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The CIA's new tech doesn't make sense — Transcript

by Veritasium · 3,698 words · 516 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00- Could the CIA really track your heartbeat
0:02from kilometers away?
0:03On April 3rd, 2026,
0:05Iranian forces shot down an American fighter plane
0:08just over Isfahan.
0:10Inside were a pilot and a weapon system officer,
0:13and both ejected successfully.
0:16The US forces located the pilot quickly
0:18and rescued him only seven hours after the crash,
0:22but they couldn't rescue the weapon system officer.
0:24He landed elsewhere deep within hostile territory.
0:27And, worst of all, he was injured.
0:30With the Iranian forces on his tail,
0:32the officer needed to hide quickly,
0:33so he disappeared into the mountains.
0:39to rescue an aviator buried deep behind enemy lines.
0:43- Fortunately, the officer had a rescue beacon
0:45that could signal his location to the US.
0:48The problem was that he not only had to step out
0:50of his hiding spot to transmit the signal,
0:52Iran could potentially intercept it and get to him first.
0:55So he could only use the beacon sparingly.
0:57With enemy forces getting closer every hour,
1:00how is the US going to pinpoint his location
1:08in the middle of a desert.
1:09- [Gregor] A blind sweep of the entire area could take days
1:11or even weeks,
1:13but, surprisingly, just 40 hours after the crash,
1:15the US announced the officer was rescued.
1:18- Still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.
1:21- So how did they do it?
1:24Well, according to a New York Post article,
1:26the CIA deployed a futuristic device to rescue him.
1:29Reportedly they were able to detect the magnetic field
1:31produced by his heartbeat from kilometers away.
1:35Such a device would have to overcome the magnetic signatures
1:37from other soldiers, vehicles, and animals in the region,
1:40let alone Earth's magnetic field.
1:43It's like listening for a murmur in a crowd.
1:46So the technology was appropriately called Ghost Murmur.
1:51Immediately this kicked off a media frenzy.
1:53- Ghost Murmur.
1:54- This is science fiction. - Ghost Murmur.
1:56- Did you hear about what the CIA tech that they have
1:59called the Ghost Murmur.
2:00- Called the Ghost Murmur.
2:01- All of this sounds too good to be true,
2:03and there seemed to be no other sources
2:04beyond this New York Post article.
2:06So we dug deep to find out whether this supposed technology
2:10really exists and what its limits are.
2:12- I very rarely believe things I read in the New York Post.
2:17- Okay.
2:17- I find it extremely difficult to believe.
2:19- Many of these researchers in the NV diamond area,
2:22are having to sign NDAs.
2:23- The fact that the CIA is involved
2:25in leveraging technologies
2:27consistent with their mission and their charter.
2:29- So is Ghost Murmur fact or fiction?
2:34There are two lines in this New York Post article
2:36that hint at what this device can be.
2:38First, normally this signal is so weak
2:41that it can only be measured in a hospital setting
2:43with sensors pressed nearly against the chest,
2:46the source said.
2:47But advances in a field known as quantum magnetometry,
2:50specifically sensors built around microscopic defects
2:53in synthetic diamonds,
2:55have apparently made it possible
2:56to detect these signals at dramatically greater distances.
3:01We're gonna break this down bit by bit.
3:03First, does the heart actually create
3:05detectable magnetic fields?
3:07Second, what are these synthetic diamonds
3:09that could potentially detect them?
3:11And third, is it all possible at these distances?
3:15Let's start with a heart.
3:16Now, if you type heart magnetic field into Google Images,
3:19you will get a bunch of questionable-looking graphs.
3:24So is it a real thing?
3:26Well, whenever current flows through a conductor,
3:28it generates a magnetic field around it.
3:31And since our bodies run on electrical impulses
3:33traveling through neurons,
3:35our tissues and organs generate faint magnetic signals.
3:38But because the heart muscles fire in a coordinated way,
3:41the magnetic field they produce is
3:43the strongest in the body.
3:45It's around 50 to 100 pico Teslas,
3:4810 to 100 times more
3:49than the next strongest field produced by the brain.
3:53But even then, this is still a million times weaker
3:55than Earth's magnetic field.
3:57So it's no surprise that we only detected
3:59the magnetic field of the heart in 1963.
