Chinese firm accused of stealing Charles Leclerc brain data
Charles Leclerc has shared his thoughts.
A Chinese firm has been accused of stealing brain data from elite athletes, including Ferrari race winner Charles Leclerc, for military purposes.
This is a claim made by the Hunterbrook portal and journalist Pablo Torre.
BrainCo called the report “unsubstantiated speculation”
BrainCo is a neurotechnology company that started in Harvard in 2015, staffed by MIT and Harvard scientists, that according to Torre is backed by Chinese government-linked entities.
And they’ve been using data obtained from a list of elite athletes that is being used to train soldiers of the future.
A list that includes Ferrari race winner Leclerc, tennis’ World No.2 player Jannik Sinner, the Italian Olympic teams, Manchester City players, and even the USA Olympic teams.
All of the above have made use of a FocusCalm electronic headband, which is a device used as headphones to train the mind to focus and concentrate while collecting and analysing brain wave data.
According to Formula Medicine’s Dr. Riccardo Ceccarelli, who is also one of BrainCo’s highest-profile customers, brain data from the athletes is then saved onto the “cloud”.
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This was denied by a spokesperson for BrainCo, who insisted that all the data was “purged from the application at the conclusion of each use”.
However, given that BrainCo allegedly has links with three of the ‘Seven Sons of National Defense’, Chinese universities whose students were barred from USA graduate programs because of their alleged ties to the military, it has raised concerns.
Duke University professor Nita Farahany told Hunterbrook, “What people had labeled as noise can now be part of the signal.
“Even old signals, if they were collected in raw format, could now be processed with more advanced AI techniques to start to decode more and more from what they’ve collected in the past.
“You should never look at technology in isolation,” she added. “China’s investment in BCI [brain-computer interface] together with cognitive warfare together with humanoid robots — this is a huge play.”
BrainCo, however, denied any collaboration with the Chinese military.
Asked about these alleged connections, BrainCo denied that its technology is being used for military purposes.
“We have implemented stringent compliance measures that explicitly require our customers not to use or transfer our technology for prohibited end-uses or to prohibited end-users, including military applications,” said a spokesperson.
BrainCo refused to answer follow up questions, accusing Hunterbrook of making allegations that “contain erroneous biases and numerous misrepresentations that fundamentally mischaracterize our work and mission” and claimed the report was full of “unsubstantiated speculation” and “false information”.
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