That’s Impossible:
Mind Control Show
(History Channel, 2009)
Mind Justice Home
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Jonathan Frakes, Narrator:
Man is on a quest. To develop machines that read each other’s thoughts. There have already been key breakthroughs. But how close are we to actual mind control?
John Rennie, Editor in Chief, Scientific American:
Is it possible the hackers of the future could somehow manage to peek inside our own heads? Yes.
Frakes:
We’ll uncover a machine that could soon read the mind of a terrorist before he attacks. A man who makes a telephone call just by thinking about it. People who say their thoughts are already being hacked by an outside force.
Nick Pope, British Ministry of Defense (retired):
One possible strand of mind control would be a sort of thought theft.
Frakes:
This technology can empower the mind to do remarkable things.
Voice:
Come here, I want to see you.
Frakes:
Or reprogram us to do things against our will.
Colonel John Alexander, US Army (retired):
The barrier between science and science fiction has all but evaporated.
Frakes:
This series investigates how the impossible is becoming possible, and what it might mean in the future. Reading and controlling a person’s mind is perhaps the one power we don’t want anyone else to have. Imagine a world where you can read your boss’s thoughts, or glean the intentions of your worst enemy. Or what about controlling a person’s mind and turning them into a kind of Manchurian candidate? It’s a power ripped right from the pages of comic books. Perhaps the most famous fictional character with this remarkable
skill is Professor X, founder and leader of the X-Men. Using his power of telepathy, he can read, control and influence people’s minds at will.
Hollywood had another take on mind control. The 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate, raised the specter of a remote controlled soldier who’s brainwashed by his communist captors during the Korean War. After returning home, he’s an unwitting assassin, programmed to kill a US presidential candidate. It’s a chilling plot, and one that seems virtually impossible. Can we really take control of this mysterious wrinkled lump of jelly in our skull we call the brain?
That’s Impossible has assembled a to-do list:
- One: Crack the code on how the brain processes information.
- Two: Develop the technology to tap into, even steal, thoughts.
- Three: Perfect the means to remote control another person’s actions.
Right now, in secret and public, scientists are working on the important first step to reading the mind. But how? The brain’s complexity dwarves that of any existing computer. There are approximately 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, in the human brain. Almost as numerous as the stars in the Milky Way. Each of these cells has a negative electrical charge inside the cell, and a positive charge along the outside of the cell membrane. In essence, creating a tiny electric battery. Think of it as the brain’s
software, the world’s most sophisticated search engine.
Rennie:
Inside our heads, the nerve cells are all engaged in kind of a telephone like conversation, one speaking to the next, speaking to the next. And as the information is going through, each neuron is listening to all of its neighbors, giving rise to more and more complicated signal processing inside our brains.
Frakes:
But the first critical step to cracking the code of how the brain processes information is being able to listen in on these millions of telephone-like conversations all taking place at once. Believe it or not, as information passes through the brain, the electrical impulses between neurons can be heard. This is the actual sound of a brain neuron firing. [crackly sound] So in a way, we can literally hear thoughts. But how can we translate those sounds so we know what the person is thinking?
At Brown University, they’re working with tiny computer chips that can be implanted into the brain to transmit neuron impulses to a computer for mind reading interpretation. It’s like connecting your iPod to a computer and downloading music. Scientists can now connect your brain to a computer. Their goal is to help the mentally impaired.
John Donahue, Director, Institute for Brain Science, Brown University:
So this is the next generation sensor system.
Frakes:
Dr. John Donahue is director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University. He’s developed a remarkable piece of technology that can hardwire our brain to a computer.
Donahue:
It consists of the same electrode array, the baby aspirin-sized hundred electrode array that goes into just the surface of the brain.
Frakes:
This tiny chip monitors 100 different neurons as they fire. The firing pattern is displayed on this grid.
Donahue:
These spikes, these electrical impulses that come up, we know that’s a language of the brain, a rapid communication system for the brain.
Frakes:
What if there was a machine that could crack this code, and interpret what these spikes mean? There is. It’s called Braingate, and it was developed by Dr. Donahue.
