By Nicholas West

Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, China is offering a grim vision of the future as it implements a full-scale technocracy that is still debated as conspiracy theory by many people in the West.

I have been writing for years about the various stories that have emerged about developments in neuroscience that have included the reading of brain waves for a multitude of applications, good and bad. Naturally, for authoritarian control freaks, the idea of being able to directly monitor and analyze the thoughts of your population is a dream come true; and for anyone else who simply wishes to have more data at their disposal for targeted advertising or other economic management schemes, it’s a technology too tempting to refuse.

South China Morning Post covers both aspects of this emerging reality, as they report that assembly lines workers, train conductors and military personnel are having their respective hats, caps and helmets outfitted with the latest brain-reading sensors to determine efficiency and safety patterns.

Concealed in regular safety helmets or uniform hats, these lightweight, wireless sensors constantly monitor the wearer’s brainwaves and stream the data to computers that use artificial intelligence algorithms to detect emotional spikes such as depression, anxiety or rage. The technology is in widespread use around the world but China has applied it on an unprecedented scale in factories, public transport, state-owned companies and the military to increase the competitiveness of its manufacturing industry and to maintain social stability. […] The research team confirmed the device and technology had been used in China’s military operations but declined to provide more information. The technology is also being used in medicine. Ma Huajuan, a doctor at the Changhai Hospital in Shanghai, said the facility was working with Fudan University to develop a more sophisticated version of the technology to monitor a patient’s emotions and prevent violent incidents.

The Chinese government acknowledges that workers expressed initial concern over the perception that they were having their minds read, but after some acclimation “they got used to the device. It looked and felt just like a safety helmet. They wore it all day at work.”

Future plans include use for flight operators in airline cockpits, but it “means the pilots may need to sacrifice some of their privacy for the sake of public safety.”

Readers in the West should ignore this news at their peril. The foundation has been laid by heavy investment into the BRAIN initiative in the U.S. and its counterpart in Europe, the Human Brain Project. Not only have these projects been researching brain wave reading through direct skull application, as this news from China demonstrates, there also has been heavy study into remote mind reading.

While many documents have surfaced over the previous decades suggesting military interest in remote mind reading and control, additional concrete evidence came to our attention at Activist Post in 2013 when a whistleblower at Arizona State University revealed a secret DARPA program being conducted there using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. This technology stimulates the temporal lobe with electromagnetic pulses and can be employed for a range of uses.

Subsequently, we have seen a rise in studies of brain-computer interfaces with a distinct mention of mind control techniques being introduced with the same magnetic manipulation via “neural (or smart) dust” or high-powered lasers that enable reading and manipulation from a distance.

Just recently, an “accidental” FOIA request resulted in other mind control documents being released; I’d encourage you to read that report here.

So, even though this news from China might appear shocking and advanced to many readers, I would argue that the technology they are using is rudimentary compared to what is already available, However, the fact that a major government with a population that is nearly 1/5th of the entire planet is beginning to roll this out should spark heightened awareness about where all of this is headed if we don’t consider the ethics now before this technology gets away from us.

Nicholas West writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon for as little as $1 per month. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.