Dual-use and neurosecurity policy
The security and policy dimension of neurotech: technologies developed for medicine or research that can also serve surveillance, coercion, interrogation, or weaponization. Concerns include non-consensual state or employer access to neural data, manipulation, and military programs pursuing nonsurgical read-and-write interfaces.
Governance tools under discussion include dual-use research-of-concern oversight, export controls, and the explicit inclusion of neurotech in security and human-rights policy. NATO and defense communities have discussed 'cognitive warfare' as a contested framing, though much of it targets the broad information environment and behavior rather than direct neural interfaces.
Intellectual honesty is essential here. A great deal of 'mind-control weapon' discourse is speculative or sensationalized. The credible near-term risks are more mundane and more likely — coercive access to neural data, workplace or state monitoring, and biased or unsafe deployment — than any science-fiction neuroweapon.