Commentary
Once an idea reserved for the pages of dystopian sci-fi novels, brain hacking is already here. The elites in Davos appear to be interested in harnessing this technology to further their questionable agenda.
At a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) presentation, those in attendance were told that attempts to decode the human brain was already well underway. As Tim Hinchcliffe, a man who has been sounding the alarm on the WEF’s plans for years, noted, the presentation came five years after historian Yuval Noah Harari told those in Davos that human beings were entirely hackable. We are, in a nutshell, walking, breathing, living algorithms, according to the academic. Harari’s vision, at the time, was a thing of feverish fantasy. Now, though, this fantasy is fast becoming a reality.
At the WEF Annual Meeting 2023, The Atlantic’s CEO Nicholas Thompson chaired a session called “Ready for Brain Transparency?” The session opened with an Orwellian-inspired video showing a scenario in which employees’ brainwaves were monitored and decoded. Besides using the information gathered to evaluate employee performance, brainwaves were decoded to assess whether or not any individuals had participated in criminal activity.
Following the video, Duke University’s Nita Farahany, an expert on both the ethical and legal implications of emerging technologies, explained to the audience that methods of decoding brainwaves already exist. Certain technologies, she said, already allow powerful organizations and governments to “pick up and decode faces that you’re seeing in your mind—simple shapes, numbers, your PIN number to your bank account.”
A file photo of an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap used to study brain activity. Oli Scarff/Getty Images
“Artificial intelligence,” she continued, “has enabled advances in decoding brain activity in ways we never before thought possible.” All those thoughts and feelings bubbling around inside, added Farahany, are just pieces of data, adding that this data can be decoded using artificial intelligence (AI). Contrary to popular belief, devices used to decode this “data” needn’t be as invasive as Elon Musk’s neural implants. According to Farahany, devices used are more like Fitbits for the human brain. “We’re not talking about implanted devices of the future; I’m talking about wearable devices that are like Fitbits for your brain,” she concluded in a rather chirpy tone.
On the same day Farahany was giving her presentation, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was also in Davos. Like Farahany, Stoltenberg probably knows his fair share about brain hacking. In 2021, NATO chaired a forum exploring the “‘weaponization of brain sciences” and exploiting the “‘vulnerabilities of the human brain.” As reported by Project Censored, an organization dedicated to the promotion of investigative journalism, greater media literacy, and critical thinking, the forum was created to explore “more sophisticated forms of social engineering and control.” This explains why, in the two years since the forum, NATO has added a sixth level to its five operational domains (air, land, sea, space, and cyber): the cognitive domain.
In a NATO-approved piece, experts from Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London discuss the many ways in which the human mind should be considered a battlefield. Cognitive warfare, they noted, involves much more than changing what people think; it also involves changing people’s behaviors. “Waged successfully,” reads the piece, cognitive warfare “shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives.” The aggressors “could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion.” NATO’s purpose, it’s important to remember, is to keep us safe. That purpose appears to be changing.
From the origin of the coronavirus to claims of Russian collusion, this is the golden age of information warfare. But the golden age, with its focus on media control, is currently evolving. As the academics Tzu-Chieh Hung and Tzu-Wei Hung explained in an article last year, cognitive warfare extends from focusing solely on media control to explicit brain control. Cognitive warfare seeks to weaponize “neurological resources” as well as “mass communication techniques.” Whereas information warfare focuses almost entirely on the input of information, cognitive warfare focuses on both the input and the output (that is, our behaviors).
One needn’t be a card-carrying QAnon member to read the above and feel a profound sense of dismay. Talks of hacking the brain are straight out of communist China. As I write this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is already using cognitive warfare to subdue the enemy. In the not-so-distant future, the unelected globalists in Davos and Brussels, home to NATO’s headquarters, could use the very same technology to subdue us.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
