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.
In a video shown at the event, a monkey with its hands restrained uses the interface to move a robotic arm and grasp a strawberry. The system, developed by NeuCyber NeuroTech and the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, involves soft electrode filaments implanted in the brain, according to state-run news media outlet Xinhua.
Researchers in the US have tested similar systems in paralyzed people to allow them to control robotic arms, but the demonstration underscores China’s progress in developing its own brain-computer interface technology and vying with the West.
Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, gather and process brain signals to often enable direct control of an external device, like a robotic arm, keyboard, or smartphone. In the US, a group of startups, inclusive of Elon Musk’s Neuralink, are aspiring to commercialize this technology.
According to William Hannas, the lead analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), China is swiftly progressing to match the US in terms of BCI technology. He states that the Asian superpower is strongly motivated and undertaking state-of-the-art work that’s as advanced as any globally.
He indicates that China has generally been trailing behind the US in invasive BCIs, those that are embedded in or on the brain’s surface, but has chosen to focus on noninvasive technology worn on the head. However, It’s quickly catching up on implantable interfaces, which are being explored for medical uses.
Even more worrying is China’s interest in noninvasive BCIs for the general population. Hannas coauthored a report published in March that studies Chinese research on BCIs for nonmedical applications.
“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. A translation of the guidelines by CSET says, “Nonmedical purposes such as attention modulation, sleep regulation, memory regulation, and exoskeletons for augmentative BCI technologies should be explored and developed to a certain extent, provided there is strict regulation and clear benefit.”
The translated Chinese guidelines continue to specify that BCI technology should avoid substituting or weakening human decision-making capabilities “before it is proven to surpass human levels and gains societal consensus, and avoid research that significantly interferes with or blurs human autonomy and self-awareness.”
These nonmedical applications pertain to wearable BCIs that rely on electrodes positioned on the scalp, otherwise known as electroencephalography or EEG devices. Electrical signals from the scalp are considerably more challenging to interpret than those from inside the brain. There’s a major effort in China to use machine learning techniques for enhanced analysis of brain signals, states the CSET report.
A few US companies are also developing wearable BCIs that could arguably be classified as cognitive enhancement. For instance, Emotiv of San Francisco and Neurable in Boston are beginning to sell EEG headsets meant to enhance attention and focus. The US Department of Defense has also funded research on wearable interfaces that could ultimately allow control over cyber-defense systems or drones by military personnel.
Juliane Bergmann
Julian Chokkattu
Charlie Wood
David Gilbert
But Margaret Kosal, associate professor of international affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology, says there’s a key difference between how the US and China approach BCI research. “The US has not explicitly linked our civilian science with our military research,” she says. “China’s strategy fundamentally links the military and the commercial, and that is why there is concern.”
She points to the US BRAIN Initiative, which was launched in 2013 with a focus on basic research and clinical applications. It has since funded substantial work on BCIs for people with paralysis and blindness. China launched its own brain project in 2016 with the goals of developing technologies both for diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders and also for mimicking human intelligence and connecting humans and machines.
In a paper published last year, Kosal argued that China is more likely to widely adopt BCI technologies in the commercial and military sectors due to its government structure, sociocultural norms, and because its neuroscience research goals are closely aligned with its military goals.
She says earlier adoption of BCIs could have implications for US national security if these technologies are able to provide cognitive enhancement in warfighters and merging of human and machine intelligence. “If that is something that a state can weaponize, that would change the nature of warfare,” she says.
Justin Sanchez, a technical fellow at the nonprofit research organization Battelle, says it shouldn’t be surprising that another country could pull ahead in the BCI race. If that happens, the US could be at a disadvantage, he says. “If we do not understand the medical uses and have those technologies available here in the United States, then the control goes somewhere else, and the same holds true on the national security side.”
