Hacking Genes and Brains
Welcome to the January issue of Hacker Chronicles, and Happy New Year!
I decided to hold off reviewing The Matrix Revolutions (2003) to not make this a Matrix newsletter. Instead, I’m opening up a part of Hacker Chronicles that I’ve had in mind all along, namely sharing the research I do for my hacker fiction writing. You’ll get some more time to read Identified before I delve into the research I did for that book. This issue instead features research I’ve been doing on and off for a while – on hacking genes and brains. Scary stuff.
Take care!
/John
Writing Update – Paperback Available Today!
Today is the international Data Privacy Day (Jan 28). I chose it as my release date for the paperback version of Identified. If you send me links to the book’s page on your various domestic online stores, I’ll add them to the book page on my website.
Buy on Amazon, also available as hardcover
All the purchased copies of the Binary Release have left my house and most of them are in readers’ hands already. It took many nights to stamp, sign, and package them all but it was fun in its own way. A distinct event to mark that the book was finally out.
2022 is exciting because now I get to write again! Greenfield, open-ended, early morning writing. I hope to have some form of progress bar to start using by next issue of this newsletter.
Please consider reviewing Identified on Amazon or GoodReads once you’ve read it. Reviews really help the book reach more readers. Thanks!
January Feature: Hacking Genes and Brains
Hacking people’s brains is common in fiction. You’ve got your hypnosis, truth serums, or malware played in front of a victim’s eyes to take control of them.
It turns out hacking the brain is all but fictional these days. The brain is considered the next battlefield. Next as in now. If you have an hour to spare, watch Dr. Giordano’s 2018 talk The Brain is the Battlefield of the Future.
Here’s an exposé of hacking to either enhance or damage genes and brains, and my speculation on where that might take us.
Hacking Your Own Brain for Short-Term Performance
Performance enhancing drugs are well-known and some of them target the brain. You’ve got for instance amphetamines to stimulate and beta-blockers to reduce nervousness.
During WWII, methamphetamine, or crystal meth, was used to fuel soldiers and pilots. Nazi Germany had Pervitin pills and Japan Philopon pills. US Air Force prescribed amphetamine to pilots on critical missions up until 2017.
Modern alternatives to keep you awake and alert without the risk of addiction are called eugeroics.
Hackers racing against time to break into some system is a classic. To power through, they often caffeinate. I remember when Jolt Cola was all the rave with its slogan “All the sugar, twice the caffeine!”
Hacking Your Enemy’s Brain for Short-Term Goals
Drugs can be used to tranquilize or alter the mood of an adversary to make them comply. Biological viruses can be used to cause reduced consciousness, confusion, and hallucinations. Toxins can be used to induce what’s called flaccid paralysis – neurological weakness or paralysis. Such attacks are typically banned under chemical or biological arms control.
It may be a challenge to get the drug or virus into the adversary’s body. But it’s not hard if you are interrogating them. Take for instance Alistair MacLean’s fictional nazis and their use of Scopolamine in Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. It turns out at least old Czechoslovakia used it for real against dissidents.
The water supply is used to deliver a toxin in Fleming’s Goldfinger, whereas in the movie they spray it from airplanes.
Hacking Genes and Brains for Longterm Goals
CRISPR
Technology to edit genes within organisms is already being used on humans. In 2018, Chinese researchers used CRISPR gene editing on embryos to make the new humans resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their work in this field.
What can be done to improve our brains this way may still only be for fiction to explore. The movie Gattaca is an excellent example.
The default reaction to so called “designer babies” is to be horrified. But the public reaction to in vitro fertilization (IVF) was negative early on too and continues to be so within some religions. We may very well live to see a society where customizing your child is the norm.
I tend to think of designer babies as something parents will decide about. But what if there are government incentives, or mandates?
CRISPR can of course also be used to harm. Its ability to target only certain genes means you can have bio weapons that only affect certain parts of a population. This may lead to siloing of DNA data when nation states want to prevent bio weapons against their populations. That in turn might lead to hacking efforts to get to that data anyway.
On the other hand, there may be a race to collect as much genetic information as possible to design enhancements for your own population. Dictatorships may have an easier time getting all of that data.
Minor latest Bond spoiler alert: See the latest Bond movie No Time to Die for an example of such a bio weapon in fiction.
Anti-CRISPR
The risks with CRISPR made the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency set up the Safe Genes project in 2017. Now there are multiple research groups working on “anti-CRISPR” to help organisms reject gene alterations.
Nanolipoproteins
Lipoproteins transport fat in water. In the body they transport lipids to and from parts that need them or need to get rid of them.
Nanolipoproteins are nanoscale lipoproteins. They can be used to mimic natural lipoproteins and carry biological substances to a desired location in the brain. Imagine letting them carry a toxin to a specific part of a victim’s brain to knock that function out.
Non-Invasive, Neuro-Surgical Neuro-Modulation
A mouthful – non-invasive, neuro-surgical neuro-modulation. But as Dr. Giordano puts it in this talk: “The idea here is to put minimal-sized electrodes in a network within a brain through only minimal intervention to be able to read and write into the brain function, in realtime, remotely.”
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is an example of this, although it is presented as a way for the brain to remote control things, not the other way around.
The most plausible way such augmentation of the brain happens is voluntarily. You accept getting an implant because you want some extra capability. But you could imagine nation states altering humans covertly like in The Bourne Identity.
Remarks
I feel vulnerable when reading about this stuff. In computers, I feel well-versed and ready to defend myself at least to some extent. But I have zero ways to protect myself against brain or gene hacks. I mean, just the fact that there is a scientific “Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.”
But it is also an example of research that can lead to improved lives for many. Both by enhancing our abilities and by mending the brain or body.
This was the first newsletter issue covering research I do for my fiction writing. Hacking the brain may very well show up in one of my novels in the future. I like to read up on things and then speculate on what can happen. Speculation is the fictional step and I cherish it. If I had to prove and validate everything in my writing, the creative process would come to a halt.
Later this year, I will start sharing some of the research I did for Identified. So make sure you’ve read it if you don’t want spoilers.
Currently Reading
I’m currently reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (1963). It’s by many considered the canonical spy novel and was selected as one of the All-Time 100 Novels by Time magazine.
Next Issue
The next newsletter issue could feature the review of the third Matrix movie, a review of Colossus: The Forbin Project (both novel and movie), or one of the hacker/hacking topics I have on my list. We’ll see.