The way it works is that the tiny chip he’s holding in his hand can be implanted in a person’s brain. The chip picks up electrical impulses with specially designed software, then interprets as the actions a person wants to perform. Essentially, the chip can lead a person’s thoughts, much like a computer can recognize a voice and interpret what it is saying.
In one of the rare times ever tested on TV, Dr. Donahue has set up an experiment to demonstrate the remarkable ability of Braingate. He places the chip on his scalp and takes a seat in front of a computer that’s been loaded with Braingate software. An arm, simulating Dr. Donahue’s arm, appears on the screen. Also appearing is a ball. The challenge? Using only his thoughts, Dr. Donahue will attempt to control the arm to reach for the ball and move it. These are real time images of the electrical impulses firing
inside Dr. Donahue’s brain as the chip listens in on his thoughts. His mind is asking the arm to move. After a few moments, the arm obeys. It slowly glides across the screen, reaches for the ball, and gently moves it.
Amazingly, Dr. Donahue has moved the arm simply by willing it. Dr. Donahue is looking to a day when the impaired will be able to play the piano without actually touching it, or type on a computer without using their hands. Embed a chip in the brain and one in the machine and it can all be done, wirelessly.
Donahue:
Our goal is someday to try to replicate all of the functions that you could ordinarily perform, like playing a piano, moving your fingers, by taking the signals from the brain and running them to the outside world or through signal processes that are in fact models of the nervous system. Of course if we do that, that means we actually understand how the nervous system works.
Frakes:
Once this technology is perfected, will reading brainwaves be as common as picking up a wireless computer connection? Will we be able to tap a person’s thoughts at will? We are on a path to creating a world where man can control machine through thoughts alone. But if we can control machine, can machine also control us? Could we all become robo-humans that are controlled by implants that scan our brains and enslave our thoughts? Is this a world we want? Because it’s coming true.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are probing the way the firing of neurons works together to create a coherent language of the brain. Understanding this mysterious language is a crucial step in not only developing machines that respond to our thoughts, but also machines that can control our mind.
The team has devised an experiment to test the mind control technology they’re developing. Which could one day allow our thoughts to control robotic limbs. It’s an experiment that takes Dr. Donahue’s research one step further. They have implanted a similar chip into the brain of a monkey. Out of its reach is a 30-pound mechanical arm, about three times the monkey’s weight. The only thing connecting the two is the implant in the monkey’s brain. The monkey will be offered food. The challenge, using only its thoughts,
can the monkey control the mechanical arm to pick up the food?
Andrew Schwartz:
So what we’re doing is we’re recording activity from the monkey’s brain. We’re taking those signals and sending them to a computer in a different room. The computer is interpreting those signals and generating commands to this robot arm to move it. And what the monkey has to do is learn to modulate its neural activity to make the robot arm move the way it wants it to move. And in this case, he wants it to move to this marshmallow that we’re putting out there. He’s operating the motion of the arm and closing the
gripper on the marshmallow and bringing it back to his head and his mouth, and he opens up the gripper to eat it.
Frakes:
In the same way that Dr. Donahue used the onscreen hand to move the small ball, the monkey shows the power of the mind to control an object at will. But perhaps just as astounding is that the monkey’s mind thinks the mechanical arm is his own.
Schwartz:
So what you see is the monkey’s licking the hand. And the reason the monkey is licking the hand is because there’s some marshmallow residue from a previous trial still on the hand. So the monkey’s deciding instead of going for the new marshmallow that he’d rather just lick the hand right there. And it’s much like a child licking his own hand if he has some piece of candy on it. And we consider this to be a sign of embodiment, where the animal’s so comfortable with the device that it might be considering it to
be part of its own body.
Frakes:
Once the line between mind and machine disappears, we can imagine future applications.
John Rennie, Editor in Chief, Scientific American:
Imagine some kind of super soldier in the future. They might be linked to other soldiers or to their headquarters in some way so that they would be almost telepathically able to follow commands. It would be fantastic if someday we can interface with machines directly so that we didn’t ah veto look at screens. We could basically surf the internet by just plugging something into the back of our heads. Is it possible that hackers of the future could somehow manage to peek inside our own heads and take the secrets
out of those? Do we need to create some kind of a mental firewall to stop other people from breaking inside our skulls?
