“NEURINT” and Neuroweapons - Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense - page 94

pointed out that although “biometric technology recognizes the fact that bodies
are indeed biographies, it hardly offers an outlet for listening to those biographies”
(Ajana 2010); on the other hand, NEURINT accesses the interaction between the
“story” and the “attribute” (or the “who” and the “what”) represented by an indi-
vidual's narrative and biometric data. An important factor here is the assumption
that relationships between biometric patterns and neural activity are individualis-
tic; thus, the utility in understanding these variables is not to identify the “what”
of a person (e.g., typing or categorizing, or otherwise reducing according to pat-
terns digital data), but instead, is to be found in recognizing their contingency (e.g.,
between the brain, body, and biography). In other words, it invokes the comment of
Mordini and Ottolini (2007) that “[b]ody requires mind, not in the trivial sense that
you need a neurological system to animate the body, but in the profound sense that
the very structure of our body is communicational [. . .] We do not just need words.
We are words made flesh.”
By first cross-correlating putative neural mechanisms subserving both experi-
ences and an individual's biometric patterns, NEURINT collection shifts the process
from one of “reading” (off) the body to one of “listening” (in)to the body. Biometric
analyses alone are often used to verify identification and thus “reduce singularity
and uniqueness to sameness” (Ajana 2010). A complementary understanding of
the relationships of biometrics (as well as the embodied experiences they reflect)
to neurological signals prevents the inadvertent “reduction of the story to its attri-
butes.” This requires that any biometric or behavioral indicators that are collected
and analyzed (with an aim to draw inferences about subjective phenomena in target
populations) must first be studied using rigorous research methods to establish a
neural framework for understanding such phenomena.
On the other hand, the analysis of NEURINT is also inextricable from
influences afforded by the social, cultural, and psychological milieu of the indi-
vidual analyst(s) (as well as the target subject[s]). Therefore, as an analysis tool,
NEURINT does not yield products with predictive validity that can be considered
independently. However, its outcomes do dynamically enhance analysis and util-
ity of HUMINT and SIGINT/COMINT (of which NEURINT may be consid-
ered to be essentially comprised.) This is due to the fact that the analyst's own
cognitive filters are subject to the neurobiological effects of cultural norms and
narratives. By its contingent nature, NEURINT engages the analyst in a herme-
neutic, interpretive process that neither seeks nor attains a stable meaning for the
data, but instead maintains an open process of reinterpretation and expandability.
At first glance, this seems to negate its utility as a source of actionable intel-
ligence. Yet it is this process by which NEURINT remains irreducible to neural
or biometric phenomena or (conversely) to any purely subjective construct. Thus,
it has a unique essence that renders it a distinct form of intelligence. Furthermore,
given that the complex human domain into which it seeks to provide operationally
relevant insight entails similarly unstable, open processes. NEURINT is revealed
as both agile and flexible. This is due to its constructive nature, which confers
the advantage of novel ways to (1) mitigate the analyst's (sociocultural) biases
and/or (2) compensate for ways that the analyst's own narratives and identity