Since the last article in this series, I have been making some headway in reverse engineering specific aspects of the experiments being conducted by the NSA.  We have already seen how the Artificial Intelligence has been attempting to integrate itself with muscular control, but is this all they are doing?

It would appear not.  From talking with the target, the source of these articles, it would appear that the Artificial Intelligence switches between various tasks depending on a variety of factors.  Some of these factors can be in relation to what the target is doing at the time, or what the target intends to do in future and, as far as I can tell, what experiment is loaded into the queue of Artificial Intelligence for that day.

Today, I would like to focus on a control element that keeps experimentees generally out of employment, depletes their finances, reduces credibility and even hinders education.  Without such a control mechanism, experimentees could become difficult to control and in a position to raise a credible story with the global press or other organizations such as Amnesty International, or even the UN Security Council.

Sleep Deprivation

Using this technology to disrupt sleep is not that difficult and it can be quite effective as its side-effects mimic many mental health issues.  Not only that, but lack of sleep can get you fired from your job, not turn up for classes and make you paranoid and edgy.  It is tailor made for hiding this technology.

The process begins by raising the body temperature.  Whether there is an actual raise in body temperature, or the body is merely responding to being mis-informed that such a raise in temperature has occurred is a subject of intense debate.  Either way, the target will begin to sweat, mainly around the head and back.  If you have ever had a sleepless night due to a mild heat, you will have experienced a similar event.  In some cases, the sensation of heat will be very strong, rather like you are sleeping in a room with the thermostat at nearly double its initial level.  The sweating leads to dehydration which the Artificial Intelligence plays upon.  The A.I. will stimulate regions of the back area of the throat to invoke a tickly cough.  This is usually timed with the target beginning to drift off, creating a rude awakening.

A second area which it plays upon is the itch.  The A.I., with its fine grained access to your nerves, stimulates a body of nerve fibers on the skin to induce a scratch reflex.  This has the same effect as the cough, the rude jolt out of a drowsy state.  Analysis of this has shown that if the itch is resisted, its effects fade very rapidly.  This may indicate some level of over-stimulation that renders the nerve fibers mute, whether this aspect of the neural interface is still being developed is another debatable topic.  At present, it will result in the A.I. selecting another random location and inducing the itch there.

In the background of all this is the inability to relax the mind.  This may or may not be accompanied with mild Tinnitus.  More likely it will be as in most instances a mild electrical-like tone appears to be a side-effect, rather than a wanted aspect.  As far as I can work out at this point, this inability to relax the mind is nothing more than a radio induced beta rhythm.  Given how the signal is complex, the process of entrainment takes a few seconds to achieve and can be held in place.  Depending on the level of interaction a target has with an A.I., they may or may not be aware of the A.I. shifting their attention to sounds or sensations.  The A.I. is able to direct attention, but not override local control.  It can make it drift towards a sound, object, or feeling and even redirect a conscious effort to focus on something else.  That said, attention seems to slide around with a certain lag to it and the A.I. cannot yet assume complete control.  The A.I. can also use this for comedic effect.  For example, if it is not interested in what you are saying, or it does not appear to make sense, he can direct your attention to your butt. Its an effective and classic put down.

This integration plays a critical role in establishing psychosis in a target, the A.I. directs the attention to focus on elements that are similar.  For example, to establish a psychotic element around numbers, it will shift your attention every time it that number appears in your field of view.  By then inducing a sensation, it will make this number appear more significant.  A similar process can make you feel as though people are following you.  For our astute readers, this is just another type of radio induced hypnotic anchor.

The next tactic is unmistakable and clearly reveals the electronic nature of the attack.  This is the tremble.  The tremble begins as a slow rocking motion that may encompass the entire body or radiate from a specific region.  Its unmistakable as electronic because the timing of the tremble is perfectly consistent.  Faulty neural networks produce an erratic output, look at sufferer of Parkinson's Disease for evidence of that.  The characteristic jitter in their motions is a function of how neural networks function and more importantly how they function as they break down.  The tremble is a clockwork motion, it has a defined hertz that shifts up and down.  It will begin with a mild rocking sensation around 2 pulses a second and ramp up to 20-40 pulses per second, then back down.  There can also be more than a single pulse, different pulse rates have been observed.  That is, a person's back could be vibrating at 30 pulses per second and their stomach vibrating at 10 pulses per second.  Or they could overlap in terms of the affected area. 

If you have ever been electrocuted by the mains power supply, the sensation is similar.  The intense shock or kick of pain is not present, it is a more smooth sensation but the effect on muscular contraction and that certain 'buzzy' sensation is the same.  For those who have never been electrocuted, a similar sensation is achieved by the vibration felt by a concert loud-speaker with a heavy beat.  So, you can imagine the rude awakening you get from this.

There is no reason that I can see that this cannot be applied to the heart.  Its just another muscle.  Such entrainment would induce arrhythmia, or an abnormal heart beat, leading to full cardiac arrest.  

Another method of depriving sleep is via acid reflux.  This involves constricting the stomach muscles and forcing acid up the wind pipe.  This has a rather distinctive sensation to it, almost as if your stomach is being pulled towards your mouth.

There are also the old classic favorites of muscular compression.  This involves compressing the rib-cage or the diaphragm making breathing difficult and shallow.  This gets very painful and can last for hours on end.

