RealClearMarkets – The FDA Reluctantly Approves Google Implant

By Llib Azzerf

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced its granting of conditional approval to Google’s direct neural interface for implantation in Americans. Google Implant™ remains banned in the European Union, with its approval marked by protests and controversy in the United States. U.S. regulators apparently buckled under pressure from trade negotiators worried that an “implant gap” could imperil U.S. competitiveness due the product’s fast-growing popularity in China, where it has enabled Chinese entrepreneurs, executives, and diplomats to wirelessly access and search the Internet using only their thoughts.

Google Implant is the only commercially successful product to grow out of the $3 billion Brain Activity Map Initiative (BRAIN) launched by the Obama administration a decade ago. Initially developed to help disabled individuals control their motorized wheelchairs, Google Implant is comprised of a small array of nano-electrodes implanted directly into a patient’s visual cortex and linked to an external power pack and Wi-Fi transceiver. When researchers learned they could project the World Wide Web directly onto the brain with search queries directed by sub-vocalized commands, rogue Google X researchers working out of the tech giant’s Shanghai skunkworks took the research in a new direction.

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