Now I'm Scared of Cyborgs

Summary

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Are We Doomed? – "Now I'm Scared of Cyborgs"

Host: Ben Bradford (NPR Network)
Date: July 28, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Ben Bradford embarks on an investigative (and ultimately unnerving) journey into the world of cyborgs: the blurred boundary between human and machine. Through vivid sci-fi imagery, historical roots, and interviews with experts like Dr. Laura Cabrera (Penn State) and Emily Mullen (Wired), Ben asks: how close are we to the cyborg dystopias of fiction? As he traces military ambitions, billionaire brainchip startups, and the rise of “wearable” mind tech, Ben’s initial whimsy turns to genuine unease—and he makes a compelling case that the cyborg age may be less far off (and far more mundane) than we think.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Cyborg in Sci-Fi and Reality

• [00:29] Ben introduces the classic sci-fi cyborg trope—humans rebuilt and made superhuman by technology (e.g., Darth Vader, The Six Million Dollar Man, Robocop).
• Historical Roots: The first cyborg story predates most assumptions:
  • [04:34] Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 story about a soldier rebuilt with mechanical limbs—setting the narrative template for centuries to come.
• Medical Devices Today:
  Routine tech, like pacemakers and cochlear implants, already make their users "cyborgs" in a literal sense, but Ben draws a distinction:
  • “I’m talking about what happens in all these stories where the machine doesn’t just restore what was lost, it gives something extra beyond normal human ability.” – Ben [05:00]

2. Human Biological Drive to Enhance

• [05:35] Laura Cabrera:
  • "I think it's been humans by nature like to improve themselves, right? So I think with that starting point, we have always tried to enhance ourselves."
• Evolution from herbal remedies and spiritual piercings, to 20th-century body hacks, now to electronics and implants.

3. Origins of the 'Cyborg' Term and Early DIY Movement

• [06:00–07:00] The term “cyborg” originated in the 1960s during the space race, proposing the human body be modified to survive “unfriendly” environments.
• DIY Cyborg Culture:
  Modern “biohackers” implant RFID chips or even, like filmmaker Rob Spence, a camera-eye.
  • [07:18] “This is my body, and I can do what I want with it.” — Laura Cabrera

4. Military Interest: Super Soldiers and Mind Control

• [08:00-13:00]
  • The US military, especially DARPA, has poured funding into enhancement—ranging from improved prosthetics to early brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
  • Stories like Prof. José Delgado remotely controlling a charging bull with brain implants in the '60s, and experiments with monkeys and BCIs.
  • DARPA’s ambitions: soldiers with exoskeletons, eye/ear enhancements, and neural-linked armor, as in the HALO video game universe.
  • [12:16] “That has been the push...How can you enhance soldiers to perform better, to come back home safe?” — Laura Cabrera
  • Tech barriers and logistics still loom large; sleep, ironically, remains the most useful “performance enhancer” for the military today.

5. Brain-Computer Interfaces: Science Fact

• [15:49–22:00]
  • From Matrix-style neural jacks to the Utah Array (the mainstay BCI device, like a tiny hairbrush in the brain), researchers can now let paralyzed patients play Pong or move a cursor “just by thinking about it.”
  • [17:33] “Moving technology with your mind, a thing from science fiction, was not science fiction anymore.” — Ben
  • Still rudimentary (wired, invasive), but proof-of-concept.
  • [18:10] “The implant is not reading your every thought. It's not that invasive.” — Emily Mullen
• Therapeutic Leap:
  Transformational potential for prosthetics, speech, and digital interaction for people with disabilities—but not "mind-reading" or mass superpowers...yet.

6. The Billionaire Brain Rush: Neuralink & More

• [23:00–28:00]
  • Elon Musk's Neuralink turbocharges BCI innovation, attracting rivals like Synchron (funded by the DoD), Paradromics, and Merge Labs (founded by Sam Altman of OpenAI).
  • Synchron: Minimally invasive “stentrode” implants delivered via neck vein—no craniotomy!
• Current Focus:
  All startups claim to be motivated by restoring ability for those paralyzed or locked-in—synthetic voices, robotic arms, communication with thought.
  • [25:36] “Making devices that actually create a synthetic or digital voice for people.” — Emily Mullen
• Skepticism Lurks:
  • [26:29] “We should really be questioning the motives of these companies and whether they really have the patient's best interest in mind.” — Emily
  • Institutional and regulatory worries rear up as AI becomes integrated, both as a facilitator for interpreting brain activity and potentially blurring the line between human and AI.

