“Long Bets
RCH #2: By 2030

The Prediction:
The great contest of the 21st century ? the individual vs. society and the state ? will progress much past my 2020 Long Bets Prediction of effective computerized individual citizen profiling, with the full maturation of the nascent, but extremely promising studies of brain, mind and personality as revealed by the many different brain scanning devices now being intensively studied and developed.
These scans - and their related psychologic, psychiatric, and sociologic fields interpreting them and giving them function ? will gain great utility as the ultimate lie detectors. But they will go much beyond the simple lie detector in that they will reveal the workings of the mind in such a way that the mind will be made malleable and reshapable in manners currently thought inconceivable (see my Long Bets Prediction #3).”

The Argument:
Citizen profiling is performed in an attempt to know that citizen?s mind in order to predict future destructive behavior; it?s all about trying to glean a mind?s intention. In this day of stealth, encryption, and WMD in the hands of individual citizens and visitors, society must also know her individuals? intentions.
As stated above, my 2020 Long Bets Prediction addressed only surveillance and profiling of individuals. The full assessment and absolute guarantee of ?friendliness,? however, could only be made with full psychiatric monitoring of the dangerous mind. New technologic frontiers, mostly relating to increasingly sophisticated brain scans, are promising much for the future. Now, this may sound intrusive and illegal, and it is, but if we lose Indianapolis to a nuke, the laws will change.
We must remember that at times in Russia political deviancy has been considered a psychiatric problem; in times of suitcase-size nuclear warheads, certain political deviancies revealed by the scans might very well be considered validly psychiatric, publicly condemnable, and ?medically? treatable.
If a brain scan can locate the bomb, we will scan the brain.