Danny Jones Podcast #332 | CIA Psychologist: DARPA's Most Bizarre New Tech Should NOT Exist | Charles Morgan

Date: September 15, 2025
Host: Danny Jones
Guest: Dr. Charles Morgan

Overview

In this wide-ranging and captivating episode, Danny Jones interviews Dr. Charles Morgan—a psychiatrist and former CIA consultant—about his journey into intelligence work, the realities of psychological assessment in high-stress settings, the ethics and efficacy of enhanced interrogation, the search for truth-detection technologies, the frontier of brain-to-brain communication, DARPA’s radical experiments, the science of memory and deception, AI, and a host of other mind-bending topics at the intersection of neuroscience, national security, and the strange.

Morgan offers rare insight into the technologies and conundrums faced by the intelligence world, including clear-eyed warnings on the limits of emerging DARPA technologies, the fallibility of memory, and why some of the tech dreamt up in secret labs "should not exist." The tone is congenial, curious, and at times, unsettling.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Morgan’s Path to the CIA and Early Work

• Background: Former Navy psychiatrist, expert in stress and PTSD, recruited into the intelligence community after academic work with elite military groups at Fort Bragg.
• Role at CIA: Forensic psychiatric profiling of world leaders for Congress and the White House, helping officials interpret leaders’ behaviors through a medical lens, and analyzing psychological threats.

Quote:
"Everybody thinks it's super sexy. And part of it was, but the core of it was helping people in government understand from a psych perspective or a medical perspective the important people they were going to be meeting." (05:12, Morgan)

2. Evaluating Leaders and Psychological Threats

• Morgan assessed world leaders not only for diplomatic encounters but for strategic reasons (e.g., disease, mental illness, threats).
• Profiled terrorist leaders, law enforcement suspects, and consulted on negotiation and interrogation strategies.
• Misconceptions about CIA psychiatrists often led to public misunderstanding and, at times, hate mail. (12:36)

3. Psychological Screening and Ethics in Intelligence

• While case officers are selected for audacity, not all are sociopaths; there’s a spectrum of personalities.
• Psychiatrists evaluate recruited spies/agents for stability and risk, not for covert assignments themselves.
• Discussed the controversial role and ethical schism in the CIA’s "enhanced interrogation" era and the long-term legal fallout (Guantanamo, torture evidence inadmissibility).

Quote:
"Now, more than 20 years later, we can see that, you know, sort of when you torture people, it ruins our ability to prosecute them." (12:57, Morgan)

4. Torture, Interrogation, and Human Cognition

• Torture is ineffective for intelligence: extreme stress destroys memory and reliability.
• Building rapport is more effective than coercion for extracting information, as validated by history and scientific research.
• Famous interrogators and the "ticking time bomb" scenario are largely myth; technological alternatives for extracting memories (e.g., brain scans) are still far-fetched.

Quote:
"Raising stress degrades cognitive function really fast and memory so that you're... changing the very organ that you're relying on to provide you the information." (18:44, Morgan)

5. Memory Under Stress: Failures and Manipulations

• Landmark studies with special ops trainees (SERE school) showed extreme stress reduces eyewitness memory accuracy; confidence is no guarantee of correctness.
• Memory can be manipulated right after trauma, leading to false identification—a danger for both courts and intelligence.
• Recollection is context-sensitive: returning to sites of trauma can involuntarily trigger confessions, even absent torture.

Quote:
"In the high stress condition… the majority of them are wrong about the person they saw under high stress who was physically assaulting them." (45:02, Morgan)

6. The Search (and Failure) for Truth-Tech: Polygraphs, Brain Scans, and Deception

• As head of the CIA’s "Detecting Deception" program, Morgan reviewed myriad technologies aimed at truth-detection. Most do not work:
  • Polygraphs barely out-perform chance (52-56%).
  • Newer devices like voice stress analyzers and "portable credibility assessment" are equally unreliable.
  • Brain imaging shows potential only under ideal, controlled circumstances—useless in real-world, adversarial settings.
• The appeal of gadgets persists, buoyed by anecdote and wishful thinking—akin to magical thinking in medicine or stage magic.

Quote:
"The fantasy... is that there's a ticking time bomb and you must know something that's going to kill a bunch of people in a matter of hours. But it doesn't turn out to be true. Most of that information is pretty perishable." (17:03, Morgan)

Memorable Moment:
"I got to be known as Dr. No... because I would look at proposals and I would say no." (30:56, Morgan)

7. DARPA, Brain-to-Brain Tech, and Science Fiction Realities

• Brain-to-Brain Experiments: Rats had knowledge (maze navigation) transferred via direct brain connection; Morgan describes driving a go-kart with thought alone via non-invasive sensors (80:09).
• Ethical Quandaries: Potential for invasive reading of thoughts—"the interrogator’s dream"—runs up against constitutional rights and opens alarming possibilities.
• Implementation: DARPA outpaces the CIA in budget and scope, running competitions for tech (robotics, neural devices). Many inventions don’t become public knowledge for decades.
• Notable Examples:
  • Remote-controlled robotic fish (Charlie the Catfish, 83:43)
  • Brain-to-brain interfacing as potential for military command, remote piloting, or even "hive mind" problem-solving.

