The US Military is Trying to Read Minds

Photo: Man reading code
A new DARPA research program is developing brain-computer interfaces that could control “swarms of drones, operating at the speed of thought.” What if it succeeds?

One day in 2010, while on vacation in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Ian Burkhart dived into the ocean and banged his head on a sandbar. He crushed his spinal cord and lost function from the sixth cervical nerve on down. He could still move his arms at the shoulder and elbow, but not his hands or legs. Physical therapy didn’t help much. He asked his doctors at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center if there was anything more they could do. It turned out that Wexner was hoping to conduct a study together with Battelle, a nonprofit research company, to see if they could use a Utah array to reanimate the limbs of a paralyzed person.

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Posted

Oct 18, 2019

Author

Paul Tullis

Publisher

MIT Technology Review

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