Posted on 09/28/2015 6:59:34 AM PDT by Van Jenerette
For decades, DARPA, the secretive research arm of the Department of Defense, has dreamed of turning soldiers into cyborgs. And now it’s finally happening. The agency has funded projects that involve implanting chips into soldiers’ brains that they hope will enhance performance on the battlefield and repair traumatized brains once the fog of war has lifted.
“Of the 2.5 million Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000 of them came home with traumatic brain injury,” journalist Annie Jacobsen told NPR. “DARPA initiated a series of programs to help cognitive functioning, to repair some of this damage. And those programs center around putting brain chips inside the tissue of the brain.”
(Excerpt) Read more at fusion.net ...
That makes obeying illegal orders even easier.
Something I’d want to talk to my Marine son about...
/johnny
The problem is that as human knowledge and technology soars, human nature stays the same.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Oh goody another one of the conspiracy theorists chimes in....and in Glen Beck’s Fusion.
She’s written on Area 51 and other stuff and such
That for sure.
This is impossible with existing technology.
My dad worked with a DARPA crazy trying to build a thought controlled helmet for fighters with external sensors
Even if they got it to work (never got even close), it was so heavy it would snap the pilot’s neck on a 3G turn.
You want SciFi, read a book.
You want reality, talk to an Engineer.
DARPA advanced technology experiments are real, and serve the purpose of helping our military master the human domain - for good or bad.
There have been huge advances in cyborg (man-machine interfaced technology) with prosthetics, for instance.
Brain electronic feedback technology is already in use to help alleviate chronic pain sufferers.
It’s perfectly conceivable the Pentagon is pursuing ways to help soldiers overcome PTSD, when cognitive behavior, or psychotropic medication is ineffective.
I hate this kind of deceptive title.
To start with, as a purely technical note, this would *not* involve chip implantation into the brain. Likely it would be an “under the skin but over the skull” chip.
Now to the main event. Why do this? Because there is tremendous variation between individuals in how quickly they develop PTSD/Battle Fatigue/Shell Shock.
In some individuals, if there are loud, unpredictable noises that scare them, they develop PTSD. That easy.
On average, a combat soldiers can develop PTSD after a couple of weeks of combat.
And finally, there are a small number who can handle a lot of combat stress, which to them is just stress, and goes away when they are out of the stressful situation.
Well, the Pentagon hates it when soldiers are not uniform in their behavior. So the idea is likely to do one of three things, or both.
1) If the soldier’s chronic stress level skyrockets, it is detected by the chip, so they can be taken out of action before they develop PTSD. and/or,
2) It might give electrical stimulation to the pleasure center of the brain to help relieve stress. Basically encouraging the production of some dopamine, the pleasure chemical.
3) It might end up going only to those who have developed PTSD, to give them some recuperative leave while on leave. This used to be done by letting them get drunk several times, but that doesn’t really help.
However, based on previous experience of US military “nutball” science ideas, of which there have been a LOT, it will fail miserably.
(My favorite is during WWII, when they tried to train soldiers to digest cellulose. As some wit noted, while it didn’t work, it turned them into a “regular” Army unit.)
How long before everyone is "chipped" with security information, credit access, etc., so you just have to be scanned to monitor and enable all activities?
That's not science-fiction.
I have been designing microprocessors for 20 years.
You want to put a chip in your dog which is filled with toxic metals?
Its your right but I wouldn’t do it.
We didn’t even like workers touching dead wafers without gloves for fear of toxic metals.
Now try and use that chip to train your dog.
Oops, not enough power for the transmitter.
Now we have to implant a power supply.
Oops, battery is dead now we have to open him up and replace the battery.
Oh and the big Oops...
Someone has to build these chips and they are NOT going to do it for free.
They types of chips YOU are talking about are similar to the ones you get in talking greeting cards.
Cheap but they really don’t do anything technical.
To create a processor capable of doing what DARPA suggests would require a 500 person design team, 150 watts of power minimum and something to generate the power.
Plus a backpack to carry the power source.
Its NOT that this is impossible...it is impossible with existing technology and power is the one thing that hasn’t been fixed yet.
And its a big problem.
666
How would the fabled "chip" interface with the billions of neurons or various functional control centers of the brain? Our most advanced microelectronic technology doesn't hold a flickering candle to the equivalent blowtorch power of the brain.
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