Pentagon Researching Telepathy For Soldiers
No, really.
At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the Pentagon’s mad-science division Darpa. The agency’s budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.” That’s on top of the $4 million the Army handed out last year to the University of California to investigate the potential for computer-mediated telepathy.
Before being vocalized, speech exists as word-specific neural signals in the mind. Darpa wants to develop technology that would detect these signals of “pre-speech,” analyze them, and then transmit the statement to an intended interlocutor. Darpa plans to use EEG to read the brain waves. It’s a technique they’re also testing in a project to devise mind-reading binoculars that alert soldiers to threats faster the conscious mind can process them.
This reminds me of something the soldiers in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War science fiction series had. In that story, every soldier was equipped with a “PDA” of sorts embedded in their brains that let them do all sorts of things, including communicate with one other “telepathically.”
That bit of technological fiction is one of the reasons why I like that series from Scalzi so much. And now it turns out, as is the case with most good science fiction, it’s based on good science.
