China unveils plan for 'zombie' BRAIN CHIPS to rival Elon Musk's Neuralink

CHINA has entered the race to implant brain chips into human skulls in a bid to take on Elon Musk's Neuralink.

The country has unveiled a hair-raising timeline for the development of what it calls a 'brain-computer interface' – and aims to have products on the market as early as 2025.

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China's brain chip shakeup comes as Musk announced that the first Neuralink brain chip has been successfully implanted in a human skull.

The billionaire said preliminary results from the human test subject are promising.

And now China's announcement – ​​following the lead of the Tesla boss – could potentially set off the biggest global technology rivalry of this decade.

China called the “brain-computer interface” one of its “innovative iconic products,” according to the press release from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Monday.

It says the country plans to develop a range of 'brain interface products' in the coming years, much like Neuralink's Telepathy.

“[China] The aim is to achieve breakthroughs in key technologies and core devices such as brain-computer fusion, brain-like chips and neural models for brain computers,” the Chinese ministry added.

Last year, the Chinese government opened a laboratory with 60 employees that focused entirely on brain-machine interfaces. Gizmodo reports.

The lab is reportedly aimed at turning extensive brain chip research into practical applications – to rival Musk's Neuralink, according to South China Morning Post.

Researchers in China have apparently developed a computing device that connects to your brain through the inner ear.

Although this device works without a chip implant – like Neuralink's Telepathy – it can still send data directly to the human brain.

China says it hopes to use such advanced brain technology in self-driving cars, virtual reality and medical rehabilitation – a cumulative vision Musk first put forward in 2017.

However, experts argue that China could use such technological implants and weaponize them to spy on their own people.

Meanwhile, some critics of the technology argue that such products will be falsely marketed as a solution to all problems – and that disrupting human biology with such technological implants could turn people into zombies.

Dr. Mikhail Lebedev, a senior neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, said: “It is even possible that 'humanity' will evolve into a community of zombies.”

Elon Musk's Neuralink timeline

Founded in 2016, Neuralink is Elon Musk's most ambitious project that aims to break down the biological barrier between the human brain and big tech.

Musk's company initially hired a number of experts in fields such as neuroscience, biochemistry and robotics to develop a chip that could be implanted in the skull.

In April 2017, Neuralink announced that it wanted to create devices to treat serious brain diseases in the short term, with the ultimate goal of human enhancement.

In April 2021, Neuralink shocked the world with a video of a macaque known as Pager with one of the chips playing Pong.

The animal was seen manually using a joystick and then operating it only with its mind through a wireless connection to the chip.

Neuralink reportedly implanted Bluetooth chips in the brains of several monkeys to see if they could communicate with computers through a small receiver.

In November 2023, the company said it was looking for paralyzed people under the age of 40 to participate in the human trials.

Neuralink received FDA approval for its first human clinical trials in May, with the company initially looking to test on 10 people, although that number has since changed to six.

The brain chip has a thousand electrodes and hopes to help people perform computer functions wirelessly by simply thinking through a 'think-and-click' mechanism.

It was announced on Monday that the first Neuralink brain chip has been successfully implanted in the human skull, marking a successful human trial.

The Tesla boss said the first Neuralink product is called Telepathy.