Cyan Banister is one of the greatest investors of all time. She’s backed SpaceX, Uber, and more. This morning, she put the word out: hackers could be coming for our brains.

Cyan calls it CogSec, and I think the name will stick. Robert Scoble, the earliest of early adopters, seconded her concerns.

Whenever these two talk, I listen. So this morning, I got to thinking how hacking our brains could work, and how we could protect ourselves…

How Brain Hacking Could Work

Make no mistake: this is some far-out ideation. There is absolutely zero evidence that anyone can hack our brains today.

But Noland Arbaugh has already had electrodes inserted into his brain by Neuralink. Those electrodes hook up to the internet, which is how he plays videogames.

Anything that hooks up to the internet can be hacked.

It’s not hard to imagine horrible possibilities if a Neuralink system or other brain-computer interfaces are hacked.

A hacker could harvest Noland’s most private thoughts. He could also insert terrifying thoughts and refuse to remove them unless he is paid an enormous amount of money.

I pray this never happens. But let’s be honest: it could happen tomorrow.

Defending the Mind

How can we defend against infiltration of the brain? We need a new generation of companies that take CogSec as seriously as cybersecurity.

We need a Wiz for the brain.

The risk of hackers hijacking a system of implanted electrodes like Neuralink means that a removable brain-computer interface is far more appealing. If anyone hacks it, you just throw it in the garbage.

In the more remote future, hackers may find ways to infiltrate the brain via some type of external device that doesn’t touch us. If that happens, perhaps tinfoil hats will go from crackpot couture to indispensable kit.

Wrap-Up

Brain-computer interfaces can be a wonderful thing. They’ve helped Noland a lot, and I’d love to try one myself if it were removable.

But we need them to be safe.

The time to build security tools for the mind isn’t after someone’s brain is hacked. It’s now.

So I’m very excited to meet with companies working on CogSec. I’d also love to talk to companies that are building removable brain-computer interfaces.

If that’s you, let me know!

More on tech:

Grok Companions — Elon’s AI Girlfriend?

Can China’s Top Tech Company Beat America in AI? — Testing Hunyuan-T1

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