4:03It had to be done in a remote field
4:05away from the magnetic noise
4:06produced by lab equipment, elevators, and cars.
4:09And the setup had to be incredibly still.
4:12Even the slightest vibration
4:13of the detector would corrupt the measurement,
4:15not something that could work on a helicopter
4:17or a military drone.
4:19But, pretty soon, magnetometers got better.
4:22By the 1970s,
4:24we got superconducting quantum interference devices,
4:26or SQUIDs.
4:28These magnetometers were incredibly sensitive,
4:30detecting fields as weak as a few femto Tesla.
4:33To no surprise,
4:34the US military quickly strapped these SQUIDs
4:37to planes and helicopters,
4:38and they tried to use them
4:39to detect large magnetic signatures
4:41like submarines in the ocean.
4:44But the project never really picked up.
4:46Nonetheless, SQUIDs also made it easier
4:49to detect the heart's magnetic field, but with a key caveat.
4:52- They typically need to be operated
4:55under a very tightly controlled conditions,
4:58often inside of shielded rooms.
4:59They can't handle large dynamic range of background fields
5:03and electromagnetic interference.
5:04- Future magnetometers offered solutions,
5:07but they also had their own drawbacks.
5:09There were always issues with either shielding
5:11or sensitivity or dynamic range that made them impractical
5:15for detecting heartbeats out in the field.
5:18Until the 1990s when physicists started
5:21looking into diamonds that might eventually be able
5:23to sense magnetic fields
5:25while potentially getting around the drawbacks.
5:28- These new quantum magnetometers work
5:31at room temperature operation,
5:33and that's what's really exciting about them.
5:35They're also a solid state sensor,
5:37which, you know, can be very practical for some applications
5:41and can be made into like a more robust kind of sensor.
5:45- These are the diamonds
5:46mentioned in the New York Post article.
5:48So how do they work?
5:51Now, the overall coverage of the story is
5:53actually very interesting
5:54because this tech is supposedly classified.
5:57There's a lot of uncertainty
5:58about whether what's being reported is actually real.
6:01And depending on which outlet you see first,
6:03you might arrive at completely different conclusions.
6:05For example, if you saw this headline first,
6:07you might be really impressed with the technology,
6:10but this one you'd be a bit more skeptical,
6:12and the last one might not even make you care
6:14about the tech.
6:15So three headlines, three completely different conclusions,
6:19and that's where today's sponsor Ground News comes in.
6:21They're a website and an app
6:23designed to make reading the news easier
6:25and more data-driven.
6:26Each day they round up stories from thousands of outlets
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6:29and give you a visual breakdown of the story,
6:32including its political leaning, factuality rating,
6:35and even ownership,
6:37all backed by ratings
6:38from three independent media-monitoring organizations.
6:41In case of this Ghost Murmur story,
6:43you can see that it's been reported on by 65 sources,
6:46but the coverage is pretty lopsided.
6:48So if you only get your news from right-leaning outlets,
6:50there's a chance you've seen the story.
6:52But if you only get it from the left,
6:54there's a chance you haven't.
6:55And below that, you can also see the factuality rating
6:57and the ownerships of the sources.
6:59They also have this blind spot feature,
7:01which highlights stories like the Ghosts Murmur one
7:03that were under reported on
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7:07Staying up to date and well-informed
7:08with accurate information has almost become a full-time job.
7:12And that's where Ground News's approach is so valuable.
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7:17and you can see all of the information within moments,
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7:20So if you, like us at Veritasium, care
7:22about getting to the truth,
7:24you can go to ground.news/ve or scan this QR code
7:27and our link will get you 40% off their vantage plan.
7:30So I wanna thank Ground News
7:31for sponsoring this part of the video,
7:33and now let's go figure out
7:34how those diamonds actually detect magnetic fields.
7:37Well, for something to function as a magnetometer,
7:40it needs to respond to a magnetic field
7:41in a way that we can detect.
7:43Now, a pure diamond is just an ordered lattice
7:46of carbon atoms,
7:47so it doesn't react to magnetic fields in a meaningful way.
7:50But this changes
7:51when you start adding defects to the lattice.
7:54You can replace one of the carbon atoms in the lattice
7:56with, say, a nitrogen.
7:58And if you remove one of the carbons next to it completely,
8:01well, that creates a vacancy.
8:03This defect is called a nitrogen vacancy or an NV center.
