The U.S. Army Research Office has awarded $4 million to scientists from three universities to study “the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy.” Put simply, the military wants to read minds. According to an offical press release, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland will collaborate to construct a “brain-computer interface,” where soldiers’ thoughts will be recorded by an EEG and transcribed by a computer-based speech recognition program for others to read. The project’s supporters say that synthetic telepathy would help both wounded soldiers and civilians as well (for example, those sustaining brain damage from trauma or stroke). Critics worry that the technology could be used for interrogation, even though the lead researcher, UC-Irvine’s Michael D’Zmura, told the Associated Press that the program “will never be used in a way without somebody’s real, active cooperation.”
This is by no means the first time the military has poured money into researching psychic activities like mind-reading or “remote viewing.” Writing for Maisonneuve (article not available online), Alex Roslin details the long history in the US of military psychic research, which stretches all the way back to 1953. The idea reached its peak in the 1970s and ’80s with Stargate, the CIA’s cinematically titled program for developing remote viewing and precognition techniques.
(Thanks, Democracy Now!)
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