The Peculiar Case of Nita Farahany

Author of “The Battle for Your Brain” Leaves Those Whose Brains Have Been Turned into a Battlefield Out in the Cold

This short essay is a cumulative outcome of my reading “The Battle for Your Brain” (twice!), and my private and public exchange with Nita Farahany on X (formerly known as Twitter).

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I pre-ordered Nita’s Book, and read it as soon as it became available. The beginning sounded promising. Right out of the gate, Nita brought up DARPA’s Infamous Projects:

•  Augmented Soldier Project

• “Active Authentication” Project which allows finding each person’s unique cognitive fingerprint so people can be biometrically identified, because of the uniqueness of one’s brain connectome

•  Weapons to precisely attack your brain (but only by foreign governments - how “patriotic” of you, Nita!)

So far, OK. She correctly identified that Neural Interface, or Brain-Computer Interface is the holy grail,  or“the secret sauce” of neurotechnology.

However, when talking about it, Nita is limiting neural interface to wearable products or macro-neural implants, suspiciously ignoring the current state of neuroscience, and omitting the fact that the neural interface can be achieved remotely, and neural implants evolved into their non-invasive forms (i.e. self-assembling sensors and actuators delivered by means other than direct brain implantation). 

This persisting implied message that in order to achieve a working neural interface one must be wearing some kind of device is not only outdated, but, I think, dangerous. It distracts readers from the main message of the book: to warn people that their brain activity can be accessed, decoded, and meddled with, by giving them false sense of security: unless I am wearing something on my head (a helmet, a band, etc.), or unless I gave an explicit permission to put an implant inside my skull (i.e., Neuralink), my brain activity is secure.

Further into the book, I couldn’t help but notice that Nita uses terms cognitive privacy and cognitive liberty interchangeably. Even at a quick glance these terms mean different things. Privacy means your thoughts and the rest of your brain activity are not being accessed, surveilled, and decoded. Liberty, however, means that your brain activity is not meddled with. Nita makes a big mess using these two concepts interchangeably, sometimes confusing even herself!

Finally, we get to the point in the book where she clarifies the concept of Cognitive Liberty as a bundle of rights that include:

• Freedom of thought (protecting the content of your mind, but only from government intrusion!) She makes an exception for cognitive capitalism, and makes forced arguments that sharing your brain activity voluntarily and knowing the consequences could be beneficial for both the employers and the employees (Shaking my head. Do you really want your employer to read your thoughts, unless it’s a condition of a gainful employment?)

• The next right is a right to self determination, and this is quite a messy topic that left me wanting more clarification

• And finally, the right to Mental Privacy

It is quite obvious that this conceptual framework is grossly incomplete, and leaves a glaring hole where direct intervention with brain structures and function should be residing. Where is the category for brain degradation produced by directed energy? Where is incapacitation demonstrated by the use of neuroweapons? These are actual examples of losing one’s liberty, losing freedom to perform cognitive tasks at your own volition, without external interference achieved by direct interaction with one’s brain, using non-kinetic, energy-emitting devices. Don’t you think people incapacitated by these weapons literally lose their liberty, cognitive and otherwise? But it’s missing. And I think the reason is because Nita doesn’t really allow for this possibility, otherwise it would’ve been a part of her framework.

And then Nita takes us to that historic day in 2011, when she encountered testimonies by Targeted Individuals while being a part of the Presidential Committee on Bioethics. So much can be said about that Chapter, but I will limit my comments to the following. Nita lost me as soon as she declared V2K to be a bizarre claim, while even a superfluous search would reveal that this is a term invented by US Armed Forces, and was advertised as existing technology (later removed from their website). The ability to induce sensation of human voice by sending modulated electromagnetic waves bypassing the acoustic route is well established in the published literature. There are numerous patents devoted to the subject. There are even commercial devices that accomplish just that. It is inconceivable that someone who was set to write a book titled “Battle for Your Brain” would miss that. And when it comes to claims of organized stalking, Nita demonstrates an appalling lack of curiosity about who might be behind it. No interest to look into the Fusion Centers, and the way they operate all over the country without any meaningful oversight.

Still, instead of entertaining the technological plausibility of the claims of Targeted Individuals, Nita simply declares TIs mentally ill with one sweeping conclusion based on her personal opinion that their claims sound bizzare. This is when I lost the rest of my respect for Nita’s public intellectual stance on the subject of Targeted Individuals.

And then, without skipping a beat, she reports on the advances of the CCP and their neuroweapons producing exactly the type of claims Targeted Individuals make. Then she reports on the advances DARPA made in producing mental augmentation. (As if what could produce augmentation, is not capable of producing harm.) Then, there is the saga of Havana Syndrome… Still, Nita, you would not give the claims of Targeted Individuals any credence what so ever. Case in point: when you are asked about the plight of TIs in the public forum, you tweeted out resources for mental health. Then you justified it by saying: cases that are clearly psychiatric, deserve psychiatric help. But what is so clear about it?

Enough, Nita, Enough! Your intellectual position toward the claims of Targeted Individuals is simply unsustainable.

I wonder what your mea culpa will look like.