7. The Path to Enhancement and AI Integration

• [27:17] “AI is really the component in the past few years that is driving a lot of the innovation here.” — Emily
• Some founders state openly: the point is not just therapy, but to “merge humans with AI.”
  • [28:46] “Sam Altman and Elon Musk want us all to have an AI chatbot in our brains, basically indistinguishable from ourselves.” — Emily
• Ethical and existential anxieties intensify:
  • [29:00] “Where do I, Emily, end, and where does Emily, the AI chatbot begin?” — Emily

8. Regulatory & Societal Barriers

• [32:10]
  FDA regulations present a current barrier, as all implanted medical devices need approval.
  • [32:14] “Yeah, if you're putting something in the brain, the FDA needs to approve it.” — Emily
  • Direct neural-AI merger for the population isn’t happening soon—“Not gonna happen. At least not for several decades.” — Emily [32:45]

9. The “Sneaky” Cyborg Path: Wearables

• [34:54–39:49]

  • The simplest route to cyborg future may not involve surgery at all.
  • Everyday wearables (smart glasses, headbands, earbuds) harvest and respond to brain signals externally, building on military/academic BCI research.
  • Applications:
    • Sleep stimulation headbands, focus-monitoring headphones (e.g., Neurable), brainwave-guided music, anxiety calming, even hands-free gaming or texting.

• [38:53] “I wouldn't be surprised if technology got more sophisticated to the point where it could extract more meaningful information from the brain.” — Emily

• As mainstream tech giants invest (Apple, Microsoft), and devices get more useful, Ben warns:

  • “It becomes just a bit more essential. The AirPods come off just a little bit less...the simplest way to become cyborgs is not to seek out surgery. It's to have technology that technically we can take off, but we never do, we never want to.” — Ben [40:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ben Bradford:
  • “When I tell you the cyborgs are coming, I want to be clear about what we're talking about.” [04:33]
  • “I'm going to take you on the same short reporting journey that I went on, the one that converted me from ‘cyborgs basically won't exist’ to being ready to yell about it on the street.” [00:57]
• Laura Cabrera:
  • “There's a whole movement of do it yourself, where people, you know, think, well, this is my body, and I can do what I want with it.” [07:12]
  • “If you get a good night's sleep, your cognitive abilities are boosted. You feel more fresh.” [13:57]
• Emily Mullen:
  • “Neuralink has been pretty clear that they want to merge humans with AI. And there's a new company too, called Merge Labs. Little on the nose, right?” [28:09]
  • “‘Sam Altman and Elon Musk want us all to have an AI chatbot in our brains, basically indistinguishable from ourselves.’ I think that's a very scary proposition…Are they my own thoughts, or is the AI directing my thoughts?” [28:46–29:00]
  • “I wouldn't be surprised if technology got more sophisticated to the point where it could extract more meaningful information from the brain.” [38:53]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:29 – Episode introduction & “cyborgs are closer than you think” premise
• 04:33 – First cyborg story: Poe’s 1839 tale & the classic sci-fi cyborg arc
• 07:00 – Modern biohacking & DIY cyborg movement
• 09:00–11:00 – Military/DARPA deep-dive: super soldiers, mind-control experiments
• 13:43 – The “best performance enhancer” is still sleep
• 15:49–22:00 – Utah Array, Matrix analogies, and real clinical BCI breakthroughs
• 23:00–28:00 – Tech startups, Musk/Altman, and the brain-chip VC race
• 29:00 – The existential threat of merging minds with AI chatbots
• 32:10 – Regulatory/FDA hurdles & why mass adoption is likely decades away
• 34:54–40:01 – Rise of “wearable” brain tech, the mainstreaming of neurotech, and the slow path toward voluntary cyborg status

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Episode Tone & Flow

Ben’s tone blends curiosity, humor, self-mockery, and encroaching anxiety. The conversational style and detailed sound design carry listeners from whimsical sci-fi homage, through jaw-dropping historical and contemporary science, to a sobering look at how quickly our most intimate technologies are closing the gap between helpful gadget and merged identity. The experts’ voices swing between excitement at therapeutic possibilities and wariness at the ambitions and ethics of the companies driving this future.

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Conclusion

What began as a whimsical inquiry into cyborg fantasy ends with Ben and his guests asking: Where is the line between convenience and control? Are we already walking the path to being cyborgs—not through dramatic surgery or war, but by never putting down our increasingly adaptive, brain-sensing, AI-fueled gadgets?

Final Provocation:
“It’s scary, but still theoretical. However, there is one more, even simpler path to cyborgs. You could already be buying the technology that’ll effectively turn you into one without realizing it. No craniotomy required.” — Ben [33:54]

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Next time: a nuclear weapons deep-dive. But for now, maybe look at your earbuds and smartwatches a little differently…

Transcript

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[Ben Bradford]

I thought maybe we try a light episode, something whimsical. And I figured, cyborgs. Where are they? Across science fiction. People weld machine implants into their bodies. An astronaut crashes, but we can rebuild them. We have the technology. A black shrouded villain is more machine than man. A port in your neck throws you into an Internet world. Whoa. I naively thought, well, even in our increasingly advanced world, at least we're not seeing cyborgs here. And of course, after I investigated, that is not remotely true. From Nuanced Tales, distributed by the NPR network, this is Are we doomed? I'm Ben Bradford. If I ran up to you on the street and yelled, the cyborg dystopia of our science fiction is imminent. You might say things to me like, don't yell at me. Get out of the street. And this man is nuts. All of which would be reasonable. All of which I would have felt too, before producing this episode. But I'm going to take you on the same short reporting journey that I went on, the one that converted me from cyborgs basically won't exist to being ready to yell about it on the street. We're going to look at iconic science fiction stories and ask whether we see a way to get there from here. Our tour includes a stop at the Department of Defense.

