Nicholas West

Activist Post

In April of last year, Obama announced a $100 million brain-mapping project, which is being promoted as essential to unlocking the secrets behind degenerative brain conditions and kick starting job growth.

Despite a U.S. economy that is sliding ever faster toward complete implosion, Obama is doubling down on the initiative with another $100 million dollar commitment even as very little of the assertions about job growth have been proven.

In light of where the funding is coming from, it is worth re-examining the darker payoff potential.

According to the latest from LiveScience:

Under the proposed budget, released Tuesday (March 4), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will contribute an estimated $100 million to the effort; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will invest $80 million; and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide another $20 million. (Source)

[…]



The NIH plans to develop a “toolbox” of technologies to map the brain’s circuitry, measure activity in brain circuits and probe how these circuits lead to unique human cognition and behavior.

DARPA will continue to develop memory prostheses as part of an effort called Restoring Active Memory, to create medical devices that measure and stimulate neurons to ease the symptoms of diseases such as PTSD and depression, a project called Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS); and to develop prosthetic limbs that would restore control and sensation to amputees, known as Prosthetic Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces (HAPTIX).

The NSF will focus on three main areas: interdisciplinary research; new theories, models and tools to guide research; and technologies to handle huge amounts of new data. The NSF has already provided $25 million in funding to an MIT research center for “Brains, Minds and Machines,” as well as funding to support scientific collaborations.





Since this all sounds so positive, and we are apparently to believe that DARPA just wants to cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, we might want to re-visit some of what has been discussed previously in order to put this into proper context.

As The New American has rightly highlighted, whenever DARPA is involved, we can expect that there will be creepy military applications . . . like mind control. This mission has actually been around for some time within the halls of elite think-tanks, and now appears to be coming to full fruition. We’ve even seen the recent exposure by a whistleblower at the University of Arizona who came forward to reveal a connection to DARPA’s desire to recreate through narrative the results from Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. In short, affecting thought patterns and, in particular, changing religious views in order to thwart the fanaticism that supposedly underpins the War on Terror.

A closer look at the area being invested in by the National Science Foundation reveals what Big Data and the merger of human and machine intelligence is really about. Please read Medical Nanobots Will Connect Brain to Cloud Computing to get a better understanding of where this part of the initiative is headed, as well as the article Big Government Seeks New Ways to Manage “Big Data” to see how heavily invested our largest federal agencies are in collecting and analyzing data in order to find ways to predict human behavior – something that is already taking shape in “predictive policing” as we see it being rolled out in Chicago. Departments such as the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological survey, and DARPA are all right there.

As government data collection ramps up, the Obama administration through the Office of Science and Technology Policy has announced a $200 million investment in taking this information “from data to decisions.” So that’s now a total of $400 million in this overall data-brain initiative. All to make our lives more prosperous and healthy? Let’s look at other possibilities….

The UK think-tank, The Royal Society (which has openly admitted to studying how to play God with the climate) kicked off a program in 2010 that revealed its multifaceted investigation into the identification of organic brain function and potential control over human behavior.

The Brain Waves project is divided into four modules, each tasked with studying the impact of developments in the field of neuroscience and neurotechnology.

The titles of the modules reflect the areas of examination:

Module 1: Society and policy

Module 2: Implications for education and lifelong learning

Module 3: Conflict and security

Module 4: Responsibility and the law

The results from these modules have been published, and clearly illustrate how this panel views the lower public masses in light of their status as the elite arbiters of human destiny. The dual approach to this investigation must be kept in mind as the U.S. government is now rolling out the BRAIN initiative as the next great thing since the human genome project. The ramifications are potentially even more momentous.

We often hear from critics that these think-tanks are an essential part of scientific discovery, and that drawing conclusions of a nefarious nature about their intent is paranoid conspiracy theory — they are only thinking, after all. I would submit that objective scientific inquiry is absolutely necessary and that the proper role of science is to disseminate results to the public for open debate, prior to their implementation. However, think-tanks such as the Royal Society betray, by their own language, subjective biases (and corporate connections) that have no place in true science.

The Royal Society funds over 700 private ventures, which undoubtedly are directed by findings from studies such as Brain Waves. While their studies might be couched in scientific terminology, there is always a philosophical overlay that indicates a desire to study the sciences specifically for use toward a purpose that a relatively small group sees fit. Furthermore, given that many developments in neuroscience are already being forced upon the public in a negative manner, the claims of open debate and “welcoming comments from the public” seem disingenuous. Rather, what we have is a another think-tank blueprint that is merely stating the current course planned long ago, as well as what is to be rolled out in the near future under projects like BRAIN.

Just as we have seen from other think tanks such as the Project For a New American Century, Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, and a host of others; their thoughts translate to reality on a less-than-coincidental frequency, so we would do well to listen to what they have been saying.

The Project (an elite view of the brain)

As an initial aside, perhaps lending insight into their philosophical perspective: the image they have chosen to represent Module 1 of the project is “a drawing of Purkinje cells (A) and granule cells (B) from pigeon cerebellum.” Slightly odd given that their results are directed toward humans, but this would be consistent with much of elitist statements and writings from Bertrand Russell to Aldoux Huxley, Henry Kissinger, and others who literally refer to the masses as a lower form of animal. (Are we to assume we’re viewed here as bird brains?)

Module 1 (108-page PDF) An overview for subsequent modules in “neuroimaging, neuropsychopharmacology, and neural interfaces – and discuss(es) the translation of this knowledge into useful applications . . . as well as the ethical questions and governance issues.”

Increasing understanding of the brain . . . will increase our insights into normal human behaviour and mental well-being, as well as enabling other enhancement, manipulation, and even degradation of brain function and cognition… The array of ‘neuro’ disciplines lend themselves to applications in diverse areas of public policy such as health, education, law, and security. More broadly, progress in neuroscience is going to raise questions about personality, identity, responsibility, and liberty, as well as associated social and ethical issues. The aim of the Royal Society’s Brain Waves project is to explore what neuroscience can offer, what are its limitations, and what are the potential benefits and the risks posted by particular applications. (page 1) Their statement of intent reads as follows:

Similar to their discussion of weather control, this study seeks an all-inclusive approach that spans the full spectrum of society, begging the same question they asked previously regarding the implementation of scientific discovery, “Who decides?”