Brain Warfare and the Malleable Mind: Experiments in the Programmable Subject

Abstract: This article examines mid-century mind control experiments—carried out by intelligence services like MK-Ultra and the CIA—as biopolitical strategy. This analysis has two main goals: first, to build theory at the boundaries of biopolitical research, examining the conditions under which something like a “programmable subject” can emerge; and second, to reframe a key episode in the scientific management of the US population. In service of these aims, the article builds upon theories of anatomo-politics and dividuated biopower to analyze how subjects are governed via the manipulation of their data-processing faculties. This method of governmentality targets the subject by pre-processing its data inputs and commands, thus managing its conduct at a pre-ideological, sub-representational level. To illustrate, we analyze how this subject appeared in the CIA’s psychochemical experiments with LSD, hypnosis, “truth serums,” and other methods of behavioral management.