[Laura Cabrera]

I think that has been the push, right? Like, how can you enhance soldiers?

[Ben Bradford]

We'll discuss real investment from big name technologists.

[Emily Mullen]

Elon Musk wants to put a brain chip in everybody.

[Ben Bradford]

And wildest of all, we'll explore the simplest path, the one that I think is most plausible and spookiest, where you and I never seek out that brain chip. We don't do much at all, but the technology we already have and already rely on advances. Just a tick and suddenly you and I aren't all that distinguishable from cyborgs.

[Emily Mullen]

I don't like where this is.

[Laura Cabrera]

Head.

[Ben Bradford]

Cyborg story 1. The war hero was tall and dashing, his voice sonorous, his manner charming. So why did others talk about General ABC Smith in such hushed, gossipy tones? Our nameless narrator couldn't understand. He itched to get to the bottom of it. And one day he sought out General Smith to ask him directly what was going on. He asked, entered the war hero's room. But all he found was a bundle on the ground, formless until it moved. A leg appeared and snapped on. The bundle rose and took shape as it put on another leg. Then an arm. Second teeth in front of our astonished narrator's eyes. General ABC Smith, with the help of a valet, snapped together like a Lego mystery about the gossip solved. He had been dismembered in war, but rebuilt with technology. That story is from 1839, written by famous gothic poet Edgar Allan Poe. It's often considered the first cyborg story. It is like the template for so many of our famous science fiction stories featuring cyborgs. A wounded man gets rebuilt with technology. But not just rebuilt, improved, enhanced. Darth Vader hacked up, rebuilt into a looming terror. The Six Million Dollar man, hero of the super popular 1970s television show, blown up in a crash. Rebuilt into a super spy. Robocop murdered police officer resurrected, rebuilt super cop. And this template is really important to establish. When I tell you the cyborgs are coming, I want to be clear about what we're talking about. Society already has an ever expanding collection of medical devices implanted into patients that need them, says Laura Cabrera at Penn State.

[Laura Cabrera]

All the prostheses that people have been using, you know, from like the wood leg to the more advanced ones. So I think those are ways in which we bring technology to our bodies.

[Ben Bradford]

You could argue that a pacemaker keeping a heart beating or a cochlear implant restoring hearing, make their owners cyborgs. But that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what happens in all these stories where the machine doesn't just restore what was lost, it gives something extra beyond normal human ability. Can I show you? That's where we're going. Let's Laura researches human enhancement. The philosophy and ethics in particular. And she thinks we are biologically inclined to be, at the very least, cyborg curious.

[Laura Cabrera]

I think it's been humans by nature like to improve themselves, right? So I think with that starting point, we have always tried to enhance ourselves,

[Ben Bradford]

she says, with special drinks, with rituals, with piercings designed for spiritual protection.

[Laura Cabrera]

But it was obviously much later that we have the technologies to actually make implants.

[Ben Bradford]

Let's talk about the term cyborg. It's not from science fiction, it's from the space race. Medical researchers in New York in 1960 proposed instead of trying to keep the squishy, needy human body Alive in the unfriendly vacuum of space, using some kind of pressurized suit, modify the body.

[Laura Cabrera]

They coined this term think, thinking about humans that will be enhanced to be able to go to extraterrestrial missions. It was this idea of, we're going to be in an environment that humans will not be able to survive by themselves. Right. We will need technologies to be able to survive.

[Ben Bradford]

A variety of implanted pumps could change the poor astronaut's body temperature, absorb radiation, and ease the no doubt stressed mind. The human would become a cybernetic organism. Cyborg. This idea was not dismissed as lunacy. The proposal went around the country, appeared in dozens of newspapers, and the word obviously stayed in our lexicon.

[Laura Cabrera]

It was really with them that then the concept really started to be used as, you know, the technologically enhanced being. And really thinking more about enhancement, not

[Ben Bradford]

just restoration, because maybe our species wants to do this. Some people already are on their own. It's a hobby.

[Laura Cabrera]

Yeah, There's a whole movement of do it yourself, where people, you know, think, well, this is my body, and I can do what I want with it.

[Ben Bradford]

A Toronto filmmaker replaced a damaged and surgically removed eyeball with a camera that streams what he sees to a computer. A colorblind British artist stuck a permanent antenna into his skull. It vibrates as it detects colors, including those beyond the human vision spectrum. Laura says the most common enhancement is people insert little radio chips into their fingertips or arms.

[Laura Cabrera]

They use it to be able to access, transport, to open doors, you know, to do things like that. Because for them, it's fun, right?

[Ben Bradford]

You can buy a kit online to do this yourself for, like 50 bucks. Still, I agree, it's a far cry from General ABC Smith, but it shows a will. And where there's a will, there's a way. And you know who seems really interested in cyborgs with a lot more than 50 bucks to make it happen. The Pentagon Cyborg story two on a spaceship. One soldier towers over the others in green metal armor. It looks impossibly heavy, but he moves in it like it's part of his body. It basically is. A neural interface installed directly into his brain allows him to move that armor. With the same careless thought, you or I move an arm. The ship slams onto a hostile planet. The doors open. He charges into a horde of aliens, guns blazing. So that's the main character in the iconic video game Halo. A military super soldier cyborg. Can we get there like apparently the rest of us? The military has long been cyborg curious.