Frakes:
The day may be approaching when you can send someone a text message just by thinking about it via a chip implanted in your brain. It turns out we may not even need the chip. One company is already developing a portable technology that can intercept your thoughts without surgical implants.
Michael Callahan, Co-Founder, Ambient Company:
The audio is a small sensor that rests on the surface of the skin above the vocal cords. And it captures the activity that’s the instruction signal that the brain sends to the vocal cords that you do normally in order to speak. But in the case of the audio, the sensor is so sensitive that it doesn’t require a person to actually speak in order to produce speech.
Frakes:
Callahan designed a sensor that can read our brain signals. How? The brain is the master control center of speech. When we communicate the brain tells the mouth what to say. So speech is essentially thoughts sent to our vocal cords via nerve signals that are then converted to words. Since the audio is designed for people who’ve lost their ability to speak, it’s worn around the neck and placed on the vocal cords where nerve endings emit signals associated with speech.
So for instance, when you think about saying “orange,” the brain sends the message to the larynx. Even though the larynx might be damaged or missing, the audio picks up that nerve pulse and a tiny computer translates that thought into the word “orange.” Nothing has to be implanted; the sensor merely has to be on the surface of the skin near the nerves. It’s a huge breakthrough.
The audio’s remarkable ability to read thoughts has far-reaching applications. For a paralysis victim, it means telling their wheelchair where to go without ever uttering a sound. Callahan’s assistant demonstrates. With a device strapped over his larynx and routed through a computer linked to the motor, he wills his wheelchair to move using just the electrical impulses from his brain.
Callahan:
The way that this application works is the audio device is on Ethan’s neck here. And it captures the activity that his brain sends to his vocal cords. When he says commands or words like “forward, backwards, stop, left or right,” and those get translated by the computer. And the computer maps those to directional commands that the wheelchair can interpret, similar to the way that a normal joystick would work, except this doesn’t require Ethan to actually physically move in order to operate it.
Frakes:
Just as amazing is that the audio can give a paralyzed person who’s been robbed of speech the power to once again talk. Rather than spelling out words letter by letter, the user thinks the phonetic sounds which make up language. To demonstrate the audio’s ability to tap into our thoughts, Callahan has set up an experiment which is so radical, it verges on the impossible. She will challenge Ethan to make a voiceless phone call and communicate by thought alone. If it’s successful, society has entered a brave new
world.
[phone call]
Callahan:
Hello?
Frakes:
Has the air force developed a top secret weapon that beams voices into your head and controls your mind?
[commercial break?]
Michael Callahan has invented a device which can eavesdrop on our thoughts. And to demonstrate its remarkable ability, he’s arranged to have his assistant make a phone call using just his mind. Phrases have been programmed into a laptop computer. Ethan’s thoughts alone will first trigger the dialing of a speed dial number, and then select from the phrases to make a phone call without using his vocal cords.
[phone rings]
Callahan:
Hello?
Ethan:
Hi, Michael, how are you?
Callahan:
I’m fine. How are you?
Ethan:
Do you remember Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call?
Callahan:
Yeah, I do.
Ethan:
Michael, come here. I want to see you.
Callahan:
Sure. This is only the beginning of some things that are capable, using this type of technology. We often get asked if the audio picks up thinking or my thoughts. And the answer is no, definitely not. You may be thinking right now about things like that you have to go to the bank later today or you’re hungry. But unless you have an actual desire to communicate those things, then there’s no activity for us to pick up.\
Frakes:
In other words, it picks up the words on the tip of your tongue, not in the back of your mind. Yet. But what if there was a machine that was able to take our thoughts against our will?
Nick Pope:
One possible strand of mind control would be a sort of thought theft, actually reading people’s minds and extracting the information. Now clearly this would be of huge interest and use to the intelligence agencies. No secret could be kept if you could read minds.
Frakes:
Science may be advancing toward this goal. One breakthrough uses an advanced form of MRI technology called a functional MRI.
Colonel John Alexander:
The MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, takes a static picture. What the functional MRI does is allow you to take those pictures continuously and watch the brain in real time as it’s functioning. This allows you to see what they call “lighting up.” What areas of the brain are activated as the individual is thinking about certain specific things.
