Neuromarketing & Mass Media Manipulation

Companies such as NeuroFocus and Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, Inc. have developed proprietary methodologies for analyzing the extent by which specific media 'impress' the human brain. These companies, amid a few others, can tell the extent by which you remember advertisements or other media. This knowledge can be used to fine tune an intended effect such as emotional engagement and/or purchase intent. NeuroFocus boasts clientele including The Weather Channel, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, CBS, Scottrade, and Microsoft.

To my knowledge, these neuromarketing tools are only being used for commercial endeavors, but the potential applications for political and/or military purposes are there, loud and clear. There is nothing stopping candidates for public office from using neuromarketing to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns - from the signage to the symbols to the speeches to the slogans. In essence, politics is, always has been, and always will be a fame game. Impressions made play a major role.

The same goes for military campaigns, such as the War on Terror. Major portions of overseas contingency operations (read stabilization and reconstruction operations) center upon convincing the current and potential opposition that fighting is not worth its weight in blood; convincing would-be problem makers that terrorism is not in their best interest - that the West is not an enemy - et cetera. From the get go, the War on Terror is a global psychological operation. Global psychological operation is a term that sums up the backbone of every modern military effort, from nuclear deterrence to counterterrorism to counterintelligence.

As political and military competition heat up, players start to look for new ways to win favor. In this vein, I expect that some derivation of 'neuromarketing' will become a standard tool for strategic communications analysis. Ultimately, the question of how to win hearts and minds is a question of how to manipulate or net effect neural connections. "If we do x, then in the brain this happens."

What are the ethical, legal, and social issues associated with using neurotechnology to manipulate public opinion in such an unprecedented fashion? Ethically, those who are in the business of crafting messages have a duty to use the most effective means available, and the cost of acquiring such capabilities will always be worth the benefit. Legally, there is nothing stopping anybody from using neurotechnologies to measure and manipulate the effectiveness of multimedia. With the intelligence and capability necessary to more or less directly control the extent by which media impresses the brain, mass communications become an exercise in deliberate social engineering - on the level of the neurons of the brain.

Political and military adversaries of the US would be wise to invest in such technologies. I am sure the Russians are already well along the way. (Those sneaky Ruskies!) Consider an Al Qaida or other terrorist organization that utilizes neuromarketing for their recruitment campaigns, or a Hugo Chavez on fame whore steroids who is hell bent on swaying favorable public opinion away from the US for his own dictatorship gain. Defense wise, is there anything you or the US writ large can do about this, aside from tuning out of media and/or turning into a human ostrich, with the old head in the sand?

Back in '98 Lt. Timothy Thomas (U.S. Army) wrote a paper called "The Mind Has No Firewall". Although this was mostly a response to reports concerning Russian psychotronic weapons technologies, the basic concept still carries weight today. The mind is a wide open system, which we have developed little to no defense for. The responses to this are to cower, complain, or play the game.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

MWSAG had a 'nice' (read 'new age'), albeit outdated message and 'interesting' (read 'Hollywood') depictions of government research into psychological operations and non-lethal weapons technologies, but it lacked any serious 'future' considerations of how such 'psyop' is increasingly becoming 'neurowarfare'.

The pseudoscience of Remote Viewing, MKULTRA, etc. was focused on two things: (1) 'enhancing' select special operations soldier performance, and (2) alternative means of interrogation. This was trial and error pseudoscience (read 'science motivated by subjective self-reports') with ad hoc and flawed research methodology, which, of course, resulted in large margins of error (read lack of ability to reproduce results on cue). One step further, the electronic warfare age non-lethal weapons thrust of the 90s looked at innovative ways to psychophysiologically affect targets (Long Range Acoustical Devices, Extremely Low Frequency Radiation, etc.).

The first iteration of the neuro stuff, which The Men Who Stare at Goats did not touch upon, is about process improvement (i.e. augmented cognition, neurotechnology for intelligence analysts).Logically and truly, the next iteration is for neuro to re-penetrate the subjective element, such as in neurotechnologies (drugs, diagnostics, and devices) for improving warfighter performance. That these technologies are a priority is evidenced by Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications (NAP, 2009). I speculate that a new iteration of how neuro- will be used to help tag, track, locate, target, (TTLT) and, ultimately, 'kill' targets. The TTLT part of it is reflected in the rise of brain-based credibility assessment methodologies (i.e. brain fingerprinting). The kill aspect could be soft kill (i.e. conversion, de-motivation) or hard kill (i.e. lethal neural agents, neurodegenerative diseases).

The national security implications due to these emerging technologies are real. For instance, radicals can utilize sophisticated 'neuromarketing' methodologies to fine tune terrorist recruiting processes [process improvement]; use neuropharmaceuticals to dope up their own 'armies' [subjective enhancement]; use mind-machine interfaces to launch soft power (i.e. manipulation of media)  campaigns; and/or develop neurodegenerative agents to kill [object-oriented]. These are easily accessible technologies, which, unlike nuclear proliferation, do not require acquisition of hard to obtain materials (i.e. refined uranium), and do not require hard to find specialists (i.e. anonymous nuclear scientists). This is an area that the DIA TWD (Defense Intelligence Agency Technology Warning Division) is very interested in, as evidenced in the book Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies (NAP, 2008).