Tuesday, 13 May 2025 / Published in Media

Prof. John Donoghue

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🧠 The U.S. BRAIN Initiative:

Neural Surveillance, Circuit Mapping & a Blueprint for Mind Control

🎯 Decoded for Targeted Individuals (TIs)
📡 Presented by: Dr. John Donoghue, Kavli Group, BrainGate, DARPA Consultant

🧬 Executive Summary

The U.S. government’s BRAIN Initiative, launched in 2013 under Obama, is a federally coordinated effort to map, decode, and modulate human thought using implantable devices, real-time imaging, and AI systems.

“We need a dynamic picture of the brain.”
— Barack Obama, White House Announcement of BRAIN

💰 Budget: $4.5 billion by 2025
🎯 Goals:

Record from millions of neurons
Build a real-time simulation of brain function
Use stimulation devices to change behavior
Decode memory, emotion, intent, and perception
Test on humans and non-humans in parallel

The same technologies being promoted for treatment of neurological disorders are dual-use systems that can be weaponized for behavioral control, remote neural surveillance, and psychological disruption — making this initiative a red flag for the TI community.

🧠 1. What Is the BRAIN Initiative?

BRAIN = Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies

A national surveillance-grade neurotech effort backed by:

🧬 NIH (Medical, clinical trials)
🎯 DARPA (Military use, cognitive warfare)
🛰️ IARPA (Intelligence community, brain decoding for spycraft)
🧪 NSF (Academic tool development)
🧠 FDA (Device approvals & implant safety)
🧬 Private sector partners: Meta, Google, Allen Institute, Neuralink

🔎 Unified under a single mission: Understand and modulate the entire human brain system — electrically, chemically, and computationally.

⚙️ 2. Technical Capabilities Funded by BRAIN

Capability Area	Description	Use Threat
🧠 Cell Type Mapping	Complete identification of neuron types & genetic signatures	Personalized neural targeting
🧲 Circuit Mapping	Full brain connectome via AI-enhanced microscopy	Memory, emotion path tracing
📈 Real-Time Neuroimaging	PET, fMRI, MEG, EEG — 100x faster MRI & wearable scanners	Covert live brain readouts
📡 Closed-Loop Neural Stimulation	Detect abnormal patterns (depression, seizures) and correct them via real-time electrical pulses	Mind-state override
🧬 Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI)	Implantable tech to control computers, robots, and bodies with thought	Behavior hijacking potential
🧠 Human Subject Research	Implants in humans (ALS, Parkinson’s, etc.) as test subjects	Slippery slope to mass deployment

⚠️ The tech exists to detect intention before action — and to suppress it.

🔐 3. Intelligence Agency Involvement

One of the most alarming admissions is the role of IARPA — the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity:

🧠 Their goal:

“Decode thought and emotion, forecast intent, and optimize decision-making.”

🎯 Implications for TIs:

Advanced mind reading beyond consent
Real-time neural data capture for profiling
Integration with existing surveillance infrastructure

🧠 DARPA’s long-term goal, according to public sources:

“Bidirectional, noninvasive neural interfaces that allow soldiers to command drones or receive battlefield updates telepathically.”

TIs already report this being abused covertly. Now it’s official doctrine.

🧪 4. Human Trials & Neural Modification

🧬 Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is now mainstream:

Treats Parkinson’s by electrically resetting motor pathways
Works via a permanent implanted stimulator targeting a brain region
Described as “mysterious but effective” — no one fully understands how it works

📡 Donoghue asks:

“If it works for Parkinson’s… can we use it for memory loss, schizophrenia, or even thought modulation?”

Real-world trial examples include:

⚡ Implants that suppress seizures using electrical storms
🧠 Thought-to-text interfaces typing entire sentences without movement
🧠 AI that modulates behavior based on cognitive states (e.g., depression detection → live stimulation)

🚨 5. The Threat Matrix for TIs

Feature	Dual Use Risk
🧬 Neural decoding	Decode thoughts, beliefs, and intentions
📡 Wireless implants	Remote monitoring, telemetry hijacking
⚡ Closed-loop control	Emotion/mood modification, compliance enforcement
🕵️ Human-AI co-modulation	AI judges your neural “normality” and intervenes
🧠 Neuroplastic targeting	Long-term rewiring of behavior, trauma memory modification
🧪 Wearable brain scanners	Passive public scanning for “targets”

🛑 These are not sci-fi. They are ongoing DARPA and NIH programs.

