Strap in: the 21st century is about to become more Owellian. 

Headsets that can monitor brainwaves. Remote devices that can track changes in brain activity, in real time. Brain-chip interfaces that can read neural signals, translate them into speech or movement – and also stimulate, block, even record brain pulses. 

Brilliant interventions for personalised, even preventive healthcare. Imagine a home kit that can monitor seizures. A “fitbit for brain” that tracks a person’s emotional peaks and valleys for mental health interventions. Chip implants that can treat autism, depression, schizophrenia. 

Or technologies that could unlock safe productivity, increase efficiency. Imagine a wearable that alerts a truck driver when they’re feeling sleepy. A device that alerts a coach that an athlete is mentally fatigued. 

But futurist, lawyer, and philosopher Nita Farahany is here to tell you about the flip side.  

A leading authority on ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies, Farahany has been tracking neurotechnology for well over a decade. She’s served on Barack Obama’s commission for bioethical issues. She’s headed the International Neuroethics Society, an organisation of global scientists and ethicists, professionals and philosophers. She’s a go-to at the World Economic Forum. She serves on scientific and ethics advisory boards for corporations. And she’s an advisor to DARPA, the American military’s R&D agency that is responsible for creating breakthrough capabilities for national security (and yes, they have an ongoing program to enhance warfighters’ cognitive abilities). 

Currently, Farahany is on a mission to wake up the public to the perils of burgeoning neurotechnologies. 

Imagine your neural data up for grabs, from brands to insurance companies. 

Imagine war being fought not just on land, sea, in air, space and cyber, but, terrifyingly, through thoughts. 

Imagine being monitored. By your workplace, state, the police. Think  political indoctrination and interference. Thought policing. (Pre-)Crime detection. Remember Minority Report? 

Ultimately, imagine your most intimate thoughts, innermost emotions, deepest desires being tracked and hacked.

Sound far-fetched? Farahany will tell you it’s not. Consider accelerating advances in neuroscience, turbocharged by AI. From being able to decode not much more than basic brain states, like fatigue, to being able to – hold your breath – read inner monologues. Increasingly capture not just words, but even meaning.

Life-changing for those paralysed who are receiving first-ever brain chip implants from the likes of Elon Musk’s Neuralink or Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates-backed Synchron. Life-affirming for those dealing with severe PTSD who would benefit from innovative neurotechnology procedures that allow overwriting traumatic experiences with more positive associations – cue Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (A process Farahany herself says she “would have opted for in a heartbeat” to deal with the grief of losing her daughter to RSV in 2017.) 

But otherwise – and Farahany is the first to recognise them as such – ethical landmines waiting to explode. Access, privacy, control, ownership. Personal freedom. Human rights. 

She details how neurotechnology is slowly seeping into our day to day in her book-cum-clarion call The Battle for Your Brain. L’Oreal’s partnership with a large neurotech company to target fragrance selection to individual brains. Workers in Chinese government controlled-factories mandated to wear EEG devices that monitor productivity and emotional states. Silicon Valley’s expanding investments  in wearable neurotech, from earbuds to headphones to VR headsets. A nascent market for “nootropics”, cognitive-enhancing drugs.

As reports of more and more use cases crop up – from mining to finance, sports to criminal justice, mindfulness to meditation – governments are beginning to roll up their sleeves and legislate the coming world of brain transparency. From Chile in 2023 becoming the first ever country to enshrine “neurorights” into its constitution to Colorado becoming the first US state to extend its privacy law to protect brainwaves in 2024. 

The future looms large. At SYNAPSE 2025, Nita Farahany will reveal how science is opening up intimate windows into the “three pounds of goo” between our ears. Whether we’re simply, awesomely, wearing the future with next-gen gadgets or, worryingly, inviting totalitarian dystopia. How the battle for our brain – privacy’s last frontier – has already begun. And her solution: “cognitive liberty”.  

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