Nearly two years ago, Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old paraplegic man, kicked off the World Cup in Brazil with the help of a brain-interface machine that allowed his thoughts to control a robotic exoskeleton. Audiences watching Pinto make his gentle kick, aided as he was by helpers and an elaborate rig, could be forgiven for not seeing much danger in the thrilling achievement. Yet like most powerful scientific breakthroughs, neurotechnologies that allow brains to control machines—or machines to read or control brains—inevitably bring with them the threat of weaponization and misuse, a threat that existing UN conventions designed to limit biological and chemical weapons do not yet cover and which ethical discussions of these new technologies tend to give short shrift. (It may seem like science fiction, but according to a September 2015 article in Foreign Policy, “The same brain-scanning machines meant to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease or autism could potentially read someone’s private thoughts. Computer systems attached to brain tissue that allow paralyzed patients to control robotic appendages with thought alone could also be used by a state to direct bionic soldiers or pilot aircraft. And devices designed to aid a deteriorating mind could alternatively be used to implant new memories, or to extinguish existing ones, in allies and enemies alike.”)
Despite the daunting complexity of the task, it’s time for the nations of the world to start closing these legal and ethical gaps—and taking other security precautions—if they hope to control the neuroweapons threat.
The technology on display in São Paulo, pioneered by Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University, exhibited the growing capability of neurorobotics—the study of artificial neural systems. The medical benefits for amputees and other patients are obvious, yet the power to read or manipulate human brains carries with it more nefarious possibilities as well, foreshadowing a bold new chapter in the long history of psychological warfare and opening another front in the difficult struggle against the proliferation of exceptionally dangerous weapons.
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