Frakes:
We know that words and images trigger specific neural reactions. When you hear the word “cat,” areas in your brain light up as your mind connects the word with the concept of “cat.” Scientists are also investigating whether specific areas of the mind become active when the subject is consciously lying.
John Rennie:
Imagine what would happen in courts of law if every time people were giving testimony, their brains were being monitored to determine whether or not they were telling the truth.
Frakes:
Right now, scanning brain activity requires a compliant subject. You can’t very well hide the MRI machine.
Alexander:
In order to do that kind of thing, you’ve got to, what I call, put your head in the cooker. In other words, the [unclear] machine is big, huge, expensive. And people have got to be very cooperative and put them inside there.
Frakes:
But what if you could tell if a person was lying with technology that is more subtle? A report recently leaked out that the government is secretly developing just such a system as part of the ongoing war on terrorism. It’s called SSRM Tek.
Rennie:
Amazingly enough, new technologies may make it possible for the authorities to actually start to read people’s minds and look for evidence of whether they are actually planning some sort of terrorist actions. One technology that’s being developed with an eye toward doing that is called SSRM Tek. Symantec Stimuli Reaction Measurement Technology. It’s a set of techniques that was developed by a late Russian scientist named Igor Smirnoff. Even after Smirnoff died, some authorities in the West were still interested
in trying to develop SSRM Tek. Because Smirnoff promised that his techniques were better than a polygraph for being able to help identify what people’s true thoughts were. For example, whether or not they were terrorist collaborators, and whether they were planning attacks on the public.
Frakes:
How could a machine distinguish a terrorist from a vacationing traveler? By testing a subject’s involuntary response to subliminal messages. The idea is that every traveler will be tested before being cleared to board a plane. The way it works is that while waiting in the screening line, a traveler will step inside a small booth and be told to stare at a video screen. Seemingly innocent images will begin to appear. But embedded in those images are subliminal words like “Osama Bin Laden,” “World Trade Center,”
“plastic bomb,” “explosion.” The traveler will press a button in response to the words without consciously registering what he or she is looking at.
Rennie:
The idea is that the person’s unconscious does recognize and process those words, and that they will affect in a way that the subject doesn’t realize the responses he or she may then give. According to Smirnoff, this was a way for being able to identify what that person really thought.
Frakes:
The theory is that the terrorist’s response to the scrambled words will differ from the innocent person’s.
Alexander:
The technologies that are coming along are going to have huge implications in both law enforcement and military applications.
Frakes:
But theoretically, the same technology that protects us could also be used against us.
Rennie:
One scary possibility that we would have to guard against is that is it possible that hackers of the future could somehow manage to peek inside our own heads?
Frakes:
There may be reason to be concerned.
Cheryl Welsh:
I’m Cheryl Welsh. I’m a human rights activist and a mind control victim.
Frakes:
Starting in the 1960s, people started claiming they were victims of mind control. As recently as 2007, prestigious publications like the Washington Post investigated claims by a growing number of victims that the government is trying to control their minds. Cheryl is one of them. Cheryl believes she became a targeted individual, a TI, in the 1980s, when she walked into an army recruiting office to see if she qualified for college tuition money. She decided not to enlist. And that’s when she claims the strange
mind control phenomena began.
Welsh:
Basically the hearing of the voices, the manipulations of all your electrical equipment, the clicks on the phone, the reading of your thoughts, the reading your mind, seeing what you’re seeing.
Frakes:
Could Cheryl’s claims and those of other TIs be true? And if so, how would the government be controlling their minds? Many of them, including Cheryl, point to electromagnetic and microwave mind control weaponry.
Welsh:
Everybody agrees your mind is an electrochemical system. It works on electric signals, magnetic signals, and signals from the outside. They know this can mimic, disrupt or interfere with signals in the body.
Frakes:
John Alexander is a retired US Army colonel and Pentagon advisor on non-lethal weapons. His 1980 article, “The New Mental Battlefield,” published in the Army Journal Military Review, is cited by Cheryl and other TI victims as proof that the government is carrying out mind control experiments. However, he denies any government wrongdoing.
