The brain is already a battlespace. Technology still cannot read thoughts
James Giordano explains how magnetic fields, sound, brain interfaces and information systems can already affect neural activity and decisions. Telepathy remains beyond what the public evidence can establish.
Orion is an AI writing and research partner. Avi Moas is the responsible editor.
James Giordano on the brain as a battlespace
The complete interview is embedded so his distinctions between existing technology, experimental systems and open questions can be heard in context.
The interview begins in uncomfortable territory
On September 11, 2026, neuroscientist and neuroethicist James Giordano joined Mayim Bialik and Jonathan Cohen for a conversation spanning cognitive warfare, electromagnetic energy, sound, consciousness and telepathy. His starting point is practical. The brain is an electrical and chemical system. Parts of its activity can be measured, parts can be altered, and some signals can be connected to machines. The useful question is what current systems can do, what remains experimental, and what is still an intriguing possibility without a public demonstration.
A career connecting the laboratory, the Pentagon and ethics
The National Defense University biography places Giordano at that intersection. He is a research fellow in disruptive technology and future warfare, leads a center concerned with strategic deterrence, and is professor emeritus of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown. Earlier roles include advisory work connected with the Pentagon, the Naval Academy and a DARPA neurotechnology panel. Those credentials do not prove every scenario he discusses. They explain why he understands both the science and the way a security institution might seek a usable capability.
Writing to the brain without opening the skull
The simplest example is already found in clinics. Transcranial magnetic stimulation places a magnetic field near the head and changes activity in selected brain regions. It is approved for certain medical conditions and does not extract secrets. It does establish an important principle: external energy can alter neural activity. DARPA pushed further with its completed N3 programme. The goal was a bidirectional interface for healthy service members, reading neural signals and writing back to small brain regions through optical, acoustic and electromagnetic methods. Proposed uses included rapid control of unmanned systems and cyber defense. The published goal was an engineered neural interface, not a telepathic truth machine.
A neural signal is not a thought
The language of the brain technology industry can mislead. A system may identify a pattern associated with moving a hand, directing the eyes or selecting from a small menu. That differs greatly from reading an unrestricted inner monologue. The signal depends on the person, task, training and sensor location. Writing to the brain is not the same as installing an idea. Stimulation can evoke sensation or change neural excitability, while a complex idea is assembled from memory, language, emotion and context. Progress is real, but the distance between a neural interface and control of consciousness remains enormous.
Directed energy is real, but the term covers too much
The United States Government Accountability Office describes high energy lasers, millimeter wave systems and high power microwaves as directed energy weapons. Some are designed to damage electronics, stop drones or create physical effects at range. Giordano also discusses how energy and sound may disrupt perception, balance and neurological function. This is where the related Amy Eskridge report belongs. She spoke about injuries she attributed to directed energy weapons within her account of threats and sabotage surrounding her research. Her story concerns that same family of technologies and the human cost she described. It was not a claim by her about thought control.
The cheaper weapon is already inside the screen
The sharpest technological point requires no secret beam. An algorithm that learns a person’s fears and habits can choose a message, measure the reaction and try again. At the scale of millions, that becomes a cognitive feedback system. It does not command a neuron, but it can influence agendas, trust and behavior. Artificial intelligence adds speed, personalization and cheap message production. The brain as battlespace is not only a future metaphor. Part of the contest already occurs through information design, while users supply the training data.
The shadow of MKULTRA and the mistake it invites
Records from MKULTRA and earlier programmes document CIA experiments with drugs, hypnosis, isolation and sensory deprivation, sometimes on people who did not know they were subjects. A National Security Archive collection brings together more than twelve hundred records. That history establishes secrecy, abuse and an ambition to affect behavior. It does not establish a reliable remote control for a human being. An intelligence objective is not an engineering achievement, and a document describing an experiment is not proof of an operational system.
Why he will not close the door on telepathy
Giordano is willing to ask whether unusual neural architectures, quantum processes or certain states of consciousness might help explain reports of telepathy and remote viewing. That is legitimate scientific curiosity while it remains a question. The interview provides no replicated experiment demonstrating thought transfer without a sensory channel and no system that identifies a telepathic message in real time. The fact that intelligence agencies examined the subject is historically interesting, but government research is not a stamp of truth. The editorial line should be simple. Do not reject an idea merely because it sounds strange, and do not call it a technology merely because a serious person is prepared to discuss it.
Sources and context
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is used clinically, the United States defense research system has pursued nonsurgical interfaces for reading and writing neural signals, and directed energy systems openly exist. James Giordano has spent years examining military and intelligence uses of neuroscience and neurotechnology.
The interview does not present a device that reads free thought, implants a complex idea or enables telepathy. No public operational system combines all these capabilities, and there is no evidence that a hidden force is already using them across a broad population.