8:08And these NV centers become particularly useful
8:11when they trap two unpaired electrons.
8:14That's because electrons have
8:16this intrinsic property called spin.
8:18A simple and flawed analogy is
8:20that spin is kind of like a tiny bar magnet
8:22that gives electrons their own magnetic signature
8:25and it can point either up or down.
8:28So when an electron is exposed
8:29to an external magnetic field,
8:32this magnetic signature will either align itself
8:34with the field or against it.
8:36Also note that particles that have no net spin
8:39will not respond to an external magnetic field.
8:43Now, the two trapped electrons can arrange their spins
8:45in the following way.
8:47They could both point up,
8:49which would give you a spin magnetic number of 1.
8:52They could both point down for a quantum number of -1,
8:56or they could point in opposite directions
8:58for a quantum number of 0.
9:00We'll denote this spin magnetic quantum number with ms,
9:04and it essentially acts as a bar magnet
9:06for the whole NV center.
9:08And just like for individual electrons,
9:10this bar magnet is also sensitive
9:13to external magnetic fields.
9:15So now that we've created a diamond
9:17that responds to magnetic fields, the challenge is,
9:20how do we measure this response to detect a heartbeat?
9:25Okay, so I reached out to experts
9:27to try and figure this out,
9:29but basically out of the 20 or so emails that I sent,
9:31I only got a few responses,
9:32but then I got an impromptu call from one of these experts
9:35who said that many of these researchers
9:37in the NV diamond area are having to sign NDAs.
9:40This is getting a lot more interesting.
9:42But with how secretive everyone was being,
9:43I had to use publicly available research.
9:46And I think the key idea is to figure out
9:49how diamonds respond to magnetic fields,
9:51you have to use light.
9:53When you shine light at an atom,
9:55the atom can either absorb the light or ignore it.
9:58An absorbed photon of light will excite an electron
10:00within the atom to a higher energy level.
10:03You can think of these energy levels as discrete platforms
10:06that the electrons can jump between,
10:07just like in a video game.
10:09All atoms of the same element, for example, carbon,
10:12have the same energy levels
10:14when the atoms are far enough apart.
10:16But when you bring them together,
10:18like inside a diamond lattice, their energy levels shift.
10:21They come together to form a series
10:23of closely spaced energy levels or an energy band.
10:27Now, an electron will only ever absorb a photon
10:31if the photon has enough energy
10:32to move the electron across the gap to a higher band.
10:36This gap between the last electron occupied band
10:39and the first empty band above it is called the band gap.
10:43In a pure diamond, it's big.
10:45It's around 5.5 electron volts,
10:47which means that only ultraviolet photons have enough energy
10:51to excite the electrons.
10:53All lower energy light, including visible light,
10:55will mostly be ignored by the diamond and just pass through.
10:58This is why a perfect pure diamond is transparent.
11:02It doesn't absorb any of the light,
11:03but if you start adding defects,
11:05they disrupt that organized lattice.
11:08The defects unlock different energy levels.
11:10Secret platforms within this band gap
11:12for nearby electrons to jump to.
11:15A boron defect, for example,
11:16creates a low energy level at only 0.37 electron volts.
11:21This is a platform that electrons can jump to
11:23by absorbing infrared or red light.
11:25And with enough boron defects,
11:27a significant amount of red light gets absorbed this way.
11:31The rest of the visible spectrum mostly makes it through.
11:34So without this red, the diamond appears blue.
11:37Similarly, a nitrogen vacancy defect unlocks
11:40other secret platforms.
11:42And these can help us detect
11:43how the NV center responds to a magnetic field.
11:47At first glance, it looks like the nitrogen vacancy
11:50generates a few unique levels,
11:51and these are exclusive
11:53to the two unpaired electrons trapped within the defect.
11:56But if you look closer at, for example, the lowest level,
12:00you'll notice that it actually contains
12:02three closely spaced but separate energy levels.
12:05The second and third levels are actually at the same height,
12:08but will draw them separately.
12:10And the fact that there are three isn't a coincidence.
12:13Remember, the NV center can adopt one of three ms numbers,
12:170, -1, or 1,
12:19depending on how the spins
12:21of the two electrons inside are arranged.
12:23If you think of the two spins as bar magnets,
12:26the most relaxed, lowest energy way for them to sit is this,
12:30one pointing up and the other down.
