Phillip K. Dick saw this (Score:3, Interesting)
Go buy yourself a copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.
You'll find that control of the mind, and thus the population through mood adjustment on demand, and communal broadcast 'hallucination', play a big part.
I haven't described it perfectly, don't want to ruin the book. Suffice it to say none of this made it into the film. Not that I don't think the film is awesome, its just different in ultimate message.
Kit Green is afraid of anxious people. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
> On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact
How likely is that? Someone will invent a drug to make you immune to incapacitating drugs, and we'll go back to bullets and explosions.
> "The concept of torture could also be altered by products in this market. It is possible that some day there could be a technique developed to extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side effects," the report states.
I hope not. I imagine the police could give you the stuff and ask you if you ever commited any crimes. It'll be a routine thing, just like taking your fingerprint and DNA and firstborn, when you are arrested.
> "In the intelligence community, there is an extremely small number of people who understand the science and without that it's going to be impossible to predict surprises. This is a black hole that needs to be filled with light," Green told the Guardian.
There's a dumb analogy if I ever saw one. Let's shine light on the black hole!
> The technologies will one day have applications in counter-terrorism and crime-fighting. The report says brain imaging will not improve sufficiently in the next 20 years to read peoples' intentions from afar and spot criminals before they act, but it might be good enough to help identify people at a checkpoint or counter who are afraid or anxious.
Do we really need a brainscan for that, though? People who are afraid or anxious are easy to spot, and being afraid or anxious hardly makes you a criminal.
> "We're not going to be reading minds at a distance, but that doesn't mean we can't detect gross changes in anxiety or fear, and then subsequently talk to those individuals to see what's upsetting them," Green said.
Will that talk involve one of those lie-detector brainscan-things?
> The development of advanced surveillance techniques, such as cameras that can spot fearful expressions on people's faces, could lead to some inventive ways to fool them, the report adds, such as Botox injections to relax facial muscles.
Dude, enough about anxious people alright. People are afraid and nervous all the time about all sorts of things, and the thought that some asshole security guy is going to detect that with some sort of remote brainscan and invite them to have a chat will only make that worse. How many of these people will turn out to be innocent? Many.
Re:Kit Green is afraid of anxious people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Kit Green is afraid of anxious people. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. It is the cool, collected ones you have to worry about.
Parent
Re:Kit Green is afraid of anxious people. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Kit Green is afraid of anxious people. (Score:5, Interesting)
How likely is that? Someone will invent a drug to make you immune to incapacitating drugs, and we'll go back to bullets and explosions.
It'll be like Syndicate where some guy at a computer jacks up your squad's adrenaline levels and compels you to run around in leather trenchcoats killing people and blowing up vehicles, not even feeling the machine gun fire and flamethrower blasts the rival squads are hitting you with. And a cyberpunk background track pounds in your head to set the mood.
In other words... freakin' awesome.
Parent
Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone recently diagnosed with a neurological condition, given drugs to treat it, given drugs to deal with the side effects, and now am on drugs to treat my psychological reaction to it, I've seen first hand how certain drugs can alter your mood and even change your perspective.
One drug they have me on makes it impossible for me to get upset about anything. If we could isolate what it is that makes the brain do that, put it into an airborne form and spray it over an enemy, then we could simply march in and say "We are taking your land, your government and your freedom", and their response would be (in a semi-zombie state) "Oh. Okay. I hope you enjoy it".
All without firing a shot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, I knew about drugs being able to totally flip over someone's personality, but I wasn't aware of that one. How is it called? Seriously messed up though... Once you stop taking the drug, can you then get upset about things that happened while you were on it?
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
All without firing a shot.
But we already have that. It's called television.
Parent
20 Years? (Score:5, Funny)
So, in 20 years, we'll have various forms of mind control, so we can force immortal (available in 20 years) enemy soldiers to steal the (available in 20 years) fusion powered (available in 20 years) flying cars (available in 20 years) and attack the space elevator (available in 20 years) that supplies our permanent colonies on the moon (available in 20 years)?
The future's looking bright!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Training (Score:3, Funny)
From TFA:
On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, ....
Fortunately, our youth appear to have gotten a head start at familiarizing themselves with the effects of such drugs and the training necessary to deal with such tactics.
Imagine the dismay of an enemy that, when interrogating a prisoner using extreme methods is answered every time with,
"Dave's not here."
Tim Schafer - The Prophet (Score:4, Funny)
"The human mind: 600 miles of synaptic fiber, 5 and half ounces of cranial fluid, 1500 grams of complex neural matter. A three pound pile of dreams. But I'll tell you what it really is! It is the ultimate battlefield and the ultimate weapon.
