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CIA Document Claims Soviet Union Was Developing Cybernetic Telepathy (vice.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the watch-out dept.
Three newly released CIA reports from 1963 and 1964 investigate the Soviet Union's apparent use of extrasensory perception (ESP) and attempted development of "cybernetic telepathy." Motherboard: The documents detail conversations an agent had with Soviet scientists and a student about the USSR's interest in developing ESP. Guided by these second hand accounts, it sounds like the Soviet Union's plans of developing telepathy went as well as America's well-documented efforts. "At the moment, he does not have a clear detailed language program for this," one report said. "Rather, he has an overall goal for the future of finding out about ESP generally." The documents come courtesy of a Freedom of Information Act via the transparency site the Government Attic. They're three reports to the CIA about conversations an agent had with a Soviet cybernetics researcher and a visiting foreign exchange student.
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CIA Document Claims Soviet Union Was Developing Cybernetic Telepathy More

CIA Document Claims Soviet Union Was Developing Cybernetic Telepathy

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  • The goats have a tough time ahead
    • It works. Apparently, you don't even have to be in line of sight for it to work. It's called Havana syndrome & CIA agents are dropping like flies! Well, if you can walk through walls, obviously you can stare through them too, DUH!

  • must think in russian

  • I didn't realize the Soviets were so far behind developing radios. I guess that would explain why they're still using unencrypted ones in 2022.

    • The real question is why are we still using unencrypted radios in the US in 2022. Encryption is still banned on Amateur radio and public radio and the only permitted encryption are backdoored.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Encryption is banned on amateur channels because they're shared. Nobody wants to have to talk over your sooper sekrit messages. I'm willing to bet that you have encrypted transmitters and receivers in your house though, freely operating on frequencies allocated for that purpose.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          I'm willing to bet that you have encrypted transmitters and receivers in your house though, freely operating on frequencies allocated for that purpose.

          Well done Sir!

        • Encryption is banned on amateur channels to prevent soviet spies from phoning home on low power globe spanning equipment that can be made in the basement. Nobody should be talking over anyone else regardless of 'sooper sekrit messages'

          As for encrypted transmitters and receivers in your house, I think you'll find those allocated frequencies are NOT useful for confidential long range communications AND are backdoored.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Ooh, Soviet spies! You don't hear that one often anymore.

            • Just because it is still against he rules doesn't mean the rules have a modern purpose. The reason encryption is banned on amateur radio is because of fear of soviet spies communicating over short wave radios. With a fairly tiny amount of power and $10 worth of parts a decent analog encryption would enable reasonably reliable radio communication half-way across the globe without any dependence on infrastructure which could be compromised/tapped/intercepted. The US government remains afraid to let you hack o

  • The recent article about flow states in brains documented inter-brain wave synchronization within productive teams in a flow state.

    Yeah, yeah, we already know everything that will ever be discovered.

  • South Park reference. I'd make fun of Russia for this but I'm pretty sure the CIA was investigating the same stuff sometime around the mid 1900s.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • We'd need to know a lot more about brain function, and it would probably require intrusive brain surgery, but it sounds like a plausible future development. Not this decade, perhaps. I'm not sure what bandwidth would be needed. Verbal human communication is pretty low bandwidth, but I can see plausible auxiliary channels that might double the requirements. Current cell phones would probably suffice for a local repeater.

    Of course, I'm spinning off my interpretation of what was meant. I've long thought t

  • Kind of funny (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Friday April 01, 2022 @03:02PM (#62409100)
    The CIA and the KGB engaged in an arms race of hucksterism. It's hard to know if each side earnestly believed the bullshit they were into, or simply pushing it to spook the other.

    • No job like a cushy government job with pretend results.

    • Re:Kind of funny (Score:4, Interesting)

      by F.Ultra ( 1673484 ) on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:57PM (#62409638)
      The way I heard about it was that (don't remember where anymore) it was one branch of the CIA that leaked to known KGB spies that the US where investigating things like remove viewing as an attempt to make the USSR waste resources on foolish things, but then once the KGB started to do said researching then the US spies reported this back home so another branch of the CIA started to do it to. So in essence the CIA fooled the CIA into doing this stupid stuff. Could be one enormous myth, but it does sound plausible.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        It's plausible, an organisation like the CIA will be intentionally siloed so that people don't know any more than they need to in case they end up leaking information to the enemy.
        Those gathering intelligence would not necessary know what those spreading false information were up to, so false information could easily come full circle.

  • Attempting telepathy development, does that mean they'd succeed? No

  • There is a book at my local 2nd and Charles which is about this very subject. It's sci-fi and I think its name is Cyber Warrior, though I can't find a corresponding book doing a search.

    In short, from the little I read of the book, Russia was using severely injured soldiers to develop a telepathic/cybernetic process by which they could kill and destroy from a distance. All the soldiers were in some type of water tank to isolate them. That's all I remember.

    • I don't know exactly how they convinced the Soviet government to fund a project like this, but I am guessing they threw a lot of big techy words around and pulled a mechanical Turk act on the terminally clueless bureaucrats to get the go ahead.

        They are shucksters and con artists, and they are playing their own government like a fool.

        The even bigger magic trick is staying out of the gulag when someone catches on to their scam.

  • FireFox!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Saffaya ( 702234 ) on Friday April 01, 2022 @04:14PM (#62409316)

    "Soviet Union's attempted development of “cybernetic telepathy.” "
    Anyone else has flashbacks to Clint Eastwood's FireFox Movie?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    "I have to think in Russian"

  • How is this news? It's been written of and discussed for years.

    I call, "slow news day."

  • That has been exposed in the excellent movie The Men Who Stare at Goats

  • Great, now all of the mentally deranged clowns will point to this as "proof" of the insane nonsense that they spew out of their mouths. Not all of them live in cardboard boxes either.

    I just love it when big governments do their part to keep medieval superstition and majick alive. :-\

  • Idiots investigating morons.

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