War Games: The Battle for the Brain

(Andrus Ciprian/Shutterstock)

Brain warfare is fast becoming a reality, with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leading the charge to “shape or even control the enemy’s cognitive thinking and decision-making,” according to Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, a China specialist at the Rand Corporation.

Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga argues that war is evolving from land, sea, and air into the “realm of the human mind,” with military brain science (MBS)  now looking at how to attack the brains of combatants, rendering them harmless.

MBS currently takes a variety of forms, including chemical weapons, biological agents and directed energy.

According to James Giordano, a professor at the departments of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center and chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, these weapons can disturb individual cells through to societies.

Mr. Giordano cites the Havana Syndrome, a set of unexplained medical symptoms first experienced by U.S. State Department personnel in Cuba beginning in 2016, as a likely example of a directed energy weapon.

Directed Energy Weapons use electromagnetic energy similar to items, such as microwaves, but with much higher output. The range of weapons includes high energy lasers, high power microwave weapons and millimetre wave weapons.

The U.S. government has not confirmed that any incidents involving brain injuries suffered by U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel overseas were caused by foreign powers. According to the Washington Times, incidents have been reported to have been recorded in China, Cuba, Russia, Poland, Georgia, Serbia, Vietnam, India, Colombia, France, Switzerland and Taiwan

But, MBS is also at the top of the investment list of scientists funded by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation, and recent research shows that Chinese academics are well on the way to hacking this new arena.

In an article published by researchers Hai Jin and Li-Jun Hou from Shanghai’s Changzheng Hospital’s Department of Neurosurgery and Zheng-Guo Wang from the Army Medical University in Chongqing, they argued that “injuring the brain, interfering with the brain and enhancing the brain can bring a series of fundamental changes to the concept of combat and combat methods, creating a whole new “brain war” combat style and redefining the battlefield.”

They discuss the possibilities of developing a variety of weapons to interfere with brain tissues to cause insanity or produce fear and depression through a variety of sounds and create psychological tactics to promote voluntary surrender.

Controlling Thought in War

A U.S. report by the CCP Biothreats Initiative titled “Enumerating, Targeting, and Collapsing the Chinese Communist Party’s NeuroStrike Program,” (pdf) has revealed that China has already created a new type of neuro strike weapon that causes neurological issues and impedes the way soldiers think.

China introduced a no-contact warfare strategy in the late 90s, and in 2014 their three warfare strategy was developed. This used psychological, media, and legal warfare tactics in order to manipulate popular will, control public opinion, and utilise legal battles to achieve its objectives.

An example of this was seen in the South China Sea strategy tactics, which included claiming ownership of disputed territories, using propaganda, and employing international arbitration.

China is now also looking to thrive in brain sciences stating that its goal by 2030 is to be a leader in the field. Five neuro-technological products are also being jointly researched by Cuba and China.

According to Maria C. Werlau, the co-founder and Director of the Free Society Project/Cuba Archive, a non-profit think tank Cuba has a government program focusing on mind control and neurological research that originates in the 1960s.

“Cuba’s mind-control and neuroscience programs stem from the 1960s and have been used to torture political opponents and U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam,” she said.

“ Since the 1980s, it has developed novel neurological drugs and treatments by way of experimental practices of questionable safety, marred in ethical deficits and claims of atrocities.”

The U.S. government has banned all exports and transfers to China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences as well as other entities they believe are working on brain control weapons.

China Technological Progress Unknown

However, little is known about how advanced China has become in MBS. According to a Washington Times article in 2021, three reports have shown that China’s research into brain weaponry has been underway for a number of years.

One of the reports titled “The Future of the Concept of Military Supremacy” states war has changed its focus away from destroying assets to simply rendering them unusable.

“War has started to shift from the pursuit of destroying bodies to paralysing and controlling the opponent,” the report reads.

Presently, in the rest of the world, Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are under development. BCI are computers that allow soldiers to direct devices purely by thinking about what they want them to do.

Currently, research is looking at how these tiny devices can be injected into a soldier’s blood and then guided with a magnet to specific brain regions. The soldier’s thought processes hypothetically then control weapon systems thousands of miles away.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink has already designed a BCI named the Link to assist people with disabling conditions.

Neuralink’s device has been designed to treat conditions like blindness, paralysis, and depression, according to Musk. While Neuralink released a video in 2021 showing a monkey typing on a computer telepathically, they are still a way off from having a fully developed product.