Cold war panic over communist brainwashing drove CIA investment in mind control research.

Evidence

The Senate investigation was triggered by a growing sense of public alarm at the spread of psychological techniques for behavior control. There were many points of origin, but most salient was the influence of the cold war and the range of psychological techniques and programs for behavior modification that it had bred. The Korean War had publicized communist “brainwashing” techniques that, according to then newly appointed CIA Director Allen Dulles, had reduced US prisoners of war to a state of robotic passivity, in which the victim’s brain “becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control.” America’s enemies appeared to be on the verge of mastering the art and science of “mind control” with psychological and pharmacological methods unknown to the US military. There were reports of Chinese and Soviet achievements in the remote alteration of a subject’s mental capacities and the elimination of his “free will.” Dulles committed the agency to rapid research in and development of “mind control” capabilities, from “de-patterning” and “rewiring” an individual to shaping an entire country’s attitudes and actions. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1006

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the earlier account of behavioral surplus as a form of behavioral prediction/control — the same dream of shaping individuals, now corporate rather than state. — connects to: The CIA reinterpreted Chinese brainwashing as Skinnerian operant conditioning on unpredictable reinforcement schedules. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1009; CIA’s interrogation techniques influenced by psychological experimentation. — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 81; Behavioral control technology reached civilian society under cover of cold-war and crime panics — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1016 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The CIA reinterpreted Chinese brainwashing as Skinnerian operant conditioning on unpredictable reinforcement schedules. #expands (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1009
• CIA’s interrogation techniques influenced by psychological experimentation. #expands (0.85) — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 81
• Behavioral control technology reached civilian society under cover of cold-war and crime panics #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1016