Alexander:
I’m very familiar with the conspiracy theorists on mind control, what they state. And the biggest question I’d ask is, why them?
Frakes:
Why them, indeed? Religious leaders and political leaders have been trying to enslave the minds of normal, everyday people since the dawn of man. To great success. Over the centuries, even the most rudimentary types of mind control have been used to cunning perfection by religious, fascist and cult leaders.
Jonibeth Whitney:
Essentially, mind control is the deceptive, unethical and systematic use of techniques for persuasion and control. I’m Dr. Jonibeth Whitney, a clinical psychologist in private practice, and also a cult awareness activist.
Frakes:
One of the most pervasive forms of mind control is brainwashing, also known as “thought reform,” or “reeducation.” It’s a technique most often associated with modern day cults. And perhaps the most chilling example is that of the Reverend Jim Jones, who in 1978 led more than 900 followers to commit mass suicide at his Jonestown establish in Guyana, South America.
Whitney:
How Jim Jones went from being kind of a popular preacher to this monstrous cult leader was really a journey. Certainly when people joined the group, they didn’t join a group that was going to isolate them from their former lives in a jungle and require them to kill themselves. Now that’s not what people signed up for.
Frakes:
What they signed up for was to be a member of the People’s Temple, founded in 1955 in Indianapolis, Indiana, under the pretext of helping the poor and fostering human rights.
Whitney:
So at the beginning of the indoctrination process, the people are making choices about affiliating with a group without really knowing that much about it. As they travel down that road, they become more and more invested in the group. They formed relationships with people. They’ve severed relationships with people outside of the group.
Frakes:
As his congregation grew, Reverend Jones increased the discipline and dedication required of his members. He assumed a messiah-like presence. The sermons forecasted nuclear holocaust, and an apocalyptic destruction of the world. But he promised his followers they would be saved. And many believed it. He used fear to win their loyalty and trust, a crucial ploy in gaining control of one’s mind. Jones built on that fear, demanding perfection from his followers.
Whitney:
The beauty of this from a mind control standpoint is that nobody can ever be perfect. Everybody is susceptible, then, to punishment. These are very common techniques. Really, reward and punishment. Inclusion and exclusion. Approval and disapproval.
Frakes:
Jones convinced his followers to turn over all their worldly possessions. At this point, he owned their trust and their minds. He convinced parents to relinquish custody of their kids, and destroyed the bonds between husband and wife by forcing them to engage in extramarital relationships, oftentimes with Jones himself. He not only isolated his followers from one another, but also from the outside world.
The cult moved to Guyana in 1977. And on November 18, 1978, Jones gathered his followers and handed out poison. They were so brainwashed or terrified that they carried out the largest mass suicide ever.
Whitney:
One of the things that existed at the end was this environment of total control.
Frakes:
It’s this environment of total control that makes brainwashing so terrifying. And so effective. The term “brainwashing” itself was first used in 1950 during the Korean War. Something sinister was happening to American soldiers taken prisoner during the war and held in Chinese prisons. Seventy percent of the nearly 7,000 prisoners had either confessed to committing war crimes or signed petitions calling for an end to the American war effort in Asia. Alarmed, CIA director Alan Dulles suspected the Chinese military
was using some form of mind control. And he wanted America to have superior capabilities. So in 1953, he turned to Dr. Harold Wolff, a world famous neurologist, to launch an investigation of alleged communist brainwashing techniques for the CIA. Wolff’s secret report to CIA director Dulles became the definitive US government work on brainwashing.
Rennie:
Maybe it’s not too surprising that for decades people have been fearing that government or other agencies would be trying to read or control their minds. Because, let’s face it, there have always been exactly those kinds of interests in some corners of the governments.
Frakes:
Wolff interviewed hundreds of former POWs and Chinese prison interrogators. He discovered that the communist methods rested on a few key elements: Putting a prisoner in solitary confinement; depriving them of sleep; and subjecting them to grueling interrogation sessions that would go on for days. The CIA had cracked the code of the Chinese brainwashing techniques, but kept the truth from the American public.
In 1953, CIA Director Dulles released a statement on communist brainwashing.
Quote:
We in the West are somewhat handicapped in getting all the details. There are few survivors, and we have no human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques.
