The West is leading the way in the research of brain chips, as demonstrated by the results achieved by Neuralink, the company founded by Elon Musk which produces neural interfaces (Brain-computer interface) with the aim of restoring a certain level of autonomy to those who suffer from various types of dysfunctions. The East, in this case Beijing, does not want to lose ground but has different objectives, namely to strengthen the cognitive abilities of the Chinese.
So, while the story of Noland Arbaugh goes around the world, China is making efforts to create neural chips at least as capable.
Arbaugh, victim of an accident that left him almost totally paralyzed, thanks to Neuralink is able to partially interact with the surrounding world. The points there are two salient ones: Neural interfaces, in the West, are designed for those with dysfunctions and, more importantly, are considered pioneering and therefore far from perfect. This leads to a certain caution that would not be felt in China.
Beijing and the empowerment of the Chinese
The alarm was raised by William Hannas, a researcher and analyst at Georgetown University (Washington DC) who, through a report published in March, denounces Beijing's intentions, determined to make use of neural interfaces outside of the doctors. Beijing's intent, simply put, would be to improve cognitive abilities of healthy subjectsas they are described in ethical guidelines of the Chinese Communist Party, themselves the subject of a study published on May 10th.
Beijing wants to use neural interfaces to modulate Chinese people's attention and memory, regulate their sleep cycles and encourage the adoption of exoskeletons. The Communist Party imposes all this, provided that strict rules are respected and only if the benefit is truly appreciable.
Simply put: the Communist Party wants neural interfaces to demonstrate power with facts enhance capabilities of man without soothing his autonomy and self-awareness.
Military objectives
The fact that Beijing refers to the possibility of creating neural interfaces applicable to healthy subjects and you specifically talk about exoskeletons makes you think of the desire for military use.
A fear that according to the teacher Margaret Kosal of the Georgia Institute of Technology is more than theoretical because, in China, the governmental structure and sociocultural rules are not entirely hostile to a military adoption of neural interfaces and this, concludes Kosal, can create problems for the national security of any country.
Combining human intellect with that of a machine can rewrite world and war balances.