🌐 6. Global Expansion & “Neuro Without Borders”

BRAIN is not just U.S.-based:

🌍 EU Human Brain Project is collaborating with U.S. researchers
🇨🇦 Canada & 🇦🇺 Australia are in talks to adopt similar initiatives
🧠 International sharing of research tools, AI models, and subject data
🎯 Goal: Universal neural access framework for all governments and corporations

⚠️ 7. The Real Agenda? Total Neural Access

Donoghue outlined the stages of the plan:

Phase	Focus
🧪 Phase 1 (2014–2019)	Tool development — implants, decoders, imaging
🧠 Phase 2 (2020–2025)	Behavior, memory, and circuit-level manipulation
🌐 Phase 3 (2025+)	Global data infrastructure for neural surveillance

💡 He mentions wearable PET scanners — once the size of cars, now being designed for your head.

Combined with Bluetooth-enabled implants (Neuralink, Blackrock Neurotech), you get:

“A nervous system that is always broadcasting.”

📜 8. Ethical Smokescreens

Donoghue repeats a mantra:

“We must examine ethical implications.”

But simultaneously outlines:

Military collaborations
Human & animal studies in parallel
Full-scale government funding for “system-wide control”

📌 Accountability is mentioned — but oversight is minimal
📌 Ethics boards are appointed after tools are built
📌 Informed consent is vague, especially in military or disabled populations

🔧 9. What TI Watchdogs Should Do

⚠️ Immediate Red Flags

Remote implantable devices w/ no visible scarring
Behavioral triggers linked to EM fields or strange dreams
Neural hijack symptoms (e.g. emotion overrides, looping thoughts)
Detected 2.4 GHz–5 GHz emissions near head or chest

🧰 Defense Concepts

Layered EM shielding (Faraday beanies + grounded mesh)
Interrupt jammers tuned to brain-computer interface bands
Cognitive “noise flooding” to disrupt AI pattern recognition
RF mapping sweeps using SDR + spectrum software

📎 10. References & Primary Sources

📣 Final Word: They Want Full Cognitive Access

The U.S. Brain Initiative is not just about curing disease — it’s about redefining how the human mind interacts with society, technology, and government.

It opens the door to:

🧠 Thought regulation
🧬 Predictive behavior modeling
⚡ Electrical overrides of autonomy

If we do not create defenses — biological, legal, or physical — this system will be militarized. It already is.

🛡️ Stay aware. Stay shielded.
✊ Knowledge is your first defense.

Full Transcript:

