As the Biden administration continues its “soft policy” on China, the CCP has developed neural transmission monitoring tools to enforce anti-pornography laws, The New York Post reported on June 23. This is a recent development in a series of biological innovation projects that the Chinese national media reportedly states innovates to advance Chinese military capacity.
The CCP’s state-linked research institutes are researching other neural pathways that neural transmission monitoring helmets can detect. CCP state officials, meanwhile, have offered civilians bribes to “snitch on neighbors suspected of viewing porn,” writes The Post.
The mind reading device can detect brainwaves when individuals, notably males, are watching pornography. The device alerts internet censors, which the regime calls “porn appraisers,” who will then check out the site and images. The so-called porn appraisers consist of women because the regime believes that differences between the sexes regarding pornography exist.
Xu Jianjun, chief of the electrical engineering experiment center at Beijing Jiaotong University, said in a report that the device was created for “bad information detection.”
This technology is being sent to governments around the world, according to The Atlantic.
Brain-to-Computer Tech Among Developing Security Issues
As China uses this brain-to-computer linking technology to experiment with social crackdown, similar technology is developing in the United States and across the United Nations. Ethics experts and security analysts are raising concerns over the interlinked U.S.-China innovation industry. In recent history, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists called for a treaty regulating thought-controlled weapons.
The U.S. put a long list of Chinese tech entities on watchlists in December 2021, an act that severely restricted the activities between the U.S. and Chinese entities in question, such as Tianjin University that conducts brain-computer interface (BCI) research.
Chinese Research Entities Added On Growing Watchlists
Trade delisting watchlists have grown in recent months, as security risks from Chinese-state linked brain-to-computer projects are among the issues prompting the U.S. government to crack down on U.S.- China tech trade.
In 2021, the U.S. Commerce Department’s security bureau moved to add 37 entities to the Export Administration Regulations entity list, requiring additional licenses and restrictions on export, reexport, and transfer between U.S. and foreign companies.
The list requires the entities added to it to apply for export licenses without exception. This, the Commerce Department says, is intended to help the Bureau of Industry and Security regulate violations and promote national security.
Meanwhile, Biden administration officials have been criticized for their business relationship ties to the CCP and have drawn criticism from U.S. analysts over reported risks to the U.S. from continued soft policies on China-related information security breaches. Biden’s “soft policy” on China is being called out as Chinese national data system hacks continue to grow.
(SEE MORE: Biden’s National Security Advisor Ties To CCP)
The U.S. Army says that China uses neurotechnology abroad, as well as at home, to advance its global superpower status. China poses a risk to the U.S. by weaponizing brain sciences, neurotech, drugs, and other brain-impacting mechanisms, to assume dominance in the neurotech field.
“The stage is set—the U.S. and the West must decide if and how they will compete with China in the overall [science and technology] arena!” writes the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.
BCIs Seen As Positive Developments, Set To Become Mainstream
BCIs are advertised positively on the social front, seen as means to simplify communication between human brains and computers. Scientists research its uses for reversing paralysis and unlocking potential motor function repair in brain activity during sleep.
Futurism writes that the brain-to computer chip technology could “bring brain-computer interfaces into the mainstream.” Innovations see BCI tech becoming more affordable and therefore more accessible to society. Yet as BCI’s reach the position of a mainstream debut, a growing concern over innovation ethics calls their use, and flagged abuse, into check.
Industry-Wide Ethics Lag, Say Science Critics
Brain-computer interfaces face some criticism. The Critic UK writes that the “rules” of science research ethics practices are “increasingly non-binding,” meaning that any such rules agreed to by parties are not enforceable.
This becomes critical when there is no binding agreement on weapons of artificial intelligence. In one instance, “the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons failed to reach an agreement on banning ‘killer robots.’” Neurotechnology rights organizations, such as the Neurorights Foundation, call for tighter control procedures to steer the ethics.
As organizations call for controlling measures, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OST) has fallen under watchdog scrutiny. In March, The Government Accountability Project wrote a 17-page letter to Congressional committees disclosing whistleblower complaints of “gross mismanagement” within the department.
The letter details allegations that the former OST Director Dr. Eric Lander violated protocols of his office as the first OST leader in the President’s cabinet. Lander, the founder of Broad Institute, and a leading voice of SARS-Cov-2 and CRISPR gene editing research, resigned following investigations into his OST conduct, writes The National Review.
U.S. Approaches “China Convergence”
U.S. citizens are calling for better accountability as entanglement with China, along with its arms race, charges ahead. Some U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, are moving to sponsor the Iran-China Accountability Act.
As China policy pushes forward, Western universities, advocacy groups, think tanks and other groups develop plans for “neurorights” and neurotechnology protection protocols.
