- good-enough understanding of the avian brain connectome & operation, such that all you need is a bunch of fine wires stuck in it, and a small CPU sending commands (local and remote operation, etc.)
It’s going to get interesting when the conspiracy theory becomes reality. Imagine the future historians browsing the Reddit archives going like, ”they knew!!“
What conspiracy? CIA had spy pigeons among other animals half a century ago, which is public info by now.[1]
They are very proud of it too.
> While many of the animal programs studied by CIA were never deployed operationally—or failed for a variety of technical, logistical, or behavioral reasons—collectively they demonstrate the incredible innovation and creative thinking that has come to characterize everything that our Directorate of Science and Technology does.
Every good conspiracy theory starts with a truth, I guess.
I had no idea about the CIA thing. I just always assumed the "birds aren't real" meme to be a way of showing how ridiculous the police state is going to become in the next decade or so as surveillance gets more and more weaponized against the people it was supposed to protect.
More likely that sensible mainstream journalists will laugh at people under Govt surveillance because they sound like the reddit conspiracy nuts from their youth...