[Laura Cabrera]

The military has always invest a Lot of money in technologies. And some of this have been like, how can we enhance soldiers to be able to do things that otherwise they couldn't do with their own biology?

[Ben Bradford]

Go Back to the 1960s, the word cyborg was still shiny and new. And in Cordova, Spain, a stomping bull snorted and charged at a Manitoba. And then a man in a sweater and tie strolled into the middle of this bullfight, pointed a remote control at the angry bull, and the bull stopped, just stopped. Yale professor Jose Delgado was flamboyantly demonstrating his research into mind control. Not magic, not some deep emotional connection between man and bull, but literally what happens if you zap electricity into a specific section of a brain. That was Delgado's jam, driving a little electric buzzer through the skull of various animals and psychiatric patients to see what it'd do. Prominently among the funders of his research, the Navy, the Air Force. Only a few years later, a UCLA researcher hooked electrodes to monkeys to see if a computer could read their brains. That matters, because if you want Halo armor or any advanced cyborg body, the hardware has to respond to thought. It's called a brain computer interface, or bci. But it was tough. The monkeys kept getting distracted. Still, you know who was intrigued by these studies? The Pentagon's famous research agency, darpa. DARPA poured money into brain computer interface research because the military wants cyborgs. Here's Wired reporter Emily Mullen, who you'll hear more from in a bit.

[Emily Mullen]

DARPA was very interested in developing brain computer interfaces for the treatment of ptsd. But also, as you might imagine, they had an interest in fighter pilots using BCIs to fly planes with their brains.

[Ben Bradford]

DARPA created a whole cybernetics technology division. In the years since, it's invested, off and on hundreds of millions of dollars into all kinds of programs. That includes better prosthetics for wounded veterans, but also the seeds of potential soldier enhancement. How to improve vision, memory, training, sharpshooting. And it has funded research into a neural implant that could pair with with battery powered exoskeletons, which do exist.

[Laura Cabrera]

Soldiers use exoskeletons to be able to carry heavy equipment, to be able to walk farther distance, to be able to jump higher.

[Ben Bradford]

Because the military is obsessed with having cyborgs. If you still don't believe me. In 2019, the army released a report unsubtly titled Cyborg Soldier 2050. It floated eye implants for pilots, adjusting the hearing of floating frontline troops and more. That Halo Super Soldier has to seem at least a little less video game science fiction.

[Laura Cabrera]

I think that has been the push.

[Emily Mullen]

Right.

[Laura Cabrera]

Like, how can you enhance soldiers to perform better, to come back home safe?

[Ben Bradford]

Still, despite the interest and the investment and the reports, Laura doesn't see this happening in the immediate future. For one, the technology is not there yet. We'll talk about that. For another, she says enhancement is a logistics nightmare.

[Laura Cabrera]

I think people have this idea that technology is going to work perfectly. But I always remind, at least my students when I'm teaching about this that how many times you are on your computer and get stuck, it just crashes. Right? Crashes. So imagine that happens with your implant. Right?

[Ben Bradford]

Yeah. What's the protocol when an implant crashes? What do the health benefits look like for your cyborg soldier? What happens when they're discharged? We don't let fighter pilots leave with their airplanes.

[Laura Cabrera]

What happens to them if they are asked to stop using them? I mean, once you give someone an ability like that, that can be very disoriented for someone to have to give it up.

[Ben Bradford]

Laura says removing implants may also be risky.

[Laura Cabrera]

If you leave them for, you know, several years in there, there's a lot of tissue that gets formed around. Is it safer to just leave them in there and just disconnect them so they're not bringing any enhanced capacities?

[Ben Bradford]

There's just a lot of questions, a lot of room for lawsuits. In the meantime, Laura and others suggest there's a cheaper, simpler performance enhancer the military can invest in before trying to create the Halo guy.

[Laura Cabrera]

Actually, in a talk that I gave with a couple of military people, we're talking about what is the best enhancer. And we end up with agreeing that sleep was one of the best ones.

[Ben Bradford]

Just let the soldiers get some rest.

[Laura Cabrera]

Like, if you get a good night's sleep, your cognitive abilities are boosted. You feel more fresh.

[Ben Bradford]

If eight hours of shut eye can outperform a machine implant, I think it's fair to say we are not currently near cyborg super soldiers, no matter how much the military wants them, and it seems to really want them. Still, military investment has a way of jumpstarting industries. And money flowed into academia, into medicine, into a new industry and a new device.

[Emily Mullen]

Think of like an electrical plug into your brain.

[Workday Announcer]

This message comes from Workday, the Enterprise AI platform with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you the ability to get work done, right. It's a new workday, Waylon.

[Ben Bradford]

It seems like everything is being called a recession indicator these days.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah, like the box of Hamburger Helper

[Ben Bradford]

in my pantry or the new Apple

[Emily Mullen]

Neo book or the resurgence of press on nails or lipstick or no lipstick. I've lost track. There is only one way to know if these are actual economic warning signs, though.

