Scuderia Ferrari Formula One driver Charles Leclerc’s name has appeared in a brainwave data breach following an investigation. It is alleged that China might have stolen brainwave data through a focus-training headband. The data could later be used for military supersoldier research, raising alarms about the safety of such devices.
Journalist Pablo Torre reported a six-month investigation by Hunterbrook Media in partnership with PTFO, which explains how FocusCalm’s parent company, BrainCo, was funded by businesses with links to the Chinese government for nearly ten years. The company then moved to China to allegedly train super-soldiers.
A Chinese government employee reportedly extracted software data from the headbands that the athletes used, including Leclerc. Elaborating on his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, Torre explained:
“I want to establish that this headband that I was just wearing, called the FocusCalm, is not just like a random thing. It is actually incredibly popular in the world of sports because it enables athletes to track their brainwaves for performance reasons.
“You can see when you’re calm, when you’re stressed, ‘you can get in the zone’ is what the whole advertising around this is.”
He added:
“These aren’t just like any athletes: we’re talking about Italy’s famously focused Jannik Sinner, who trains with the FocusCalm. We’re talking about the former number one women’s tennis player in the world, Iga Swiatek, who is using it every day. The number one alpine skier of all time, American gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin, who uses it as also a bunch of English Premier League soccer players do.”
Hunterbrook’s Sam Koppelman explained how BrainCo moved to China and became one of the most important companies for the Chinese Communist Party. He said:
“In recent years, BrainCo has largely shut down its US operation. Moved to China where it’s now going public at that $1.3billion valuation, and it has quietly become one of the most important companies in the world to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.”
When asked if China was using the data to train its athletes, sports physician Dr. Riccardo Ceccarelli, who worked with the Ferrari driver, explained how it could be used by the military. He said:
“Yes, absolutely. Yes. We are still in contact with them now because they did also a device which is more wearable and that we can use in different experiment with aviation, with the military, because obviously the device has to be wearable and comfortable. So it is a synergy, is a project that is running since many years and obviously BrainCo was really, really supporting us.”
It remains unclear if the athletes who used the headband are aware of how their brainwave data is being used. Some notable names that were featured in the report include NFL player Logan Ryan, touring car racer Néstor “Bebu,” athletes from the US Olympic weightlifting and bobsleigh teams, unnamed Manchester City footballers, and members of Italy’s Olympic teams.
Legal ethicist from Duke Law School, Nita Farahany, explained what China could do with the data. She said:
“It’s probably useful to look at the broader context of a lot of information that’s come out about China’s investments in brain-computer interface more recently, which then makes you think ‘okay well why is China investing so significantly into brain-computer interface devices?’ Clearly it has some military component to it, some dual use component to it.”
“Maybe BrainCo is part of the pathway, either to distribute it internationally and be able to collect biometrics from individuals in other places, and/or to be able to develop brain interface technology that is using these devices to be able to share commands. For example, within the military, or to be able to communicate with a device in an incredibly secure and very difficult to intercept manner.”