Darpa is testing implanting chips in soldiers’ brains | Hacker News Reader

Darpa is testing implanting chips in soldiers’ brains

fusion.net

70 pointsjacquesm45 comments

I'm disappointed... what an alarmist and false article. Soldiers are expensive to train, you want them to come back safe and healthy so you can send them out again. Fighting is a messy affair where you have to rely on people making good independent decisions in swiftly variable situations with limited information, and helping each other out.. a battalion of "hunter killer cyborgs" needing direction and micromanagement would be a real commander's worst nightmare. Commenters have been playing too many video games :) Most armies are volunteer, not draft... who would ever join again?

> who would ever join again?

well if it's 'join the army or starve', the choice becomes a little clearer.

>Soldiers are expensive to train, you want them to come back safe and healthy so you can send them out again.

Who is "you"? Maybe you. I didn't want to send out soldiers in the first place. I haven't supported a single conflict the US has been involved in in my lifetime, and I certainly don't think that the need to get soldiers - who have already been traumatically injured fighting bullshit wars - back in the field is a pressing one.

Even if it WAS a pressing need, are you fucking INSANE? The US military implanting chips in soldiers' brains is a fucking bonkers notion. How about we stop putting these people in harm's way for our oil wars, first of all, and start actually offering them good medical treatment and therapy when they get home? Let's solve all of these problems first, then we can talk about putting chips inside them (the answer will still be 'no').

If I was cynical, I would say that this is the perfect machevielan scheme: Send you poorest people to fight your dirty wars, then when they come back broken, use them as guinea pigs ...

I would go with:

1) Suppress the empathy response; 2) Implement a kill-switch for rogue units.

:-)

I once attended a talk by the head of DARPA at a technology conference in DC. He said, in essence, the job of DARPA is to take a serious look at things that sound crazy, but just might work.

As background he pointed out that a lot of ideas that are fundamental to our current understanding of science and technology were at one time considered crazy and impractical. Now, most ideas that we today think are crazy or impractical, are in fact crazy or impractical. But it's likely that a tiny few will be transformative. DARPA's job is to seriously test and cull for the good ideas. Once they find a good idea, they hand it off (as they did the Internet).

This can lead to some science-fiction-sounding headlines (like this one). But the truth is that DARPA has no idea if they will work. So when it comes to news coverage of DARPA, you have to bring a big grain of salt. News media love to report crazy-sounding stories, and frankly it seems like DARPA enjoys having a science-fiction reputation. That doesn't mean the programs are "real," the way we think of other government programs like the F-35 or Medicaid.

I am wondering if this can be used two ways and if the soldiers with this implant are willing to take the risks.

Assuming that a soldier has been captured by enemy forces and he has knowledge of vital information. What are the chances that using the implant they can "fry" the soldier brain to avoid giving the enemy those vital information ?

I'm more interested what are the chances of soldier going "insane" just before giving testimony to court/senate about "some things that people in the control of that chip would like to bury"? Or even having a stroke or epilepsy attack...

Clickbait title

To repair injury, not sensational super soldiers.

“Suggesting that we aim to develop ‘super soldiers’ or that our brain-related research is being conducted to ‘unlock the secrets of artificial intelligence’ is patently false,'” he said.

Of course he would deny that.

> and if the soldiers with this implant are willing to take the risks.

Would they have a choice?

This probably already exists. I don't believe they'd need to fry the brain, just explode it or titrate certain drugs.

citation needed.

Nah. We can hypothesize very conservatively based off of what we knew existed in the 1960s-- agency issued suicide pills, and remotely detonated explosive molar implants to prevent squealing (albeit with a quite short range because of technical limitations at the time).

citation still needed. Don't confuse 60s TV shows with reality.

Well, suicide pills are certainly possible. The question is whether any agencies use them. To that end I have no idea.

I do question exploding molar implants, however... that seems like something straight out of a cheesy spy movie. If those do exist I'd love to see what the idea in using them was, because that's kind of funny.

Here ya go, citation!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_pill#Examples

Good old fashioned mad science. I can dig it.