[Ben Bradford]

Listen to the indicator from Planet Money

[Emily Mullen]

on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bradford]

This week on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. We talked to Tyler James Williams, star of Abbott elementary, about the special connection he has with real teachers. If there's teacher within 100 yards of me, I'm gonna know. I'm gonna know. They're either going to tell me or I'll see it in their eyes. Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our games. Listen to the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Cyborg story number three. Black trench coat, black sunglasses, a peak. Keanu can manipulate the world with his mind.

[Laura Cabrera]

Whoa.

[Ben Bradford]

Because it's all a cyber world. His brain wired directly into it by a giant needle thrumming through the back of his skull. He disconnects from the virtual reality. The needle retracts with a thunk. He gasps awake. Obviously the matrix and this one, at least parts of it are already here. I told you. The military had funded research into brain implants, but not what that spawned. Starting in the 90s and 2000s, there

[Emily Mullen]

was a chip called the Utah Array, which was sort of the mainstay of the brain computer interface field up until very recently.

[Ben Bradford]

This is Emily Mullen, staff writer for Wired. She covers biotechnology. And if I'm going to scare you about an impending cyborg dystopia, it's really Emily's fault. She's written a lot about the technology that can make it happen.

[Emily Mullen]

I'm sorry.

[Ben Bradford]

Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

[Emily Mullen]

I became obsessed with this topic and had been obsessed for about 10 years almost.

[Ben Bradford]

Emily says the Utah Array was the brain computer interface that really showed this kind of technology could work. The device reads specific neurons firing at a brain. It's a little body horror, this very

[Emily Mullen]

rigid thing that sticks into the brain like a little hairbrush, almost.

[Ben Bradford]

A teeny tiny hairbrush, smaller than a pencil eraser.

[Emily Mullen]

You know, this hard piece of silicon that goes into the brain. You can get some scarring around the implant site.

[Ben Bradford]

Gross. But what it could do was startling. It showed that moving technology with your mind, a thing from science fiction, was not science fiction anymore.

[Emily Mullen]

So there were these series of sort of one off experience experiments in which they had people do very basic tasks like move a computer cursor or move a robotic arm with Just their thoughts, just by thinking about it.

[Ben Bradford]

The first clinical trial came in 2004. A 25 year old with paralysis played Pong on a computer using only his thoughts. Now Emily demands I be clear. The Utah Array, these experiments, the ones that spawned and the things I'm worried about turning us into cyborgs, are not actually reading minds.

[Emily Mullen]

The implant is not reading your every thought. It's not that invasive.

[Ben Bradford]

Yeah. How does it work?

[Emily Mullen]

The researchers have the participant think about doing a specific type of movement. So the person might have to think about tapping their foot, for instance, or making a fist with their right hand. And that is the signal that the brain implant is picking up on.

[Ben Bradford]

The computer can convert that specific intention. Make a fist, raise an arm, to instead move a mouse.

[Emily Mullen]

And in people who are paralyzed, their muscles might not work anymore to. To actually be able to carry out that action. But that action originates in the brain, and their brain is still firing just fine.

[Ben Bradford]

The therapeutic possibilities are incredible. It shows a path for someone who's lost a limb to one day raise a prosthetic arm with the same thought you used to raise yours. Someone locked into their body, can't move due to illness or injury, can use their mind to navigate the Internet.

[Emily Mullen]

This takes a bit of training. You know, it can take days or even weeks in a lab at this point in time.

[Ben Bradford]

And who's getting trained? Is it the person getting trained or the machine getting trained? Or both?

[Emily Mullen]

Kind of both, yeah. Because the participants have to be able to concentrate in order to think about doing this motion.

[Ben Bradford]

However limited Utah Arrays and the research from them was a breakthrough. Science fiction become reality. A mind can directly operate software. But I admit when I said some of what's in the Matrix is here, I cheated because that was more about what these Utah Arrays limitations were than their possibilities.

[Emily Mullen]

The participants had to have this metal pedestal on top of their head that connected to the implant that was actually in the brain. And they were tethered to a computer via a wire. So you couldn't exactly be mobile with this thing.

[Ben Bradford]

Like I am imagining the Matrix.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Bradford]

I mean, I understand it probably wasn't as elegant even as that, but I'm imagining the person in the chair with like the cord, like going into their head and that's where they are.

[Emily Mullen]

Right. I mean, think of like an electrical plug into your brain. See, that's what these early setups look like.

[Ben Bradford]

It was a lot of hardware and a lot of infrastructure. It was a major commitment from the people who volunteered to be tested on.

[Emily Mullen]

Participants would go through Invasive brain surgery. You have to get a craniotomy, which means getting a hole drilled into your head to install one of these things. And then you would go to the research lab on certain days of the week, and you might be there for a couple of hours and get to do these amazing things with your mind in the research lab, but then go home to your regular life.

