A BRIEF HISTORY OF MIND CONTROL

Late 1800s–early 1900s

Serbian-born scientist and inventor Nicola Tesla conducts experiments using ELF (extremely low frequency) electromagnetic waves as part of his goal to create a global wireless communications system and a limitless power supply that uses the earth’s atmosphere as a conductor. Tesla is credited as being one of the first scientists to explore how electromagnetic radiation can be used to produce altered states of consciousness in the human brain.

1945

The US Air Technical Command requests access to Tesla’s personal papers, including documentation and drawings of his ELF beam experiments, for defense-related purposes. Government officials subsequently deny ever having had possession of Tesla’s research materials.

1950s–1960s

Interest in the military applications of Tesla’s ELF research spreads to the Soviet Union. Russian scientists, who have already been experimenting with mental telepathy and other nontraditional forms of communication, accelerate their own electromagnetic brain wave tests.

1975

A US congressional committee led by Senator Frank Church publicly reveals that the CIA and the Department of Defense have conducted experiments on American and foreign subjects as part of an extensive program to influence and control human behavior through psychoactive drugs, like LSD, and other chemical, biological, and psychological methods. A year later, President Gerald Ford issues an executive order prohibiting such experiments on unwitting human subjects.

1976

On July 4, the US embassy in Moscow is bombarded by ELF waves being transmitted through the earth and air. The microwave particle beam is dubbed the “Woodpecker” signal because of the persistent tapping noise it produces on shortwave radio bands in several countries. Woodpecker is comprised of as many as five different frequencies, including the 8Hz-to-10Hz range, which according to some reports is capable of inducing a hypnotic state in humans.

1980

In an article published in Military Review, “The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock,” Lieutenant Colonel John B. Alexander of the US Army openly depicts a brave new arena of brain-targeting “psychotronics,” which he defines as “weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been tested.” Mind-altering techniques, the lieutenant-colonel contends, are “well advanced” and include manipulation of human behavior through use of psychological weapons affecting sight, sound, smell, temperature, electromagnetic energy, or sensory deprivation.

1980–1990s

The US government continues research on electromagnetic devices with both defensive and offensive capabilities, including GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, a national network of radio towers, each capable of covering a three-hundred-mile radius with very low frequency (VLF) waves that hug the ground rather than flow through the air. Critics contend that VLF waves are harmful to humans and could be used to manipulate or disable brain functions on a national scale.

1998

The Institute of Noetic Sciences launches the Global Consciousness Project, which uses a geographically distributed network of computers and random number generators to detect and measure widespread emotional responses to natural disasters, social or political upheaval, football games, and other mass events. The project’s goal is to measure and validate the possibility that large numbers of people thinking or feeling the same thing at the same time can generate a psychic wave or pulse that disrupts the function of random number generators around the planet.

2001

Work begins on the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). Jointly funded by the US Air Force, US Navy, the University of Alaska, and the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), HAARP is an ionospheric research project based near Gakona, Alaska, that uses a high-energy beam to temporarily excite a portion of the uppermost layer of the atmosphere.

2006

The Media Freedom Foundation of Sonoma State University publishes a paper on US electromagnetic weapons and human rights. The authors warn about efforts by US-funded scientists to search for better means of controlling human behavior through “the use of wireless directed electromagnetic energy under the headings of Information Warfare and Non-Lethal Weapons.” The foundation also says that the US military and intelligence agencies have at their disposal weapons that have likely already been covertly used and/or tested on humans, both here and abroad, and which could be directed at the public in the event of mass protests or disobedience.

2007

HAARP is completed and deployed. Its official purpose is to gather data on how the earth’s atmosphere reacts to solar radiation and other cosmic phenomenon. According to DARPA, HAARP is also capable of generating ELF frequencies by heating portions of the auroral electrojet, an electrical current that travels around the earth’s ionosphere. The main concern expressed by HAARP’s detractors is its ability to bounce focused ELF beams off the upper atmosphere to almost any place on Earth, potentially making it the largest and most powerful electromagnetic weapon ever built.

2009

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Company announces plans to develop an amusement park game that induces people to dance by wearing headphones connected to a galvanic vestibular stimulator (GVS), which transmits signals into the inner ear and brain. NTT scientists are considering mixing GVS signals into music in dance clubs to keep people dancing while another person remotely controls their movements with a wireless joystick. In the United States, patents are filed for devices that would use ELF and other radio waves to induce a receptive state in subjects and then expose them to images, words, and sounds that would transfer subconscious messages and emotions directly to the brain.

2013

Amol Sarva, an entrepreneur and cofounder of Virgin Mobile USA, announces his newest venture: a bio-tech start-up called Halo Neuroscience. The company plans to build and market a commercially available headset that uses electromagnetic waves, which he calls neurostimulation, to enhance human brain performance. Sarva claims that early testing has shown that neurostimulation can accelerate and improve a wide range of cognitive functions, from learning and creativity to memory and video game playing.

2013–2014

President Barack Obama seeks private and public partners for a one-hundred-million-dollar initiative to understand and map the inner workings of the human brain. Government agencies involved in the project include the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. A DARPA spokesperson says one of the agency’s priorities will be to address the needs of combat veterans who suffer from mental and physical conditions, including PTSD. Listed among the initiative’s key goals on the www.whitehouse.gov/share/brain-initiative website: “Understand how brain activity leads to perception, decision making, and ultimately action.”

2015

After raising thirteen million dollars in funding for its brain-stimulating electrode headset and mobile phone app, Thync, a Boston-based start-up, continues testing a consumer mood-altering device that uses electromagnetic signals to make the wearer feel more focused, relaxed, or energetic. Thync uses neurosignaling via electronic or ultrasonic waveforms to activate and manipulate existing neural pathways in the human mind. The company’s motto: “Shift your state of mind. Conquer more.”

2016

A company called Nervana announces plans to market mood-enhancing headphones that generate electrical signals in tandem with music to trigger feelings of happiness and euphoria in the wearer. The headphones’ music-enhanced signal stimulates the vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem to the abdomen and triggers the release of dopamine, a chemical tied to the brain’s pleasure centers and activities, including playing games, eating, and sex.

Chicago-based start-up Brain.fm releases beta of a product that uses 3-D audio technology and brain wave frequency protocols powered by a complex “Music-AI” engine to enhance beta waves in the brain and help the listener focus, relax, meditate, or sleep.

DARPA announces a new sixty-million-dollar initiative to develop an implantable neural interface the size of a small coin to allow unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth for improved communication between the human brain and digital devices, including computers, robots, and prosthetics. Among the goals of the Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program is digitally accessing up to one million neurons in a human brain and feeding auditory and visual information into the minds of US military personnel.