The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced their plans to create a chip that will translate human brain activity into binary code, effectively giving soldiers the ability to communicate with computers directly via their brain, according to Gizmodo. In order to develop this device, DARPA is launching their new Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program in order to make the advancements necessary for its creation.
"Today's best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem," Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager, said in a press release. "Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics."
Although it might sound crazy, this is not the first time that the United States military has dabbled in such technology; In 2013, researchers developed the first implantable brain-to-computer interface and since then, DARPA has invested ample time and money into various projects that involve implanted brain chips, according to STASHED.
In September, Fusion reported that DARPA was in the testing stages with implantable brain chips designed to repair soldiers' brain damage.
"Of the 2.5 million Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000 of them came home with traumatic brain injury," journalist Annie Jacobsen said in an interview with NPR. "DARPA initiated a series of programs to help cognitive functioning, to repair some of this damage. And those programs center around putting brain chips inside the tissue of the brain."
Although many of DARPA's programs seem to focus on the health of soldiers, there is no doubt that many of these technologies will also be used to increase battlefield performance and effectiveness, according to Tech.Mic.