[Ben Bradford]

It was a breakthrough. Not a product, not a consumer device, not the thing poised to usher in our cyborg age. To get there, you need something smaller, wireless, portable, easier to implant, offering way more function. In the last decade, an industry has developed to produce just that much, and investment are pouring in. Testing has gone from animals to a handful of people to dozens of test subjects with brain implants that are smaller, permanent, and portable. On one hand, it's exciting for freedom and function it could restore to people with disabilities. But on the other, a disconcerting question lies underneath all that promise. But like, what do these companies want?

[Emily Mullen]

Oh, that's a spicy question.

[Ben Bradford]

Cyborg story number four. The city is neon lights and broken pavement, luxury skyscrapers and crime ridden streets. A young man at a seedy bar longs to repair the neural interface that once let him soar in a metaverse. A woman with blades under her fingernails approaches with an offer of surgery to fix this tech. That is Neuromancer, a 1984 novel that laid out conventions for a whole genre of cyberpunk. It's a world of body horror implants, where people visit chop shops for any augmentation you can think of, any of the ones we've discussed. A few ultra powerful technologists rule this grim world. Can we get there? Like so much of the 21st century, our story picks up with Elon Musk. In 2016, the technologist announced yet another new company. In addition to electric cars and solar panels and batteries and rockets and tunnels. But before X or Doge, he would be in the business of brains. Wired reporter Emily Mullin says Musk's new company was Neuralink.

[Emily Mullen]

Neuralink was what set off this industry. Before that, this research was mainly confined to academia.

[Ben Bradford]

Neuralink had its own equivalent to the Utah Array, a computer chip that could plug into the mind this sort of

[Emily Mullen]

coin sized device that sits in the skull. So you still have to remove a little bit of the skull. And then it's got these electrical wire threads, these really thin, flexible threads that stick into the brain tissue.

[Ben Bradford]

Neuralink's launch was the starting gun for a new industry. A slew of companies raced into the brain chip field.

[Emily Mullen]

Paradromics Their device is also this hard little chip, but it's got way more channel counts and way more electrodes on it.

[Ben Bradford]

There's precision.

[Emily Mullen]

Neuro neuroscience slips into a sort of slit in the skull, and it rests on the outside of the brain, on the surface of the brain.

[Ben Bradford]

The company Emily says that's most advanced is called Synchron. Initial funding from the Department of Defense because, you know, the military really wants cyborgs.

[Emily Mullen]

Their devices like a heart stent, a little wire mesh tube, very flexible, about the size of a matchstick.

[Ben Bradford]

So it's very small and no craniotomy required.

[Emily Mullen]

It actually is threaded up through the jugular vein at the base of the neck in this minimally invasive procedure.

[Laura Cabrera]

Okay.

[Emily Mullen]

And if you can imagine a catheter pushing it through the vein until it gets up against the brain.

[Ben Bradford]

Now, I'm having fun teasing a cyberpunk neuromancer future. But all these companies right now are focused on something amazing and I think almost inarguably praiseworthy.

[Emily Mullen]

These companies are all starting off with trying to restore communication for people who are paralyzed, severely paralyzed. To give people the ability to communicate again via electronic devices. Computers, laptops, phones, or even restoring voices

[Ben Bradford]

to people who've lost theirs.

[Emily Mullen]

Making devices that actually create a synthetic or digital voice for people.

[Ben Bradford]

It's incredible and hopeful. The stories are heartwarming. Neuralink put out a video of one of its participants. A man who's quadriplegic sits next to a robot arm. It's like a miniature version of one you'd see assembling a car in a factory. He's controlling it. It's holding a drink, but also he's waving that arm with the cup in it as he talks. A movement most of us don't even think about, but long denied to him. It was incredible to be able to just gesture with an arm again. Emily says that reaction is not unusual. I mean, it sounds like actually kind of like a very joyful thing.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah. The participants I've spoken to are just really, really excited to be involved in the research.

[Ben Bradford]

And yet Emily has qualms.

[Emily Mullen]

I see the good. I see the potential for helping people with severe physical disabilities. I think it's wonderful. But I think that we should really be questioning the motives of these companies and whether they really have the patient's best interest in mind.

[Ben Bradford]

What do these companies want? Why have they entered this field? Are they content as medical device manufacturers, or are they in it for something else? Once these clinical trials end, what is the ultimate plan for the these implants? Emily says the new wild card here is AI.

[Emily Mullen]

AI is really the component in the past few years that is driving a lot of the innovation here.

[Ben Bradford]

AI can process lots of data quickly, lots of inputs, such as neurons firing in the brain. So it has the potential to speed up and expand what brain implants can do.

[Emily Mullen]

We need these sophisticated outcomes algorithms in order to decode what they're extracting.

[Ben Bradford]

If we're going to get next gen prosthetics that can fully replace a missing limb or a matrix like Metaverse that someone trapped in their body can fully escape to, AI might be the path. It offers huge potential. But Emily says that is not the main goal for at least a couple of these companies. They have said so in public statements and press releases. They want enhancement. A very specific one.

[Emily Mullen]

Neuralink has been pretty clear that they want to merge humans with AI. And there's a new company too, called Merge Labs. Little on the nose, right?

[Ben Bradford]

Merge Labs is the braintech company of Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. OpenAI dropped a quarter million dollars of investment into it earlier this year. Serious money. And so, just to restate that company, Merge Labs, and Elon Musk's company, neuralink, braintech Ventures from two of our wealthiest, most prominent technologists, Emily says, are very clearly working toward this.

