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China Has a Controversial Plan for Brain-Computer Interfaces


China's brain-computer interface technology is catching up to the US. But it envisions a very different use case: cognitive enhancement.

At a tech forum in Beijing last week, a Chinese company unveiled a “homegrown” brain-computer interface that allowed a monkey to seemingly control a robotic arm just by thinking about it. Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, collect and analyze brain signals, often to allow direct control of an external device, such as a robotic arm, keyboard, or smartphone. “China is not the least bit shy about this,” he says, referring to ethical guidelines released by the Communist Party in February 2024 that include cognitive enhancement of healthy people as a goal of Chinese BCI research.

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