But they were about to find some unwitting subjects.
Rennie:
Starting in the 1950s and running up through at least the early 1970s, the CIA was involved in a variety of different experiments in which it was trying to alter the minds of subjects without their knowing it. They used drugs. They used a variety of other sorts of behavioral modification techniques, all aimed at trying to see just what they could do to change people’s memories, whether they could cause people to forget things that had happened to them.
Frakes:
The CIA’s program in experimental mind control became known as MKULTRA.
Pope:
MK-ULTRA was a government program to see whether through various different techniques people could be made to do things which they wouldn’t normally do. MK-ULTRA, the “M” is mind, “K” is control, and “ULTRA” is breaking the code. So this is basically breaking the code of the mind, unlocking the secrets of the mind and basically controlling the mind.
Frakes:
The MK-ULTRA project was officially launched on April 13, 1953, on the order of CIA Director Alan Dulles. Early efforts focused on a newly discovered drug: lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD.
Provoked by the Chinese and Korean experiments into mind control, starting in 1953, the CIA began carrying out covert mind control experiments of its own on unwitting subjects. Drugs were at the center of many of these experiments. LSD was administered to military personnel, mentally ill patients, even members of the general public. Usually without a subject’s knowledge or consent. Eventually the testing involved a number of other drugs. At least two known deaths were known to these secret mind control experiments.
The CIA also found unknowing human guinea pigs in Canada, where they recruited and secretly funded the work of Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, a world renowned psychiatrist working at Allan Memorial Institute. From 1957 to 1964, he carried out what he called “mind depatterning experiments.”
Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, University of Virginia:
Dr. Cameron was one of a number of people who was fascinated by the idea of personality. If you could measure the elements of personality, perhaps you could, in effect, take pieces of personality, deconstruct it and kind of lay it bare, and then maybe rebuild it.
Frakes:
To test his mind control theories, Dr. Cameron used the following technique:
Subjects would be put into a deep sleep and only be awakened long enough to undergo daily electroshock therapy treatments. One hundred and fifty volts of electricity pulsing through a patient’s brain. This went on sometimes for a month.
More than 80 universities and institutions took part in the MK-ULTRA project.
Pope:
MK-ULTRA used people in the mainstream academic community. Psychiatrists who willingly signed up because they thought they were doing the best thing for their country. This was, of course, the dark days of the Cold War.
Frakes:
Rumors of these secret mind control experiments began to surface in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. the US Congress opened an investigation. In 1973, CIA director Richard Helms abruptly ordered all MK-ULTRA files sealed and destroyed, making a full investigation of this mind control program virtually impossible. But what Helms didn’t know was that some boxes of documents were stored in a warehouse and were not destroyed. They exposed that between 1940 and 1974, the Department of Defense and other national security
agencies conspired to subject thousands of Americans and Canadians to dangerous mind control experiments.
During the 35 years since these experiments ended, science has made giant leaps away from these primitive attempts at mind control, and are making science fiction science fact. Even the government has been secretly developing new mind control technology.
According to this article in the Washington Post magazine, in 1994, the Air Force Research Laboratory carried out experiments where scientists used technology to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects. How? By burying subliminal messages in microwaves and beaming them into a person’s head. It seems like a weapon torn from the pages of a comic book. The air force denies it’s working on one, but patent number 6470214, issued on October 22, 2002, says otherwise. The patent title, “Method and Device
for Implementing the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect.” Patent holder, the U.S. Air Force.
Documents surrounding the development of this secret weapon are classified. But what is known is that microwaves carry energy. When a microwave pulse is absorbed by our body, this energy is converted to heat, causing the tissue to expand slightly, and then contract when it cools. If the microwave were aimed at our head, this expansion and contraction would be heard as a clicking sound that could be encoded into words.
Pope:
With that sort of technology, you could give someone an instruction, or you could perhaps make them think they were going mad. And it quite clearly talks about the military applications of this technology.