[Emily Mullen]

Sam Altman and Elon Musk want us all to have an AI chatbot in our brains, basically indistinguishable from ourselves.

[Ben Bradford]

A cyborg future straight out of science fiction.

[Emily Mullen]

I think that's a very scary proposition because it introduces. Introduces this idea of like, where do I, Emily, end, and where does Emily, the AI chatbot begin? And where are my thoughts arising from? Are they my own thoughts, or is the AI directing my thoughts? So I. I think that's really scary.

[Ben Bradford]

Anyway, look, I don't know what to say. The sentence Emily just said, AI chatbot

[Emily Mullen]

in our brains, basically indistinguishable from ourselves.

[Ben Bradford]

That is a cyborg. And it feels to me like that sentence belongs nestled in one of our dystopian science fiction movies, and not even one set in a near future, in a far future. I am speechless at the idea. We have companies right now with hundreds of millions of dollars in investment that are reading brains and implanting technology into them and making great strides. And they are stating, this is why they're doing it. Maybe I do need an AI buddy in here because my brain struggles to form a coherent response. Altman, by the way, has written that the best way for humans to avoid being doomed by AI is Destroyed by a superintelligence which he has a whole company trying to build, is if humans instead learn to merge with it. But right now, at this moment, Emily worries most. Not for you and me, but for the patients participating in these clinical trials. They're being offered such hope by what brain chips can do. But could they soon face a dilemma?

[Emily Mullen]

These devices are meant to restore autonomy and independence for people who have lost it. And all of these companies are integrating AI to some degree in their devices, using chatbots or what have you. And I think we have to be concerned about the initial users of these devices. And are these devices going to be carrying out the user's intentions?

[Ben Bradford]

Okay, you come to somebody who has ALS and you say, hey, we can install this thing in you where we can restore some function, give you some ability to be less trapped in your body.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah. We can allow you to text with your friends and family again, but also

[Ben Bradford]

we're going to put an AI chatbot in you.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ben Bradford]

As opposed to them being able to say, well, this is what I want your technology to be able to do for me.

[Emily Mullen]

Right.

[Ben Bradford]

It doesn't mean any of this will happen. For one, the technology to blend a human with AI is not exactly there yet. And even if it were, there are some legal hurdles before you can experimentally install your chatbot in a medical patient.

[Emily Mullen]

So one big question here is from the regulatory perspective, Emily says the federal

[Ben Bradford]

Food and Drug Administration regulates medical devices, especially ones that require brain surgery to get.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah, if you're putting something in the brain, the FDA needs to approve it.

[Ben Bradford]

Yeah, okay, good. That's good to know. And actually that's a little bit comforting.

[Emily Mullen]

So that's the big question that these companies are grappling with right now, is how to get an FDA approval.

[Ben Bradford]

At least for now. We're gonna make it so you won't know. Where you end in a chatbot begins is not a federally approved medical indication. And the larger dream of merging us all with AI brain chips, Emily thinks is a hard sell, not least because any takers would need that brain surgery. Our cyberpunk world is not immediately around the corner.

[Emily Mullen]

Elon Musk wants to put a brain chip in everybody. Not gonna happen. At least not for several decades.

[Ben Bradford]

But you can see the path, right? It seems so much clearer than when I started and thought this whole thing was gonna be a lark. We have rapidly improving brain reading chips. Our own most powerful technology companies are racing to perfect them and market them. Military interest, of course. Is it conceivable not next year or Maybe even next decade, but within most of our lifetimes that some kind of implants are helpful enough and small enough so it's not as invasive as a whole craniotomy that a growing number of people feel compelled to get them in the same way that plenty of people used to think they didn't need email or you didn't need a smartphone, and now it's hard to live without those. I think it's at least plausible, especially considering the amount of money pouring in to create that world. It's scary, but still theoretical. However, there is one more, even simpler path to cyborgs. You could already be buying the technology that'll effectively turn you into one without realizing it. No craniotomy required.

[Emily Mullen]

I think this is an area that's gonna explode.

[Laura Cabrera]

Every episode of it's been a minute.

[Ben Bradford]

NPR's what's Happening in Culture podcast starts

[Laura Cabrera]

by asking three questions. Who?

[Ben Bradford]

How? Why Now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it at npr. We stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow It's Been a Minute wherever you get your podcasts and we'll break down the zeitgeist y topics that are filling your feed.

[Emily Mullen]

The midterms are coming, and that means the news cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall. So this summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I'm Layla Faldel on up first, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Upverse today wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bradford]

What's the first thing you pick up in the morning? Probably your phone or maybe glasses. If you go for a jog, you might socket some little plastic bits into your ears to play audio. Hopefully this show, you might have a watch that tracks your steps or heart rate. I'm not arguing this makes you a cyborg. Bear with me. We have technology with us all the time these days, but it's not implanted, not permanent. We're not fused with it. We don't make it work with a thought. We push buttons or use our voice. So not cyborgs, But a new class of device is emerging from all the same research you heard about from the military, the Utah Array, the private sector. Some of these devices are already entering the market. They're wearables for your brain.

