#chineseposting

So the sporting press read the same sources I did and decided it means that 1) a “Chinese government employee” obtained user data from FocusCalm wearable headsets, 2) including that of Leclerc and other top athletes, and 3) may be using them to develop “super soldier” tech. This is a pretty, erm, loose reading of the actual article. 

For some quick context, the FocusCalm is a wearable headset that purportedly measures and improves mental focus, and it’s popular among athletes. Reporters Torre and Koppelman definitely raised concerns about potential misuse of user data by the Chinese government. BrainCo, makers of the FocusCalm, does have close ties to military contractors and local governments in China. BrainCo has received funding from Chinese VCs, government funds, and military tech companies, and they’ve also worked closely with military contractors. Despite BrainCo’s claim to not store user data, the reporters use interviews with users, BrainCo’s privacy policy, and the device’s code to show that this claim is probably not true. With this raw user data, the reporters express concern that Chinese military contractors could develop improved BCI (brain-computer interface tech) for secret communication, fighting robots, surveillance, etc.

However, neither the Hunterbrook article nor Torre’s podcast episode claim that a “Chinese government employee” accessed the data. The closest piece of info I can find is that Chinese companies like BrainCo are required by law to share information with the government that the government deems relevant to national security. Torre and Koppelman raise concerns that the data COULD legally be used for military research, not that they’ve found proof that the data IS CURRENTLY being used in such a manner, or that the information was “breached” or stolen by a particular government employee. 

Additionally, the original reports don’t confirm that Leclerc even uses the device. (If you’ve seen him posting about the FocusCalm, do let me know.) Dr. Riccardo Ceccarelli, a top sports medicine doctor who works with Leclerc, has long integrated the FocusCalm into his training programs. Ceccarelli mentions elite tennis players Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek, and record-setting alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, as clients who have been helped using the FocusCalm. Ceccarelli has also used the FocusCalm as part of sim training for motorsport clients, so it's possible Leclerc has used the product. However, Leclerc is only named once in the article as one of Ceccarelli’s clients and is not even mentioned in the podcast. In the sports articles saying Leclerc’s data has “possibly” been stolen or that he “was named” in the report, the words “possibly” and “was named” are certainly doing heavy lifting. (Sidenote, Ceccarelli is, like, comically Italian. Literally compares being an athlete to cooking a carbonara and says that, with the help of the device, Jannik is better able to “cook.” Lol.)

The “super soldiers” thing is also blown a bit out of proportion. While Motorsport puts this claim in their headline, the actual reports only mention neural enhancement for actual humans once, which is, at least to me, what I was envisioning reading the term. In Torre’s podcast, Koppelman mostly uses the term “super soldier” to refer to humanoid military robots, which could be controlled by humans using BCI tech or run by AI trained on brain-wave data. The “could” is also doing A LOT of heavy lifting. Experts and even former BrainCo employees tell Koppelman and Torre that the data they get is pretty vague, especially given the device’s position on the outside of the brain, though advancements in AI processing could make it easier to decipher brain signals. 

I also somewhat doubt claims that China could use athlete data to improve physical performance, which is a concern actually mentioned in the original article. The brain data may give existing elite athletes a leg up, but being able to vaguely SEE an athlete’s neural patterns doesn’t necessarily mean that soldiers or robots will be able to COPY them, or that doing so would improve sharpness or physical performance. 

The long and short of it is, I highly suspect that the B-Tier reporters on the F1 beat didn’t even fully read the article and just threw Charles Leclerc and pictures of him looking hot and sad to generate engagement. 

Also, the parts of the Hunterbrook article that are actually concerning don’t have much to do with the sports stuff. It’s definitely concerning that companies and governments just casually have access to your EEG data, even if the tech is nowhere close to the level of mind reading or mind control. I am definitely worried about the tech’s military applications as well. Perhaps the most concerning use-case for this tech is in surveillance. FocusCalm headsets are allegedly being used in some schools in Ningxia province, likely being deployed as part of the government’s high-tech efforts to surveil their Muslim and ethnic minority citizens. Tech ethics professor Nita Farahany raises concerns that with only a few advancements, neural reading tech could be used to detect potentially disloyal citizens, perhaps by measuring a person’s emotional reaction to propaganda. 

The OTHER big elephant (or prancing horse, as it were) in the room is the potentially Sinophobic subtext of a lot of the reporting. The implication is that China is “stealing” info from “our” (Western) athletes for use against “us.” Not to say that the Chinese government isn’t a surveillance state, but Western governments (like my good old US of A) also love surveilling their citizens and creating high tech weapons.

Many of our tech firms (Palantir, Meta, Twitter) are in bed with the Trump admin. Tiktok US is going from Chinese ownership (scary, bad) to control by a pro-Trump billionaire (much better, apparently). European wearable company Oura recently announced a partnership with comically evil surveillance giant Palantir and the US Dept of Defense. Oura is an official partner of Red Bull and Aston F1 teams, and Charles has definitely used the device before… and yet, no pearl-clutching alarm about how the US government will use Charles’ biometrics to advance a crop of GMO corn fed American F1 drivers. (Oura has told users that they will not share their data with Palantir and the DoD, but that’s also what BrainCo said, and you can see how well that went.)

I also had some criticisms of the Hunterbrook and podcast coverage, though it is certainly more sound than the F1 press. The header image on Hunterbrook is literally Jannik Sinner’s headset being linked, among other things, to an image of China, with scary foreign Chinese text and a huge hammer and sickle above it.

The journalists also compare Neuralink favorably to BrainCo, with Koppelman noting on Torre’s podcast that Neuralink is helping paraplegics walk, while BrainCo is making military robots. I’m skeptical of this positive spin on Neuralink, given its fascist-saluting, right wing owner Elon Musk. I’m also a little suspicious of the reporters’ implication that the use of BCI for military and surveillance tech is largely a Chinese threat. The US military is also working on its own BCI tech, and I can’t scroll ten feet without hearing about how another US-based company is working on stealing my personal data or feeding my soul woodchipper style to an AI run by techno fascists.