please welcome to the brain for professor John Daniel well it’s a great honor to be here it’s a great honor to share the stage with so many distinguished speakers and thank you for that invitation I do want to start just briefly by saying that I come to you as a person who was a member of an agitator group put together by the Kavli Foundation and dr. B Yong Chun that initially approached the White House about the US brain initiative and that eventually led to the brain initiative that I’m going to talk about and I was a member of the committee that put together the documentation for the NIH and to set up the goals and strategies for the NIH so I’m here representing them but I’m not an official spokesperson for the US government but they did kindly prevent provide me with many of the slides I’ll show so I thank them in advance for that so the the question to us now in 2012 was what why do we need a US brain initiative and of course as Patrick already pointed out a few minutes ago that brain disorders are a major problem with a health problem and that it’s the number one source of disability in the u.s. there’s more than a hundred million u.s. citizens affected and what’s disconcerting is the rates of these diseases disorders are increasing an annual cost of dementia alone is 200 billion dollars and of course it’s what’s really frightening with this neurodegenerative disease is that the cost could be in the order of trillion trillions of dollars in the future and that’s not only in the US but in Europe and around the world this is a major health crisis so we have a really great need to do something about treating brain disorders the basic message that with all the years of investment in in neuroscience and moving forward is that we don’t know enough about the puzzle of the brain we don’t know how the brain works we need a lot of basic material to understand it and it fits into a little mantra that I was carrying around in my head at the time that I think applies very nicely to this is rules and tools this is a cycle where the rules by which the brain works by which the brain goes wrong the disorders occur are limited not only by you know having enough people that are well funded to to think about brain – so but also by the tools that they have not only to investigate the brain but also to treat these brain disorders and this is a cycle where improvements in the tools which rely on our friends and colleagues and the physical sciences and engineering to the to create new rules which then create new demands on tools so this was driving and motivating force for thinking about the US brain initiative so in April of 2013 I was actually fortunate to be president present at the White House while President Obama said announced the brain project that this is the next great American project and specifically he announced that you know we need to give the neuroscience give the world the tools they need to paint what he called a dynamic picture of the brain which he means an understanding of how the brain is working this really led to an unprecedented activity set of activities in which federal agencies in the US there are many federal agencies working together or working on brain initiatives on the brain the NIH DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Program the National Science Foundation the FDA and what’s IRP a recent one that many of you may not have heard about that as an intelligence Advanced Research Program and these groups were assigned with coming up with with programs related to the president’s brain initiative and importantly a number of foundations also joined it in the program early on and you’re going to hear about some of those at particularly the Allen Brain Institute a little bit later on so when the when the need for a plan was really put together the the National Institutes of Health put together an advisory committee was called the Advisory Committee to the director working group and it was a collection of prominent scientists reductionist scientists clinicians of all types and it was the leadership was actually appointed Bill Newsom who is a neuroscientist very distinguished neuroscientists and Cori Bargmann and other distinguished neuroscientists both of whom were actually skeptical of the whole program and whether a top-down initiative like this made sense and it was really a brilliant move I think from the leadership part to put in people who are really originally initially very skeptical about this whole program and they became phenomenal leaders driving very important discourse helping us receive broad input from many people in the scientific community we worked for about a year and a half and basically the summer up that summarized this report which is called brain 2025 it said the first five years should be emphasizing technology development but not exclusively and the second five years of the program should emphasize Discovery Science but not exclusively and the key words of understanding the brain and I think one of the big revelations that that emerge from what I see is an air and era of molecular revolution – turning back to understanding the brain as an entire system how does it all work together and so some of the words that popped out was from this whole initiative and this whole discussion was we needed to map the circuits of the brain we needed to measure its patterns of activity and we had to know how all of these things interacted together in other words understanding the brain as a system and the tools to do that have emerged over the past years and we realized that making these tools better and making them work was a way to really get us understanding of the brain so we came up with seven priorities these are the seven priorities for the NIH brain initiative now and one was to establish a catalogue of the cell types what kinds of cells what are the basic working elements of the nervous system how are they wired together how would those wiring diagrams all working in this complex network of a brain how do we link brain and behavior how do we make understand how brains actually connect to behavior what is the theory important that we need to work from not only a an empirical framework but actually having theories that guide us and I see my movie is fading in quickly so the next area is the for reasons I don’t quite understand it it will appear and it’ll make sense what did that the next one was human neuroscience which is something that may or may not be familiar to you but it means actually not only treating humans and being able to apply things to humans but also understanding the nervous system by studying humans and there are many opportunities to study humans one of them in this movie that you’ll see here is a woman with Parkinson’s disease and she’s treated with a tiny electro that’s placed in a little target structure in her brain professor ben Abid is going to talk about this wonderful discovery pretty soon tomorrow and what’s really exciting about this this initiative visits this particular treatment is it’s a medical