1984 MIND CONTROL

Boston Globe: Defense Department funding brain-machine work

Even by Washington scandal standards, the "terrorism futures" scandal was strange and dramatic.

It started when two senators discovered an obscure military program designed to gauge the chances of various geopolitical developments, including terrorist attacks, by asking people to bet money on them. Within 48 hours -- or, more precisely, two news cycles -- the program was canceled and the man behind it, John Poindexter of Iran-contra fame, had tendered his resignation.

What most people don't know is that the Department of Defense is already funding a research program with far creepier implications.

The $24 million enterprise called Brain Machine Interfaces is developing technology that promises to directly read thoughts from a living brain -- and even instill thoughts as well.

The research, some of which is being done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is already surprisingly advanced. Monkeys in a laboratory can control the movement of a robotic arm using only their thoughts. And last year scientists in New York announced they could control the skittering motions of a rat by implanting electrodes in its brain, steering it around the lab floor as if it were a radio-controlled toy car

The terrorism futures idea, the subject of near hysterical media coverage, is rooted in well-established economic principles. The Brain Machine Interface program, which may well be next in the spotlight, could offer help to the paralyzed and is no more likely to bring about a virtual police state than technologies that already are available

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