That Facebook Experiment - Do We Know What They Were REALLY Doing?: Air Force 'Containment Control' Model Looks at How Groups of Influencers Can Manipulate People

How to use social media to control people. . . like drones

Photo by Justin Morgan.

By Sean Gallagher
Facebook isn’t the only organization conducting research into how attitudes are affected by social media. The Department of Defense has invested millions of dollars over the past few years investigating social media, social networks, and how information spreads across them. While Facebook and Cornell University researchers manipulated what individuals saw in their social media streams, military-funded research—including projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program—has looked primarily into how messages from influential members of social networks propagate.

One study, funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), has gone a step further. “A less investigated problem is once you’ve identified the network, how do you manipulate it toward an end,” said Warren Dixon, a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering and director of the University of Florida’s Nonlinear Controls and Robotics research group. Dixon was the principal investigator on an Air Force Research Laboratory-funded project, which published its findings in February in a paper entitled “Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity.”

The research demonstrates that the mathematical principles used to control groups of autonomous robots can be applied to social networks in order to control human behavior. If properly calibrated, the mathematical models developed by Dixon and his fellow researchers could be used to sway the opinion of social networks toward a desired set of behaviors—perhaps in concert with some of the social media “effects” cyber-weaponry developed by the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ.

Read More

Military Working on Brain Chip to Fight Mental Illness: Is it a Sneaky Way to Develop Remote Controlled Humans?

Illustration provided by DARPA.

By DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
Work on DARPA’s Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS) program is set to begin with teams led by UC San Francisco (UCSF), and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The SUBNETS program seeks to reduce the severity of neuropsychological illness in service members and veterans by developing closed-loop therapies that incorporate recording and analysis of brain activity with near-real-time neural stimulation. The program, which will use next-generation devices inspired by current Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) technology, was launched in support of President Obama’s brain initiative.

RELATED STORY: New Venture Aims to Understand and Heal Disrupted Brain Circuitry to Treat Mental Illnesses - Seeks Permanent Cures for Anxiety Disorders, Depression, Addiction

UCSF and MGH will oversee teams of physicians, engineers, and neuroscientists who are working together to develop advanced brain interfaces, computational models of neural activity, and clinical therapies for treating networks of the brain. The teams will collaborate with commercial industry and government, including researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Medtronic, to apply a broad range of perspectives to the technological challenges involved.

SUBNETS is premised on the understanding that brain function—and dysfunction, in the case of neuropsychological illness—plays out across distributed neural systems, as opposed to being strictly relegated to distinct anatomical regions of the brain. The program also aims to take advantage of neural plasticity, a feature of the brain by which the organ’s anatomy and physiology can alter over time to support normal brain function. Plasticity runs counter to previously held ideas that the adult brain is a “finished” entity that can be statically mapped. Because of plasticity, researchers are optimistic that the brain can be trained or treated to restore normal functionality following injury or the onset of neuropsychological illness.

“The brain is very different from all other organs because of its networking and adaptability,” said Justin Sanchez, the DARPA program manager for SUBNETS. “Real-time, closed-loop neural interfaces allow us to move beyond the traditional static view of the brain and into a realm of precision therapy. This lack of understanding of how mental illness specifically manifests in the brain has limited the effectiveness of existing treatment options, but through SUBNETS we hope to change that. DARPA is looking for ways to characterize which regions come into play for different conditions—measured from brain networks down to the single neuron level—and develop therapeutic devices that can record activity, deliver targeted stimulation, and most importantly, automatically adjust therapy as the brain itself changes. The research teams we selected for SUBNETS will pursue bold approaches to reach those goals and we’re excited to get started because this research could prove to be transformative for people with mental illness.”

The UCSF team’s approach is to develop a device that focuses on regions of the brain involved in an individual’s psychiatric or neurologic disease. The device will use direct recording, stimulation, and therapeutic approaches to encourage neural plasticity, with the aim of rehabilitating the circuits that appear to be driving pathology and free an individual from psychiatric or neurologic symptoms. If successful, the approach would allow for the eventual removal of the device.

