‘Brainstorming’ conference

Press, 23 February 1987, Page 14

‘Brainstorming’ conference

NZPA-APSan Jose (California)

Researchers, futurists and science-fiction writers attending a United States Air Force “brainstorming” conference pondered such ideas as implanting computer chips into human brains and genetically altering pilots, it was reported.

American Air Force scientists have already implanted silicon chips in the brains of dogs in experiments aimed at giving human pilots “an extra sensing organ,” according to the “San Jose Mercury News.”

The concepts were broached at the "Futures Workshop” conducted two years ago for the United States Air Force’s Aeronautical Systems Division of Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. It included 30 Air Force members, 10 fiction writers and 10 futurists, according to a report ob-

tained by the newspaper. The report noted the ideas do not “reflect Air Force policy, plans or directions.” But the Air Force issued a second, unreleased report that included ideas from the conference deemed worth further study. “Consider, upon elistment into the Air Force, that future blue-suiters (pilots) could be genetically re-engineered to be a ‘better’ pilot — one in which superhuman capabilities have been added,” the workshop report said.

Other ideas included implanting computer chips into the brains of chimpanzees and using the animals as expendable pilot crews; growing human body parts; running * computers by thought waves; flinging meteors at naval targets; and designing biological “diseases” that could invade and “eat” enemy computers.