Alright Texas, we gotta talk about neurorights. Don’t think it matters? Tell that to Elon Musk, who is about to break ground on a new Neuralink lab in Austin. There are others as well, so let’s get into it.

At least four of the top brain-computer interface (BCI) companies have labs or manufacturing plants in Texas.

Despite this, Texas has not adopted any measures protecting neurorights, neurodata, and cognitive liberty.

Places that have already put neural privacy measures into place? Colorado, Montana, California, Connecticut, Chile, Spain, the United Nations, and others. Texas is clearly behind the game, yet the tech continues to accelerate.

Let’s look at some facts about BCI development in Texas.

While headquartered in California, Elon Musk’s Neuralink has a strong presence in Austin. If you’re looking for a job, their new Austin lab is currently hiring. Some of the positions available? A “veterinary pathologist and a surgeon to carry out experimental brain-computer interface procedures using human cadavers or large animal subjects.” Lovely.

Texas is also home to Paradromics (Austin headquarters), Precision Neuroscience (office in Addison), and Motif Neurotech (Houston headquarters). All of these companies are working on invasive and noninvasive BCI.

Additionally, Texas academia is fully entrenched in neurotech funded research. Just recently, researchers from the Thiel-funded Blackrock Neurotech collaborated with the University of Texas at Dallas (my alma mater) on a study about the electrochemical stability of invasive neural implants. Fortunately, the authors disclosed the conflict of interest.

All I’m saying here is that maybe we should keep an eye on neurotechnology development in the Lone Star State. Even better, we could look at ways to protect the neural data of our citizens.

The future is coming soon, y’all.