Elon Musk's 'Telepathy'

Do we have the right to NOT have our brains read? Or is it already too late to ask this question?

Elon Musk has promised that X will become “the most powerful brand on earth”. The last part of that plan is now in place: Neuralink.

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Yesterday on X, Elon Musk announced that a human volunteer underwent surgery to have Neuralink’s first computer chip embedded in his brain, and he was recovering well.

Neuralink’s website tells us its mission is to:

Create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.

The first part, helping those with unmet medical needs such as paralysis, sounds great. It’s the second part that worries me. Musk is like an omniscient conductor, where everyone can have an instrument but only if they play his tune. He has all the instruments at his fingertips, he has the venue, he has the baton, and he sure has a lot of eager players. All he needs is to finetune the details. With Neuralink’s latest development, he is finally able to do that.

Back in October of 2022, with my article X, I called this Musk’s CIRCLE OF 5:

X + Crypto + Neuralink + Starlink + SpaceX= CIRCLE OF 5

• X: As Musk said in October of 2022, “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app” with China’s WeChat as his model. “It’s impossible not to be intoxicated by WeChat,” he says.

  In July 2023, Musk said X will eventually offer users the “ability to conduct your entire financial world” and that it would become “the most powerful brand on earth”.

• Crypto: Just this month, X created a dedicated account for its upcoming payments feature, igniting speculation about the possible integration of cryptocurrencies. It could be Dogecoin, but it doesn’t really matter what it is.

• Neuralink: at some point in the future, everyone who wants to buy and sell, and basically participate in society, will have to submit to the brain chip.

• Starlink: Musk is setting up his own internet around the world. He want’s everyone plugged into it, from the most advanced cities to the deepest jungles, no one will be able to escape the Eye of Musk. The Starlink website describes it as “the world's first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit to deliver broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls and more.”

• SpaceX: Starlink would not be possible without a company to put satellites into orbit. This is the glue holding it all together. SpaceX is a dominating force. “The company aims to build out its 2,000-satellite-strong Starlink internet constellation to hold perhaps 30,000 spacecraft. It's ramping up an orbital space tourism program and is the sole U.S. provider for crewed missions to the International Space Station. And as Musk envisioned, SpaceX is now regularly launching and landing rockets while carrying payloads for a wide range of customers, from private companies to NASA and the United States Space Force.” Musk would not be where he is today without government contracts dating all the way back to 2015 when government subsidies helped him grow his wealth by $13.3 billion. In 2020 alone Elon Musk's SpaceX secured three military contracts and that is far from the end of it.

Of course, there are other companies doing some of these things.

For example, Jeff Bezos is giving Musk a run for his money with his Blue Origin space program. And Synchron, the BCI company that describes itself as “The brain-computer interface designed to enable people to use their thoughts to control a digital device”.

But none of them have Musk’s magical CIRCLE OF 5. None of them have all the pieces of the puzzle almost in place.

If you doubt Musk wants to chip us all and hook us up to the Vast Machine, yesterday he announced:

“The first @Neuralink product is called Telepathy.”

Musk is very upfront about his goals and yet, incredibly to me, people continue to believe he is the savior of free speech. I’ve warned repeatedly about this. That is what Musk and others like him need. Real people, not bots, to feed the insatiable appetite of the Vast Machine. He verifies that you are real with the blue check. I don’t want the blue check; however, it was given to me when I applied to write longer posts. I have asked for the blue check to be taken away, but my requests are ignored. Yes, I want my voice to be heard as a balance to all the voices expressing adoration for him and his desires to control the masses. Except, my voice is not heard. It is censored on X. I still keep writing and speaking, because that is what I can do.

Yes, of course, Musk wants free speech. He wants ALL of our speech—for free, In fact, he wants you to pay for the privilege of giving it to him.

But even that is not enough. He wants all of our thoughts.

