Déjà Vu: What happens when the next frontier of technology is you?

During the Cold War, intelligence agencies in the United States and Europe explored so-called “mind-control” experiments using LSD, electroshock, and other methods now viewed as bizarre, cruel, and useless. Most were part of a CIA program called MK-Ultra, which ran from 1953 until 1973.

Its reach was astonishing. In one infamous case, an elephant named Tusko died after being injected with an enormous dose of LSD. Dolphins and countless dogs, cats, and rodents met similar fates. Human “subjects” suffered most. Many were psychiatric patients, prisoners, or unsuspecting civilians who were never told they were part of an experiment.

The goal was to discover how to control, erase, or rewrite the human mind. What the CIA called “behavioral modification” blurred quickly into torture. Decades later, declassified documents revealed that scientists funded through universities and hospitals had participated, often under vague contracts or front organizations. The line between curiosity and cruelty disappeared.

Lidiya’s memoir in Her Magic Mushroom Memoir revisits that unsettling history—and, perhaps, predicts its return. Today, technology has become more precise, more invisible, and maybe more effective at shaping how we think. Artificial intelligence can now track emotions, rewrite memories, and personalize persuasion. Non-invasive tools based on electromagnetic stimulation—originally tested to “selectively alter narrative structure and brain function”—have already moved from labs into clinics and marketing firms. (https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr/publications/mind-control-past-and-future)

It is a familiar pattern: a mixture of fear and fascination, of power dressed as progress. In the 1960s, CIA operations like Project CHAOS secretly spied on U.S. citizens involved in civil rights and antiwar movements, claiming to protect national security. Fifty years later, we face different tools but the same temptation—to monitor, predict, and influence human behavior in the name of safety or convenience.

Perhaps that is why the story feels like déjà vu. The stage, the cast, and the technology have changed, but the central question has not: when knowledge can be used to shape minds, who decides how far is too far?

Will we like the next act of this show?