[Emily Mullen]

Yeah, it might be headphones, might be earbuds, might be a helmet looking device or sort of like a Star Trek looking band.

[Ben Bradford]

And what they're doing is like a diet version of a neural implant. They're reading and responding to the electrical signals given off by your brain, but from outside the skull.

[Emily Mullen]

So the signal quality is not nearly as good as if you were inside the brain. Obviously it's going to be distorted, it's going to be a lot weaker. But there are some signals you can pull out of the brain.

[Ben Bradford]

The advantage is no craniotomy, no clinical trial or FDA approval unless they're claiming to treat a medical condition. And that means they can start life not as terrifying cyborg devices, but as gadgets, useful gadgets. Emily says one current use is sleep

[Emily Mullen]

wearables to help you sleep, for instance. So providing like stimulation to help you fall asleep.

[Ben Bradford]

A headband doesn't just monitor your brain activity as you try to sleep. It plays music or white notes or even subtly influences your brain's electrical signals to soothe you into sleep. That sounds nice. It wouldn't make you a cyborg. Certainly not. Other wearables already on the market are starting to track your attention.

[Emily Mullen]

There are some signals you can pull out of the brain that correspond with how deeply focused you are.

[Ben Bradford]

For instance, there's a company called Neurable selling headphones that can tell when your focus is fading and then prompt you, maybe wake up, maybe take a walk. Useful. And buying those wouldn't make you a cyborg. No. But Emily expects this is just the beginning.

[Emily Mullen]

Wearables for your brain. I think this is an area that's going to explode.

[Ben Bradford]

Once you can read even a little bit of brain activity from outside the skull, you can start doing more things with it. Giants like Apple and Microsoft are already investing in the next iteration of brain controlled wearables. Emily says the near future version looks something like this.

[Emily Mullen]

Headphones or earbuds that maybe can help you sleep also calm your anxiety. Maybe allows you to play video games, games with your mind, check emails without having to scroll on your phone.

[Ben Bradford]

If they achieve it, couldn't you see yourself wearing that technology more, spending more time with it? For instance, if you already have Apple AirPods, which you already use to take calls, play music, listen to podcasts, summon Siri with just your voice to ask Internet questions. But now this device can also help you sleep or stay focused. It lets you text or search the web without even needing to use your voice. That device becomes just a bit more essential. The AirPods come off just a little bit less. It still wouldn't make you a cyborg. Absolutely not. But Emily says these wearables are gonna continue to advance. We don't know how far, but it's plausible. This is like the calculator watch stage of brain tech.

[Emily Mullen]

I wouldn't be surprised if technology could got more sophisticated to the point where it could extract more meaningful information from the brain.

[Ben Bradford]

You can picture next steps, a device that reads in response to more specific thoughts. A device you rely on for directions, recipes, search reminders, writing, conversation.

[Emily Mullen]

I can see a future where that's a possibility, where people are constantly relying on their neurotech wearable for everything.

[Ben Bradford]

The most obvious way to provide this kind of functionality is with a chatbot. You ask it questions, it feeds you directions, it helps you write, it improves what you're going to say before you say it. It sits there in such constant communication with you that it starts to feel less like a tool and more like a layer of your own mind. And all of a sudden that's not

[Emily Mullen]

very far from an AI chatbot in our brains. Basically indistinguishable from ourselves.

[Ben Bradford]

I think this is the most straightforward and therefore scariest path to cyborg dystopia. It's not rain swept streets with back alley butchers hacking in cyberpunk hardware. It's not matrix style ports in the back of our head or super soldiers in mind controlled armor. It's all this tech that's slowly accumulated around us. So convenient that it's already hard to put down. The main friction left is we have to pick it up, we have to swipe, we have to talk. If that friction fades, if the devices get more useful, available out of thought, then the simplest way to become cyborgs is not to seek out surgery. It's to have technology that technically we can take off, but we never do, we never want to. There is a current push within the US government for the first time since the cold war to deploy more nuclear weapons. Next time on Are we doomed? We're going to get into some nuclear theology, alright. A former senior defense official gives us the inside view of the case. For more nukes, Check out all of our past episodes on YouTube. We're sign are wedoomed pod and the animated likeness of me is dead on. Finally an ask. This show is labor intensive from the reporting to the interviewing to the sound and storytelling. And if you value it, I'd ask that one you help folks continue to find us very simply by sending this episode to your most cyborg curious friends. You can do it right now. It helps a lot. And if you really want to get involved and hear bonus episodes and join discussion with me on our Discord. You can go to doompod.com that's doompod.com support and thank you again. Are We Doomed? Is a production of Nuanced Tales. It is created by me, Ben Bradford. Our producer is Lindsey Kilbride. Our editor is Tracy Samuelson. This episode sound designed and engineered by Jay Cowett. Our video animation is by Alborz Kamalzad. Theme music is by Dylan Dagenet. The show is distributed by the NPR. Huge thanks to Dan McCoy, Kalia Ali and the rest of the team at NPR. And the biggest thanks to you for listening and supporting us.