Part 2: Using the Brain as a Bioweapon — poet, teaching artist, mama

Please read Part 1

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

Albert Einstein

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Humans have long used bioweapons against each other in some form or another; willfully exposing another population to unknown pathogens. With recent advancements in bioengineering, the next bioweapons testing ground is the human brain.

In 2013, DARPA announced the “Brain Initiative.” President Obama declared in his State of the Union Address that year that the program would launch with an initial budget of 100 million dollars. This hefty price tag was described as paying for itself; President Obama said “every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned 140 to our economy….Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the space race.”

And with that a defense project was sold in the name of scientific advancement for our economy and prosperity.

Continuing in 2016, DARPA announced 65 million dollars in funding specifically to their Neural Engineering System Design, or “fully implantable devices able to connect with up to a million neurons.”

In 2019, DARPA was spending millions in researching thought-control weapons, theoretically allowing soldiers to operate drones, or armies of drones, with thought-commands. That same year, six independent research teams received federal funding for the Nonsurgical-Neurotechnology program. The government funds are specifically to be used to develop technology for a two-way channel for communication between the human brain and machines.

One such team at Rice University is looking into how to genetically altar the human brain using viruses to facilitate mind control. Led by Dr. Robinson, the team is using modified viruses to encode genetic information into cells. Basically, neurons receive signals that cause them to emit two different proteins. One protein absorbs light, allowing researchers to see, through imaging, what the subject is experiencing. This could beam sights, sounds or even intentions the person’s brain may be signaling to outside observers. The second protein hooks on to nanoparticles that are impanted in the brain, so the subject’s neurons can be magnetically stimulated to fire. For example, the nanoparticles could be used to stimulate neurons in someone’s brain to induce a vivid hallucination.

The US government initiated mind control technology with projects like Bluebird, Artichoke and MKUltra after noticing some American GIs returned from the Korean War and seemed brain-washed. Some GIs confessed to using disease warfare against North Korea, which the US denied. Perhaps most shocking at the time, some GIs had refused to come home, joining the Communist society they had been sent to suppress. After this, the CIA began experimenting using electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, polygraph tests, and toxins including chemicals and diseases, both natural and/or bioengineered. They used every drug imaginable, including forced addiction and opiate withdrawal as a means of incapacitation.

Frank Olsen was an unsuspecting Army Doctor who tragically jumped out a window after his boss Sidney Gottlieb secretly slipped him LSD. Others died like Olsen or were irreparably harmed in these experiments. Some sought a truth serum, while others were meant to discover how to drive a person certifiably insane, or erase their memory. Project Artichoke was specifically designed to see if assassins could be created through mind-control. In 1952, the scope of work for Artichoke included “can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”

Throughout these projects, the CIA experimented on prisoners and poor people that no one would believe and possibly, no one would miss.

Operation Artichoke documents that have been declassified include the idea of using viral dengue fever to incapacitate subjects. They reasoned that a virus did not always have to be lethal to be used against a population or individual like say, Castro during the Cold War days. Other ways to incapacitate a man included radiation, and the US government fed radioactive oatmeal to orphans to study the effects. Well before the 60s, before WWII and the massive genocide comitted by the Nazis, the CIA hosted Nazis at the army’s lab in Ft. Detrick, Maryland, to learn more about how to kill people with sarin gas. We will likely never know how many research subjects in the US were harmed from experiments in the name of national defense and/or public health.

One glaring issue with federal funds being funneled into independent research teams is lack of oversight by the government. But even within the US military and government agencies, there is a remarkable lack of accountability and ethics in general. Until we all agree that we cannot experiment on the most vulnerable members of society, or even on average unsuspecting citizens, we are as barbaric as the leaders and scientists of the past. Contemporary mind-control technology like Dr. Robinson’s could create a whole new realm of mind-machine capabilities. Or, it could be used to overtake a nation by controlling the minds of it’s citizens’.

Stay tuned for part 3 and 4

Just one possible use of Robinsons technology

Americans who refused to come home N Korea,

sources listed in part 4