Yeah, the kind that results in more efficient mass murder, suffering, and oppression in the world. Hurray!

This is a pretty stupid assumption to make. All the of the 'weaponized brain' bullshit is coming from breathless web journalism types -- DARPA's research is into offsetting TBI, which is a real problem for many, many veterans.

If you need proof that not everything DARPA does is going to immediately commit mass murder, consider the internet you used to post your teenaged witticism.

This 'weaponized brain' bullshit arises out of a very legitimate fear of the US military, the right-wing nutcases that pull its strings, and its extensive history of unethical human experimentation. If DARPA is seriously interested in reducing TBI then perhaps they should consider conducting fewer fraudulent wars.

"the right-wing nutcases that pull its strings..."

You may want to look into the history of the military in the U.S., both right and left share in it's excesses.

Perhaps because the "left" in the US is still cloase to what would be called right (or even far-right) in other places, when it comes to anything "patriotic" (and even in religious and moral issues).

I am no fan of either party, and I consider people like Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton to be right-wingers as well, but the self-proclaimed political right does the majority of warmongering.

If you need proof that not everything DARPA does is going to immediately commit mass murder, consider the internet you used to post your teenaged witticism.

I take it you've never heard of Skynet?

You do realize 'defense department' is a euphemism for the world's most powerful military which has engaged in numerous regional conflicts in recent years, conflicts which have destroyed several countries, displaced millions and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths?

Yeah, do you need a teenage witticism to understand that or not?

>DARPA's research is into offsetting TBI, which is a real problem for many, many veterans

Because if it leads to techniques to make more efficient killing machines of the soldiers they'll pass them over? Or because they are not researching that too, all the time?

>If you need proof that not everything DARPA does is going to immediately commit mass murder, consider the internet you used to post your teenaged witticism.

That was created to facilitate a nuclear war scenario, so that the army facilities could still operate and have fault tolerant distributed communication etc. While we don't use it for that now, it's not the best example to make your point.

Besides it seems you missed the whole:

"The question that should punctuate everything DARPA does, Jacobsen suggests, is “How can this be weaponized?”"

thing, from somebody who has studied DARPA long time...

The article also somehow associated treating TBI/PTSD through this BCI with creating Super Soldiers. I am not seeing that jump. Super Soldier would imply that they are able to carry out the same tasks that a team could by themselves. We are still very, very far away from that.

I think people are mixing with this article about with their future "expectations" about DARPA

The comments on that article are crazy. How did so many nutters find it and comment on it so quickly?

Just from looking around here, it appears they found it via the link from Hacker News. :(

What if someone put these chips into some volunteer students. They later do a lot much better in school in term of test scores, homework, writing, reading, science, etc?

What if you have a mentally disable child, but help with this chip implant, he/she can do much better than normal students or can easy get high enough SAT score to get into the best colleges /grad school and cant easily match/beat the best programmers in Google/Facebook/Apple.

Would you do it?

What if with this implant, you can learn new foreign language in a few days, learn a new programming language + most complex programming patterns, concepts while you are sleeping in couple days. You can easily get the best jobs in any tech company. You can also train yourself to be the best CTO/Programmer in a few weeks and finish the Backend/FrontEnd/IOS/Android/Windows program much needed for your startup in no time at all.

Would you do it?

Assuming such chip/software exists and if you don't do it, others might have huge competitive advantage. Would you care?

Maybe AI stand for Augmented Intelligent soon?

Make no mistake, this is more than distant science fiction. Similar devices and experiments were made by Yale researcher Jose Delgado back in the 50s and 60s [1]. He also wrote a book with a rather interesting title: 'Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society'.

[1] http://io9.com/5871598/the-scientist-who-controlled-peoples-...

Wow, put soldiers in a situation where they become wounded and traumatised and then go in and say "but yeah we've got this which might help you" Learn a load about how brain neural interfaces might work. Not much of a leap to then ask "Let's weaponize it."

oh great, new fodder for the conspiracy theorists.

"Interface" by Neal Stephenson and George Jewsbury

at least I'm not the only one that thought of this book.

Did someone at DARPA take Kingsman seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Cage it was a movie first ;)