The MGH team will pursue a “trans-diagnostic” approach to assessing common components of psychiatric and neurologic diseases—traits common to many such syndromes, including increased anxiety, impaired recall, or inappropriate reactions to stimuli—through qualitative and quantitative behavioral testing combined with high-fidelity, real-time single-neuron recordings. If successful, this method will allow investigators to follow the traces of pathology from individually firing neurons, up through imaging studies of neural network behavior, and into tests that can be performed in the clinical setting. It could also lead to more targeted treatments for psychiatric disease and advance clinicians’ ability to make accurate diagnoses. The MGH team will also work with Draper Laboratories to deploy state-of-the-art advances in micro-fabrication of electronics, with the goal of generating a sophisticated, implantable device that will remain safe and effective through the lifetime of the recipient.

The SUBNETS program plan calls for research to be conducted over the next five years along a schedule of prescribed milestones, culminating in technology demonstrations and submission of devices for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“DARPA is in the business of creating not just science, but new technologies,” Sanchez said. “The neurotechnologies we will work to develop under SUBNETS could give new tools to the medical community to treat patients who don’t respond to other therapies, and new knowledge to the neuroscience community to expand the understanding of brain function. We believe this will be a foundational program.”

Reprinted with permission from DARPA

Google-Owned Robot Tops Robot Competition: Contest Included 8 Tasks - Driving, Climbing, Walking

Google robot zips around driving obstacle course.

(Screen Capture from SHAFT, Inc. video)

Google's Robot, "Shaft" Competes in DARPA'S Robotics Challenge - 8 Tasks

The U.S. Secret State and the Internet: “Dirty Secrets” and “Crypto Wars” from “Clipper Chip” and ECHELON to PRISM

Back in the 1990s, security researchers and privacy watchdogs were alarmed by government demands that hardware and software firms build “backdoors” into their products, the millions of personal computers and cell phones propelling communication flows along the now-quaint “information superhighway.”

London in 1984, as described by Novelist George Orwell. (Illustration: Anton Raath)

By Tom Burghardt

Global Research, November 10, 2013

Antifascist Calling and Global Research

Never mind that the same factory-installed kit that allowed secret state agencies to troll through private communications also served as a discrete portal for criminal gangs to loot your bank account or steal your identity.

To make matters worse, instead of the accountability promised the American people by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, successive US administrations have worked assiduously to erect an impenetrable secrecy regime backstopped by secret laws overseen by secret courts which operate on the basis of secret administrative subpoenas, latter day lettres de cachet.

But now that all their dirty secrets are popping out of Edward Snowden’s “bottomless briefcase,” we also know the “Crypto Wars” of the 1990s never ended.

Documents published by The Guardian and The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency “actively engages the US and IT industries” and has “broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.”

“Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards,” The Guardian disclosed, along with “the use of supercomputers to break encryption with ‘brute force’, and–the most closely guarded secret of all–collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.”

According to The New York Times, NSA “had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors or by surreptitiously exploiting existing security flaws, according to the documents.”

In fact, “vulnerabilities” inserted “into commercial encryption systems” would be known to NSA alone. Everyone else, including commercial customers, are referred to in the documents as “adversaries.”

The cover name for this program is Project BULLRUN. An agency classification guide asserts that “Project BULLRUN deals with NSA’s abilities to defeat the encryption used in specific network communication technologies. BULLRUN involves multiple sources, all of which are extremely sensitive. They include CNE [computer network exploitation], interdiction, industry relationships, collaboration with other IC entities, and advanced mathematical techniques.”

AMERICA'S COMING TERROR DRONES: New Generation of Drones Won't Look Like Jets & Helicopters - They'll Pass for Insects & Birds, Operate Autonomously

By Ronald Jackson
Because of past publicity received by America's drones, most believe that when drones inevitably show up in the skies of their country these drones will resemble mini-jets and mini-helicopters.  In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  Today's cutting edge drones are just as likely to resemble a roach, bird, horse, dog, or even a human. And plans are afoot to deploy these robots everywhere, including within the United States.