And as I pointed out in MASTER vs MACHINE: Human DNA is the Ultimate Prize, machines need food (pure data from real humans), or they start eating themselves. If they are fed data from bots, they risk literally going MAD.

Twitter had a problem with bots. In 2022, it was claimed that nearly half of his own followers were fake.

In my essay, Digital ID and Our Obsession with "Identity" I go into why it is so important that we are proved to be “real” and not bots.

This obsession with proving identity is like a snowball rolling down a mountain, building in size and speed with no way of stopping. Every way that the government can possibly identify citizens and take their data is now being implemented, and it is still never enough. Speech recognition, iris recognition, facial recognition, DNA sequencing, hand geometry, and vascular pattern recognition, which relies on blood vessel patterns in the hands, even monitoring each person’s unique heartbeat.

Of course, once the chip is in your head, it won’t matter anymore. The Vast Machine will have direct access to everything.

It won’t just be Alexa in your kitchen, living room or bedroom. She will be inside your head.

As one person responded to Musk’s Neuralink implant news:

“Live look at Elon controlling my brain after he puts a neuralink in it” with the image below:

Musk says he would have no problem implanting the chip into his children if the need arose. He also said he intended to get one for himself. In fact, he could have one right now and no one would know.

Back in 2021, Musk showed off his brain-chipped monkey, Pager’s “telepathic” ability by playing the video game “Pong” with its mind. Do you see the long “straw” in the monkey’s mouth? As long as Pager plays the game, he is rewarded with a banana smoothie.

In a weird kind of a way, this image of Pager, sucking off a straw, is what disturbs me the most.

Pager gets immediate gratification for doing what he is told. We think we are different, but we aren’t. The overlords see us as billions of Pagers. Already, we are controlled by algorithms that tell us what products we like and don’t like, how to vote, what to eat, and on it goes. We have been conditioned to expect immediate gratification in return for clicking links. And we are willing to pay for it with our data. The next step is to pay for it with our thoughts.

Just imagine how convenient it would be to open doors with your thoughts. To communicate with your friends without having to use your mouth. You will only be able to do this if you are hooked up to the Vast Machine. In return, you will have full access to Musk’s X ap, where you can buy or sell, conduct your work, entertain yourself, make travel plans.

Just as we are very close to not being able to survive without our smart phones (many people would lose their jobs if they didn’t have one), at a certain point, we will not be able to participate in society without submitting to the brain chip.

Once the machine has direct access to your thoughts, how will you know which are your thoughts and which are the machine’s? At what point will you stop caring or even being aware of your individual identity. With the constant influence of algorithms, it’s already hard to know this. Even if you think you are in control, if you use technology and you are honest, you will admit it is very hard to know.

Data gathering from people’s brains is of great ethical concern now. Just like it is with autonomous weapons, stem cell research, CRISPR, etc. There needs to be regulations. Except, for the sake of progress, regulations always seem to be put off for later, the excuse being “we aren’t far enough along for that”.

Chile is the first country to legislate on neurotechnologies and include “brain rights” in its constitution.

“Regulations must evolve quickly,” warns Guido Girardi, senator and president of the Commission, and one of the initiators of the legislation. "There are already technologies that can directly read the brain, decipher what people are thinking and feeling, but also implant feelings that are not one’s own.”

Those involved in the legislation warn:

“If we wait for the technology to mature, we may never be able to control it,” warns Carlos Amunátegui, professor at the law school of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and one of the experts appointed by the Commission to draft the legislation.

“It would be naive to think that these advances will not translate into commercial applications,” says Pablo López-Silva, a psychologist and professor at the University of Valparaiso. “While the development of these technologies is not a problem in itself, it can cross dangerous boundaries if there is no regulation.”

Such applications, he explains, could be hacked or contain “neuro cookies” that would allow them to identify a consumer's preferences, and eventually, to implant new ones.

Oh, you mean like they are already doing? What makes anyone think once they actually get inside our heads it will be any different?

Do we have the right to not have our brains read? Or is it already too late to ask this question?