Quote:
"If you can link two brains, that's part of that lecture I gave at college that freaks people out." (39:37, Morgan)

8. Exotic Technologies: Storing Information in DNA

• DNA as Data Storage: DNA can encode massive amounts of information (700,000 TB in a gram); experiments have encoded video in bacteria. Potential covert uses: smuggling info within the body.
• Cryptography: DNA and quantum computers offer new, nearly unbreakable forms of encryption—raising dual-use concerns for national security.

Quote:
"If you can store everything in a little tiny tube that has all this DNA in it, you just need the machine that rapidly isolates the strand you want played." (158:18, Morgan)

9. AI, Memory, and Learning in the Modern World

• Critical Thinking & AI: Overreliance on tech (phones, AI) degrades memory and critical analysis skills, especially in younger generations.
• Retention: Absorption of information is best when content is emotionally/rationally engaging—not through passive reading or AI summarization alone.
• Teaching: Morgan’s teaching approach stresses active engagement, critical appraisal, and understanding argument structure over mere data consumption.

Quote:
"You need that for... science, if you're going to do intelligence, you have to be able to do that critical thinking, because there's always going to be an opinion." (69:59, Morgan)

10. Pattern Recognition, Magic, and the Limits of Human Cognition

• Humans are wired for pattern recognition (pareidolia). This can be used positively (creativity, intelligence) or manipulated (magic, deception, narrative creation).
• Morgan discusses his foray into tarot and psychic readings during COVID, treating them as mechanisms to focus attention and extract meaning—a parallel to intelligence analysis.
• Analyst training at CIA involves systematically generating and testing alternative hypotheses to counter bias and the human tendency to see confirming patterns.

11. National Security, Secrecy, and the Dangers of Invisible Tech

• Most alarming: Not a gadget, but the organizational mindset that led to widespread torture and legal paralysis at Guantanamo.
• True danger comes from lack of oversight and the potential for "dual use"—technologies that can be used for good or ill, depending on who controls them.

Quote:
"From a tech standpoint... nothing quickly came to mind. I think in my time there at the CIA, the more salient and horrifying thing was the enhanced interrogation program." (164:24, Morgan)

12. International Tech Competition and the Future

• China is rapidly closing the gap on advanced tech, investing state funds in science while encouraging talent to "bring knowledge home,” sometimes through covert means. This raises pressing national security concerns.
• Morgan cautions that public/private partnerships cannot replace the grand-scale, long-game investment of major state science projects (e.g., the Chinese space program, AI).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Polygraphs:
  "The meta-analyses suggest maybe comes in around 52 to 56 percent. You could flip a coin." (27:31, Morgan)
• On Brain-to-Brain Tech:
  "If you can link two brains... can you go find out what someone's thinking? Right. Nobody knows." (39:37, Morgan)
• On Tech Ethics:
  "Nothing more alarming... than enhanced interrogation. Couldn’t think of anything more badly thought out." (164:24, Morgan)
• On Memory and Deception:
  "Confidence is not related to accuracy. Wish it was. But you can be super confident and wrong." (47:48, Morgan)
• On Magic and Analysis:
  "It's the same phenomenon. You're trying to make sense of ambiguous information... because there's a need to make sense of something." (146:58, Morgan)

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Topic | |----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:22 | Morgan’s entry into intelligence, stress research, and military psychiatry | | 05:43 | Profiling world leaders—psychiatric assessment for diplomacy and security | | 12:55 | Ethics debate during the enhanced interrogation program | | 16:30 | Ineffectiveness of torture in interrogation; rapport-based techniques | | 24:30 | Detecting deception—overview of the CIA’s science & tech approaches | | 27:31 | Polygraph and other technologies—limitations and inaccuracies | | 39:00 | Brain-to-brain communication, current experiments, and ethical dilemmas | | 59:03 | Memory palaces and photographic memory—what’s real and what’s not | | 63:33 | The effect of AI/technology on memory and critical thinking | | 80:09 | Brain-controlled go-kart and non-invasive neurotechnology | | 83:43 | DARPA inventions—robotic fish, brain interfaces | | 104:25 | Possibility (and limitations) of a “hive mind”; group intelligence experiments | | 124:22 | Jung, archetypes, and collective experience—psychology, UFOs, and pattern recognition | | 146:15 | Magic, tarot, and the psychology of meaning—application to intelligence analysis | | 153:49 | CIA manual of trickery and the deep history of magicians in espionage | | 158:18 | Storing information in DNA—spycraft to science fiction | | 164:24 | The most alarming program at CIA: Enhanced Interrogation, secrecy, and lack of oversight | | 179:42 | China’s surge in scientific R&D, intelligence collection, and the shifting global tech race| | 182:19 | Lunar base competition: new frontiers in national security |

Further Reading and Contact

Charles Morgan:
Email: Charles.A.Morgan@yale.edu (contact for further study or information)

Final Thoughts

Dr. Charles Morgan’s perspective bridges hard science, applied intelligence, and the enduring mysteries (and dangers) of human cognition. This episode is a whirlwind tour of the known, the plausible, and the speculative, always returning to the same basic problems: how do we know what’s true, and what should we do with that knowledge? For anyone curious about the real intersection of psychology, espionage, and technology, this is essential listening.