We can read thoughts to some degree, but it is by putting electrodes around the head.
How can we read thoughts?
By studying patterns in neural activity.
When your brain thinks of a car... Any brain thinks of a car.
There is a pattern of neurons firing.
That can be identified with electrodes scanning brain activity real time. I have been involved in using this for cognitive linguistic research.
Now, as far as I know. This is very primitive. i.e. We need a electrodes to measure brain patterns, and the brain patterns do not tell us too much. The best I have heard is that we can make out 20 words or so, but mostly emotions... Scared, happy etc. But, with AI, which is all about pattern recognition... That can be expected to change. And fast. Perhaps..
And also... There is a major push to make this tech non invasive. In other words to read your brain without electrodes all around your head. It will help handicapped people.. right...
How far we are on that path? I do not know, but I do know that pretty much everyone that counts work on it....
Google, Facebook, Microsoft.
Then there is the last and to me most scary proposition.
Knowing what a certain pattern of neurons mean...
Can we also change them?
The super scary part is that it seems we can.
Then we have gone from reading minds to controlling and changing minds. Not through TV propaganda, but by directly controlling your thoughts.
We do live in a very scary world my friends....
The Dan Bongino Show
Ep. 1095 The Deep Staters Are Turning on Each Other
Audio
https://bongino.com/ep-1095-the-deep-staters-are-turning-on-each-other/
Video
Concur