Bird or Machine?: From an Air Force Research Lab Video.

Let's take a look at some of the drone-spy equipment that high-tech weapons corporations are creating and intend to sell world-wide to any nation with the ability to buy. First let's look at "Micro Air Vehicles" (MAVs) brought to you by the 'Air Force Research Laboratory"

According to their own video the small size of MAVs allows them to be "hidden in plain sight." Once in place a MAV can "enter a low power surveillance mode for missions lasting days or weeks." It will harvest power from sunlight, wind or man made sources such as power lines. A swarm of MAVs will provide a 'big picture' point of view of the field of battle.

Tiny 'robot insects' will be deployed as a swarm.

Some MAVs will be used merely for visual reconnaissance, other individual MAVs will perform "direct attack missions" (a bug will land on your head and explode, or inject a deadly venom). The maker of these MAVs sound almost giddy as they brag about all of the potential military applications. These tiny but deadly drones will fly around your local park, sit on your window sill, crawl under the door into your home or place of work, or swim up threw your plumbing. And what happens if your dog or cat eats one of these by mistake?

Watch the video:

Now you are probably thinking, "That's just a video, a corporation's dream packaged and marketed with animations but representing nothing more than future hopes."  Guess again. Such technology has been under development in some form or another for decades now and the technology will be available for deployment as a weapon in the very near future. In fact, we can assume that the military has secret projects that are far ahead of what is being done publicly at universities and corporations.  Take for example the robot drones already operational and programmed to fly in formation as a "swarm" of robots capable of taking off, flying and landing in unison - a literal coordinated team of flying robots.

Watch the video:

Ghoulish geeks have even turned living insects into half-live/half-machine entities under their full control. In this case, researchers at the North Carolina State University have planted circuits into the body of a roach, claiming such half-live/half-machines could be used to "explore and map disaster sites."

Photo from the 'RoboRoach' Surgery Kit.

Really? It's pretty easy to imagine what the military will use this technology for. You can even buy a "insect surgery kit" from a company called Backyard Brains which has been selling kits for turning insects into robots and are now seeking funding for "educational materials" for their surgery kits




Watch the video:

Scientists at the Argonne Natl Lab have been developing robots that are just a half millimeter wide and composed of "micro-particles." These "micro-bots" are  small enough to climb into your ear or nose while you are sleeping; small enough to be placed on your food or in your drink; or perhaps they can be flushed into the water supply of a nuclear plant after which they can be made to perform "certain tasks" before anyone even realizes that "something is amiss." This particular research is being funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science. In this video micro-drones perform a task (picking up a glass bead) at the behest of their giant masters. What happens if (or when) humans lose control of such "drones?" Nobody, it seems, is bothering to ask.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not satisfied with robots that can pass for birds or insects, or robots that "swarm" and act in unison, or robots that can barely be seen by the human eye - scientists (Should the word "mad" be placed before the word "scientist?") are developing a wide variety of robots that are capable of "self assembling," like the Pentagon's "shape-shifting robot" that can "fold into a boat or an airplane."

These "smart pepples" will get smaller and smaller.

Such robots are made of "programmable materials" that can create any shape the scientists designate.  One such "shape shifting, self assembling" robot under developing at MIT is "self-sculpting sand" that can "selectively, intelligently" replicate objects. This technology is being called "smart sand." Imagine a "pile of sand" that suddenly turns into a tank or missile, or human-like robot. It should come as no surprise that one of the key funders of this "research project" is the US Army Research Office.

Watch the video:

Here's perhaps the most important aspect of this new generation of drones: What you have seen here represents only the tip of the iceberg.  Try to imagine the kinds of devices the US military and intelligence services don't want you to know about and you begin to get an inkling of what's in store for the future of humankind.