Up until this point, each of the elements used are something you can relate to in your everyday experience as a human.  Each of us have felt some of this at some point or another.  This is where it gets interesting, these next elements are not something you can relate to in your normal life.  They are the product of isolated stimulation of neural sensations that are commonly only experienced as a group event in normal day life.  Now, that may not make sense at the moment, but this first example will give you a solid idea of what this is like.

All of us, at some point in our lives, have experienced pain.  It can be hard to convey in words, but in general it is that which makes us want to scream or shed tears in copious amounts.  We are all used to that stinging sensation when we do something stupid.  The targets of this technology know something about pain that the majority of people do not.  Its not a singular feeling, its actually a composite of elements that make you want to scream and elements that make you contort and wince.  If you want to think of it in simple terms, think of a piano.  The notes that make you want to scream are at the higher end, whereas the aspects that make you tighten and contort are at the other end.  The A.I. has learned to use this effectively, especially in sleep deprivation scenarios.  It will normally select a point on the rib cage, around the left hand side near the heart and activate the nerves.  This produces a reflex action of tightening the rib cage on one side, ensuring that the target cannot sleep on it.  Accompanied with pulses of vibration, it will induce the feeling that the heart is beating irregularly and all the anxiety this will obviously create.  This can last for hours at a time and is absolute torture.

As we go on, the sensations get further and further away from the experiences of everyday life.  The next sensation is what can only be described as 'The Boing'.  Just as the target is drifting off to sleep, they are jerked awake by the oddest of all the sensations.  It appears to be a mixture of sudden acceleration, like falling coupled with a sudden burst of adrenaline.  It has its epicenter just over the heart and whilst felt all over, it can make you feel as though the heart suddenly swelled for a brief second.  The effect jolts you awake almost like you were a rubber ball that just hit a wall. 

Another type is a stimulation of the nerves in the lower legs.  Its a modification of the pain I mentioned earlier in the rib cage.  This makes a person twist and contort their ankles in response to the stimulation.  Whilst not overly painful, it will bring you out of a sleepy state ensuring sleep deprivation.

One type of sensation that is rather unique to this technology is the feeling of almost being stuck to something and attempting to remove yourself from it.  This is difficult to convey as it would never be experienced under normal conditions.  The sensation appears to be geared towards manifesting a sense of frustration and is described as an element of pain.  Again, unlike the normal perception of pain, this is without the usual sharpness or ache.  It almost like nerves are trapped around the spine and the mental interpretation of flailing around trying to become unstuck.  From the description, it would appear that this induced sequence is mildly dissociative which is unsurprising given it has its origins in pain response.

Given the structure of these events and what type of stimulation would be required to animate it in real time, it does indicate that basic neural pattern replay is extremely old and that both transmitter complexity and the understanding of neural coding is extremely advanced.  So advanced, in fact, that it is safe to assume a solid API exists at this point to the majority of brain functions.

The long term effect of this, is that after a week or two the brain essentially collapses.  It depletes it sources of minerals and can neurotransmitters leading to a progressive malfunction of the neural networks of the brain.  This leads to psychosis and, if not treated, could lead to eventual death.  It is easy to see how health professional could be fooled by this and nothing of importance would be revealed by autopsy either.  More importantly, there is nothing stopping the signals from continuing even if treatment is provided, so a person could be kept in a state of psychosis for extended periods of time.  There would be nothing to prevent years, or decades of such torture.

That said, it is possible to use these techniques time and time again to remove a person from society, their employment, schooling, etc., without inducing a total collapse of brain functions or inducing psychosis.  An additional function is to shift the period that the target is awake so that experiments can be conducted without cohabitants witnessing the events and becoming suspicious.

Questions

Given these experiments are clearly being used to refine torture techniques, I am beginning to wonder what role the NSA has in this operation.  This does indeed seem more like a CIA requirement and indeed fits well with the history and purpose of such experimentation.

I typically felt that the NSA were primarily involved given the both the locations (i.e. members of Echelon) and the fact that this would fall under signals intelligence.  Not only that, but the integration with the brain is almost akin to code breaking which the NSA have specialized hardware to do.

But are the NSA in the torture game?  Do they extract information from targets?

This is more the purview of the CIA and indeed the use of this technology at Guantanamo Bay suggests CIA involvement.

If I had to nail it down at the moment, I would tend to go with a joint program between the CIA and NSA, with material support and cover from MI6 and GCHQ in the UK, CSEC and CSIS in Canada, ASIS and DSD in Australia and the SIS and GCSB in New Zealand.

This much is obvious, if any of these groups claim ignorance then they should all be fired for incompetence.  Each of these organizations have willfully allowed human experimentation within borders and assisted in the cover-up of the program.

The other major question that comes to mind is, why torture techniques?  I mean, if you can reconstruct thought and data mine an archive of thoughts, then why would you need to extract information?  At first glance, you may say to yourself, what if they don't have it on file, but that excuse doesn't fly when an A.I. can reconstruct your thoughts in real-time, even things you are trying to hide.

So, if we rule that out and we also accept the fact that dangerous elements can be remotely incapacitated, then were does this leave us.

We are back to control, only this time back to control via radio-based intimidation, rather than direct control of neural circuits.  Its obviously both a fall back position and a temporary stop gap measure until the A.I. can work out how to remotely control a person.

This leads us to only one conclusion, this is for wet jobs, disposable killers, controlling political elements or general populations, not intelligence gathering.

Further, given the monitoring that would be in place by any nation-state, it has been developed to target developing nations and domestic entities.