The wars of this modern age, the Psychic Age, are all fought somewhere between these damp, curvaceous, undulations.
From this day forward, you are all psychic soldiers, paranormal paratroopers, mental marines who are about to ship out on the adventure of their lives. THIS is our beachhead! And THIS is your landing craft! You shall engage the enemy in his own mentality! You shall chase his dreams! You shall fight his demons! You shall live his nightmares!
And those of you fight well, you will find yourselves on the path to be international secret agents. In other words:
PSYCHONAUTS!"
-Morceau Oleander
Survival of the Sickest (Score:4, Interesting)
Aim for politicians, not soldiers (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA focuses on war, but lets talk about the causes, not just the effects of war.
On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned, the report says.
What if instead of "disrupting their ability to tell lies when questions" were applied to political candidates instead of to soldiers? I believe there is a time and a place to wage war, but I'd be more supportive if the motives of our leaders were "filled with light" before they were elected and before we went to war. I'd like to see each political candidate for federal office asked to undergo a standard screen before they were allowed to accept any party nomination. I can even throw out a list of questions that I'd love to see the voters of the US get honest answers to:
It might be assumed from these questions that I'm against the wars and the policies of current elected officials, but the truth is that I agree with some of the policies and actions we've seen from our representatives in the house, senate and president, I'm even proud of them from time to time. At the same time I'm terribly disappointed in their lack of consistency and the feeling I always get that there are reasons and motivations that they hide from the people they are supposed to represent. I'd love to get honest answers about their motivations.
A Very Small Battlefield (Score:4, Funny)
Judging by the people I deal with on a daily basis, I think that this battle of the minds could take place on the head of a pin.
1984 (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not surprising. It derives from becoming paranoid and losing trust on your fellow human beings: "what if someone is secretly thinking of killing us? we ought to have a way to tell!". I hope no one ever gains such understanding, as it would be a serious threat to freedom.
Rule of Thumb. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
When the military or a collective of enough industry voices declare where we're going to be in twenty years, you can safely bet that those advancements are already here in some dark lab someplace.
My reasoning is this: When you have developed a super-advanced technology in secret, then when it is out-moded and no longer useful because it is being replaced by an even more super-advanced secret technology, what do you do with it? Why you sell the heck out of it. Profit, profit, profit. The bad guys understand and live in the frequency of all things one can be fearful of. A big one is the Fear of Want. --Will I be safe from being homeless on the streets? Better make enough money to get a house. Will I be safe from a mortgage collapse? Better own a house and lots of extra money on top of that to see me through the hard times. Ooh, but the natives are growing restless. I better make sure my house is gated with armed guards on the walls. How much does that cost? Oh, and what if the economy collapses altogether? I'd better have enough resources saved up to be REALLY safe.
It never ends, and so greed never ends. You need more to protect what you have, which in turn needs protecting. Fear, fear, fear.
And so. . , you find schemes to make lots and lots of money. Keeping the economy running on new tech advancements; keep the people chasing after new and better stuff to replace old and outmoded stuff. So when your secret technologies which multiple agencies sworn to secrecy have been working on in compartmentalized areas with talk-and-die non-disclosure agreements signed and filed. . , when those technologies no longer serve to protect you directly because of newer and better items, you sell them! Yay!
But hold on. You can't just dump a super-advanced technology on the market just like that. People will ask, "But where did it come from? Hey! Are you making secret technologies? With tax money? Well we want some of that!"
So you need a narrative. You need to establish a logical development path for a new technology to sprout from for people to see. It doesn't have to be true, but just true enough. Think of all those poor busy-work developers re-inventing stuff in a guided manner so that their 'new' stuff lines up with the prescribed flow of stuff which you want to drop on the market in ten or twenty years time. Stuff, stuff, stuff!
A silly game. Enjoy your iPods.
-FL
Who Did They Ask? (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously they asked a panel of, at least primarily, neuroscientists. TFA doesn't mention that the report wasn't an all-around technology assessment, but rather is from the outset a futurism projection of neuroscience: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12177&page=R1 [nap.edu]
They didn't come to the conclusion, as implied by the tone of TFA, rather it was their starting point and working boundary.
Had they asked a panel of archeologists, the battlefield of the future would probably be inside the Great Pyramid, but The Guardian would fail to note the profession of the report writers, instead simply calling them "leading scientists".
Re:Hasn't it already been the battlefield? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about that, but it seems to me that it has already been on the battlefield. You shoot the enemy in the head, you've effectively "interfered with the firing of neurons in the brain."
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