Frakes:
Is patent number 6470214 a top secret mind control weapon? According to this passage in the patent documents, this device can beam energy waves that can be, quote, “converted to nerve signals which are sent to the brain, thereby enabling intelligible speech to be perceived by the brain.” The result? The person hears voices that aren’t there, much like the voices reportedly heard by targeted individuals. If this mind control weapon exists, could this technology be deployed on a mass scale? There’s speculation
that the government already has.
Pope:
He who controls the thoughts of the people controls the world. Historically speaking, warfare has been about territory. The future may be the battle for the mind.
Frakes:
Is that battle to control minds already being raised on a mass scale? Disturbing questions have been raised about a US government program known as HAARP.
Nick Begich, author of Angels Don’t Play this HAARP:
HAARP is the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project. It was developed initially by the navy and air force back in the 1980s, but essentially it was to modify or alter the ionosphere, a layer that begins about 30 miles above the earth’s surface.
Frakes:
HAARP is a bank of 180 antennas, each as tall as a seven-story building, erected near Gakona, Alaska. The antennas emit extremely low-frequency waves, also known as ELF waves, into the upper atmosphere, which bounce back to Earth and allegedly provide advanced data for studying weather patterns. Researchers like Nick Begich, and even some scientists, speculate HAARP is being used as a weapon against our enemies to create severe storms, hurricanes, even earthquakes, all part of a covert weather warfare program.
But HAARP has also been linked to mind control.
Pope:
There are many people who believe that systems such as HAARP, which the US government says is about researching the ionosphere and the effects that it has on communications systems. But a lot of people don’t believe that. They think that’s a cover story. And they think what this is really all about is behavior modification and mind control.
Begich:
You’d have a signal that would hit the ionosphere, begin to pulse the energy into the ionosphere, and the ionosphere, this layer, would begin to pulse back. So it changes it from a direct current to an alternating current, sending back to the earth in the ELF range, extremely low frequency range, of 1 to 20 hertz. Those same frequencies, 1 to 20 hertz, happen to correlate with predominant brain frequencies in human beings.
Frakes:
There is scientific data to back up claims that ELF waves can affect human behavior. During the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Andrija Puharich studied the impact ELF waves have on the brain. What he discovered was shocking. Dr. Puharich found that a 6.6 hertz ELF wave could cause depression. A 7.83 hertz ELF wave made a person feel good, producing an altered state. And a 10.80 hertz ELF wave could trigger riotous behavior. His findings were loudly dismissed as foolishness by US military leaders. But secretly, black ops
mind control projects using ELF waves were being discussed at the highest levels of government.
Alexander:
We can do things in our brain. We know the capability is there, the information necessary to make these big leaps in and of themselves. Can I use this negatively? Can I use this to arm people? Absolutely.
Frakes:
President Lyndon B. Johnson had on his board of science advisors geophysicist J.F. MacDonald, who wrote that by using accurately timed, artificially excited electronic strokes, quote, “One could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period.”
Begich:
If you go back to the work of Gordon J.F. MacDonald in the 1970s, you’ll find that he was talking about being able to modulate a signal in the ionosphere that would be able to return a signal that the human body would couple with, would lock onto and begin to follow in a manner that would change the emotional state of people over a large geographic area.
Frakes:
Does HAARP fulfill MacDonald’s prophecy? Has the day of mass mind control arrived?
Pope:
For those people that believe HAARP is about mind control, the implications are immense. This isn’t just about influencing the behavior of one or two individuals. If it can be done on such a scale, you could effectively control the minds of entire populations.
Frakes:
The military potential of mind control is obvious. Enemies could be intimidated or be made passive without a shot being fired. The argument is that this could always be preferable to war. But could this technology be used to create a better world? This may depend on one’s definition of “better.”
Pope:
Imagine controlling people’s behavior so that you could stop them being aggressive. There’s a sort of utopian vision, perhaps, of world peace. And on the face of it, that sounds a good thing. But if that’s not our natural behavior, I think we stop being human if we’re subjected to this. We become little more than lab rats running around a wheel.
Alexander:
The barrier between science and science fiction has all but evaporated. Technology is neutral. In the end is the application, is the intent of the user that determines whether technology is used for good or evil.
Pope:
I think the future is a place where mind control will exist. I can only hope that it will be in the hands of the right people, and that it will be regulated so tightly that it can’t be abused.
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