12:33This is analogous to the ms = 0 state,
12:35which is why it has the lowest energy.
12:38Forcing both magnets to point down together or up together,
12:41like the ms = 1 or -1 states requires more energy.
12:45They oppose you.
12:47So these two states are
12:48at an equal, slightly higher energy sub level.
12:51These differences are tiny.
12:53Jumping from the 0 to the +/-1 levels requires
12:55only a small amount of energy.
12:57A microwave photon of 10.4 centimeters will be enough.
13:01Now, these secret energy platforms
13:03of NV centers were mapped out by the '90s.
13:06But for a long time,
13:07no one thought to use them as magnetometers.
13:09- There was a decade before the light bulb went on
13:12for a bunch of us to think about them as sensors.
13:14It takes a mindset switch to think differently.
13:17And once you do, you realize,
13:18"Oh my goodness, this could be useful."
13:21- So let's apply a magnetic field to this diamond
13:24and see what happens.
13:25If we slowly turn up the field strength,
13:28you'll see that the +1 and -1 levels are starting to shift.
13:32To understand why,
13:33we can use a compass needle as an analogy.
13:36Naturally, a compass needle will align itself
13:38with the magnetic field of the Earth.
13:41And this is the lowest energy relaxed state
13:44that the needle can be in.
13:46And it's analogous to the behavior of the system
13:48in the ms = -1 state,
13:51which is why its energy level drops slightly.
13:54But if ms = 1, the system flips.
13:57This would be like taking an external magnet
14:00and applying it to this compass needle,
14:02flipping it 180 degrees.
14:04And then if I'm careful in retracting this magnet,
14:07I can actually get the needle to stay in this place.
14:11And this is the highest energy this needle can have
14:14sitting in this unstable position.
14:17Now if I tap it, it will actually go back.
14:19It's possible, but it's a higher energy state.
14:22So the ms = 1 level slightly rises.
14:26And if ms = 0, it doesn't react to the field,
14:28which is why this level hasn't changed.
14:31Now, if you keep turning up the magnetic field strength,
14:34you'll notice that the levels get further and further apart.
14:37This phenomenon is called Zeeman splitting.
14:39It's described by a simple formula
14:41that gives you a direct link between the energy split
14:44and the magnetic field strength.
14:46So in the presence of a periodic magnetic field
14:48like that generated by the heart,
14:50we would theoretically see a rhythmic separation
14:53of these lines.
14:55And these two energy levels absorb light
14:57at two different microwave wavelengths,
15:00which change depending on the strength of the field.
15:03So what we can actually measure is
15:05which microwave wavelengths the diamond is absorbing.
15:08When there's no magnetic field,
15:09the levels are fused and produce a single absorption line
15:12at the wavelength of 10.4 centimeters.
15:15But when there's an external magnetic field,
15:17they produce two separate absorption lines.
15:20Now, we've simplified it a bit,
15:22but by measuring how spaced apart these lines are,
15:25you get the field strength.
15:27This is how an NV diamond magnetometer works.
15:30Was the diamond magnetometer ever used
15:32to detect a heartbeat?
15:33- So what has been done for sure is, you know,
15:35for certain is detection
15:37of magnetic fields generated by neurons.
15:39Yeah, I mean, which is to some extent connected
15:42to the heartbeat question.
15:44Neuron activity, to my knowledge,
15:45has been first seen in 2015.
15:48- Okay, well, that's, wow, that's impressive.
15:52So could it pick up a heartbeat from kilometers away?
15:55Well, in 2022, researchers were able
15:57to pick up the magnetic field of a rat's heart,
16:00but it was done using a thoracotomy,
16:02which means the rat's chest was open
16:04and the diamond was less than two millimeters away
16:06from the heart.
16:08Okay, but the human heart produces
16:10a stronger magnetic field.
16:11And the tech, the CIA might have deployed,
16:13could be decades ahead of what is publicly known.
16:16You're former CIA operations officer
16:18and you've worked in the Middle East, right?
16:21So what was your first reaction to this news?
16:24- Well, the fact that the CIA's involved
16:27in leveraging technology is consistent
16:30with their mission and their charter.
16:32But I defer to smarter people in engineering
16:34and science like yourself
16:35to figure out the exact technique that might be used.