device a device that is changing the way the brain is working in ways that we don’t fully understand but it is a remarkable effect and if we can do this for Parkinson’s disease can we do this for other disorders dementia schizophrenia even loss of memory and so this has opened up a whole new avenue of thinking and in humans how can we treat disorders that are with stimulation that can have dramatic effects like this and one is is to learn from the human themselves the people that have these kinds of devices so also from this initiative we put forward seven principles which I think are very important to present at a forum like this where we have many people gather together and think about not only what are our initiatives but how do we go about the process and I very much like these and I’d like to just quickly review them with you one is to pursue human and animal studies in parallel that is the two spheres are very important they both have to be carried out together one is not more important than the other we learn from non-human animal models and we also learn from the human examples and they both have to work hand in hand we need interdisciplinary collaborations as Patrick and others have pointed out just recently just in this in his opening comments that working across discipline from physicists and engineers and clinicians is critical to understanding so and something is immensely complicated as the brain we need to integrate across spatial and temporal scales that is the brain works that thousandth of a second level that works at second levels it works at hours and even days and months and years and we need to be able to understand how functions work across these many levels we need to disseminate technology that means this as all of us make discoveries we need to make sure this is widely available importantly because we’re trying to influence how the human brain operates and make it well we will be influencing its function and we need to just examine its ethical implications I think very carefully and of course important to all of us who are receiving from various government governmental organizations or from private foundations or philanthropists we need to be accountable we have to say that we’ve used this money prudently to push forward the scientific boundaries so for the US brain initiative the plan was to initially invest in technology you can see in the blue line here there was a bump early on and it plateaus the Green Line is the investment in more discovery neuroscience and the red line is an investment in infrastructure you can see that grows over the years and the u.s. is planning to ramp up to about 500 million dollars a year by 2021 with the total investment by 2025 of 4.5 billion done excuse me dollars now of course there’s a reality what a committee of scientists puts forward as the need and what the US government will approve is not always in complete alignment and so this is just the match of the two and I’ll just point out the first year we received 46 million which was distributed the next year 80 million new dollars was provided even though 100 million was requested but that’s not bad and the projection for 16 is about 150 million of the 190 projected of course the US government will change over the next few years and we’re not sure about those commitments so we we obviously are using this initiative to show that we need an ongoing base of support so so far in 14 as I mentioned 46 million was distributed to went to 58 projects and over 115 100 investigators in 15 states and even three countries so already an international effort so just to give you a flavor of some of the things that have been developed or been funded already I’ll just highlight a couple of really interesting one one is just to map every cell type based on the way they express genes are they uniquely genetically identifiable look at neurotransmitters the chemicals in the brain moving around in real-time to see how the the flux of those chemicals washing around in the brain there was a funded program to develop an MRI scanner that’s a hundred more hundred times more sensitive than the current ones available and one a wearable PET scanner which is an imaging system that is now the size of a small car and could could be condense down to something you could wear on your head and we could evaluate brain chemistry and brain function another important step forward for the US was to engage all of the brain entities that are working on the brain the NIH DARPA and the FDA these organizations have traditionally not been closely in line and not certainly work together on brain activities although they’re all major funders or approvers of these kinds of activities and so there’s an important initiative now to bring all of them together they meet regularly to discuss the things like their interactions and concepts and they communicate with each other importantly the US fda is listening in a way probably that it hasn’t before and approving especially medical devices is complex and very costly endeavor the u.s. is now having an annual meeting that brings all the investigators together with federal officials and that will now as of December 15th December 2015 or will be an annual meeting the NIH and all the other agencies are now continuing their funding all of the initiatives that I discussed putting about 80 million this year as I said both in technology and the discovery science and they’ve also introduced a series of short courses for educational activities and if I’m not mistaken that although it’s more difficult for people around the world to get funding from the US government it is a possibility and those kinds of inquiries are encouraged another important step is engaging commercial partners and both small businesses and large businesses are being brought into the fold a number of big companies have shown great interest in trying to push forward this the collaborations with scientists and academia and in the government and that the NIH is and the other federal agencies are very interested in creating a worldwide collaborative effort so in the international realm the US and I asked the NIH to provide me with a quote where they are they put the quote was where it’s talking to Australia and Canada about their brain initiatives and collaboration and and others they said to me and of course I think an example that Henry Markram a talk about a bit is a neuro day without borders’ initiative which is already a collaboration between the EU and the human brain project I’m sorry on the US I should say so finally the report if you’re interested is available online at the website that you can see there’s also you can download the brain 2025 which is a long document describing everything that I’ve talked about in more detail and also a publication will come out today in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society which is a summary report from all of us in that committee describing the highlights of that initiative so with that I say thank you very much and thank you for attention