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"Soldiers barking orders at each other is so 20th Century. That's why the U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing "thought helmets" that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone.
If this sounds insane, it would have been as recently as a few years ago. But improvements in computing power and a better understanding of how the brain works have scientists busy hunting for the distinctive neural fingerprints that flash through a brain when a person is talking to himself. The Army's initial goal is to capture those brain waves with incredibly sophisticated software that then translates the waves into audible radio messages for other troops in the field. "It'd be radio without a microphone, " says Dr. Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program. "Because soldiers are already trained to talk in clean, clear and formulaic ways, it would be a very small step to have them think that way."
Some possible concomitant hazards my friend pointed out with this system could involve gays in the military: Why? Because if one of the guys in the unit had a crush on another guy in the unit - problems could result as those brainwave messages were translated to - well I suppose everybody. Another problem would be with "complaint thoughts" in cases where soldiers' minds were read while they were wondering who the hell spent 4 million bucks on mind reading helmets and that they were idiots - couldn't the transmission of these messages jeopardize future promotions? Also "thou shalt not covet thy neigbor's wife" issues ruin unit cohesiveness. Another scenario could be with the enemy capturing a headset and reading the minds of soldiers plugged into the same network.
It is predicted that these and many other problems expected during development of this high tech wizardry should be sufficient to provide quite a gravy train for the developers.