16:39But the processes, of course, are consistent
16:41for what we've done.
16:42- We can't say for sure whether the CIA has this tech,
16:45but we can use physics to estimate
16:46how sensitive it would need to be.
16:49Well, the strength of a magnetic field falls off
16:51with the cube of the distance from the source.
16:54So if the magnetic field of the heart
16:55when measured at the chest is 50 pico Tesla,
16:59or 5 times 10 to the -11 Tesla,
17:01well, then just 100 meters away,
17:04this falls off by a factor of a billion
17:06to 5 times 10 to the -20 Tesla.
17:09And at 50 to 100 kilometers,
17:11this could drop to as little as 10 to the -30 Tesla.
17:15- The most sensitive measurement ever made
17:18at the frequencies that the human heartbeat work at is
17:22at the 10 to the -15 Tesla level.
17:25And that's in a shielded room.
17:27So you'd need a system
17:29that is 15 orders of magnitude more sensitive
17:32than the superconducting quantum interference devices
17:36and 18 orders of magnitude more sensitive
17:40than diamond NV sensors.
17:43- 18 orders of magnitude is a lot, sounds quite unfeasible.
17:47- It's not like the hills of Iran are devoid of animal life.
17:52They also have heartbeats
17:54and possibly larger hearts than humans.
17:56- There's also the magnetic field of the drone
17:59or the helicopter the device might be mounted on.
18:02And, finally, there's the fact
18:03that a magnetic field of 10 to the -30 Tesla is weaker
18:07than a magnetic field an electron will give you
18:10a meter away.
18:11- The New York Post is notoriously a very good place
18:15for amusing fiction.
18:16- On the day before we saw this article,
18:20we also saw an article
18:21about how they had a technology where it was a beeper.
18:28and that was one way that they were able to detect him.
18:34And these are things that we know about already.
18:37We also know that there may well have been
18:40other intelligence methods used,
18:44but this isn't really necessary.
18:45- And then that brings you to the point of like,
18:48why would they make this up?
18:50- I think New York Post is known to print a lot of stuff.
18:53- I'm not a real fan of the credibility
18:57of the press to report things,
18:59having seen reality and then seeing what the press reports.
19:02- How about deception stories
19:04and like false narratives published by not only the CIA,
19:07but other agencies?
19:09Is this often the case?
19:11- If you look historically,
19:12the idea of fooling your enemy,
19:15particularly when you have some vulnerability to protect,
19:19goes back thousands of years.
19:20- During World War II,
19:22German bombers frequently attacked Britain at night.
19:25And to retaliate, the British would fly up to intercept
19:27and somehow kept finding these bombers in the dark
19:30and would attack them.
19:32Now, UK officials told the press
19:33that the pilots were able to do this
19:35because they ate a lot of carrots,
19:37which was improving their vision at night.
19:39But some experts believe
19:41that this was actually a cover story
19:42meant to distract the Germans
19:44from the fact the British installed radars on their planes.
19:47- Is that where the idea
19:49that carrots give you good eyesight comes from?
19:52- I think so.
19:53I think this is the original, yeah, the original myth.
19:55- That is crazy. - Yeah.
19:57- But, okay, there's one thing that still bothers me.
20:00If this is likely fake,
20:02then why is everyone saying no comment
20:04and declining to talk?
20:06There must be something here, you know?
20:08- Well, these NV centers and diamonds are also used
20:10for quantum computing.
20:11But the more interesting,
20:13probably confidential way they could be used is
20:16as navigation devices.
20:17The Earth's magnetic field creates a unique pattern
20:21all across the globe.
20:22- Then to place an object into this map,
20:26and if you know all of these perturbations
20:30and in homogeneities,
20:31you can infer where you are
20:33without having any GPS reception anymore.
20:36- With the rise of GPS spoofing
20:39and jamming over the last couple of years,
20:41that could be incredibly powerful.
20:43So NV magnetometers do exist with these synthetic diamonds,
20:47and they do have potential military applications.
20:50It's just that detecting heartbeats kilometers away
20:53probably isn't one of them.
20:58I wanna give a shout-out
20:59to a great Scientific American article
21:01on this story by Deni Béchard
21:03that initially expressed skepticism in Ghost Murmur
21:06as a potential technology.
21:08It's a great read and you check it out.

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