Would You Let Elon Musk Into Your Mind? The Truth Behind Neuralink’s Brain Chips

May 14

Elon Musk doesn’t just want to send rockets to Mars.
He wants to put chips in people’s heads.

By 2026, Neuralink says a thousand of them could be ticking away under human skulls.
The surgery would take about ten minutes.
The cost would be about the same as an Apple Watch.

Sounds simple, right? A little too simple?
Because what he’s really selling isn’t a gadget, it’s a new way of being human.

So…What Is Neuralink, Anyway?

Let’s start simple. Neuralink is Musk’s latest obsession, a brain-computer interface.
A chip, smaller than a coin, that can read your neural signals and send them…somewhere else.

In plain English: it’s a way to make your thoughts talk to machines.

The possibilities sound like a mash-up of science fiction headlines:

Move a prosthetic arm just by thinking.
Restore sight to the blind.
Help someone paralyzed walk again.
Silence seizures before they even start.
Ease depression by rewiring the brain’s own circuits.
Maybe even replay memories like a video file.

And then there are the even wilder promises: download a new language in seconds, or connect your mind directly to the internet!

At its heart, Neuralink isn’t just about fixing broken things.
It’s about making us “upgradable.” Turning biology into software.
Making the human mind play nice with AI.

Brains, Bargain-Priced

Only Elon Musk would try to sell brain surgery the way Apple sells wrist candy.
Neuralink’s target price isn’t some unreachable six-figure medical bill.
It’s about $1,000…the cost of a new iPhone or a shiny Apple Watch Ultra.

That’s deliberate.

Call it marketing genius or just classic Musk showmanship, but price something like a gadget and suddenly it feels like one.
A brain chip stops sounding like surgery and starts sounding like an accessory.
Something you show off, something you upgrade when the next version drops, not life (or quality of life) altering surgery.

But here’s the catch, this isn’t a wearable. You can’t put it back in the box when you’re done.

This is your brain.

The very thing that makes you…you.

Neuralink wants to make it seem ordinary: a ten-minute procedure, a perfectly steady robot hand, a tiny coin-sized chip. But no matter how easy they say it is, it’s hard not to feel the tingle of sci-fi running up your spine.

Because when brain surgery starts looking like a tech launch, you have to wonder: are we upgrading our lives, or auctioning off the last private space we have left?

The Quickest Surgery You’ll Ever Have

Neuralink doesn’t picture white coats or hospital beds. They picture a literal robot.
A sleek machine that buzzes gently with electricity while it opens your skull and slides a chip into place.

The promise is ten minutes, no anesthesia, no overnight stay. You’d be home before your dinner reservation, except now you’d have a computer living in your brain.

Sounds efficient.

This isn’t like replacing a phone battery or installing a new screen protector. This is the seat of your consciousness. The place where memory, identity, and personality all hide. What happens if the robot slips? Or if the chip fails? Or if Neuralink pushes a firmware update that goes sideways?

The risks may be statistically small, but small isn’t zero. A glitch in your phone is annoying.
A glitch in your mind is something else entirely.

And then there’s consent.
Informed consent is easy to say out loud, harder to guarantee when early adopters are desperate: the blind hoping to see, the paralyzed hoping to walk. Hope can blur that fine print.

This is not a cosmetic upgrade in any way. It isn’t like choosing a shinier phone with the better camera lense. It’s neural invasion, dressed up in the language of convenience.

The potential is huge, yes. But so is the gamble.

Healing the Brain vs. Hacking It

There’s a big difference between fixing what’s broken and rewriting what works fine on its own.

On one path, Neuralink could change medicine forever. A paralyzed person typing with thought alone. Someone with ALS finding their voice again. A patient with Parkinson’s controlling their body, not the other way around. These are the stories that make people lean in with hope.

But Musk’s ambitions don’t stop at healing. They stretch into something stranger.

He talks about “merging with AI”, as if the only way to survive the future is to blend into it. In his version of tomorrow, you don’t just use technology. You are technology.

Summon a car with your thoughts. Compose a symphony without touching a key.
Translate a language without opening a book.

It sounds dazzling. It also sounds like the start of a new race.
If you can upgrade your brain, will you have to, just to keep up?

And what happens when thinking becomes a competitive sport?

Where AI and Neuralink Collide

Let’s not forget Musk also launched Grok 3.5 through xAI…a chatbot meant to outwit, outwork, and outsnark ChatGPT. Grok already pulls real-time data from X (formerly Twitter), and its ambitions are huge.

Now imagine Neuralink paired with Grok. A mind connected not just to a chip, but to a live AI assistant that knows your preferences, your tendencies, even your moods.

Are we building tools to help humans…or turning humans into tools?

Because when the same man wants to connect your brain to AI and owns the AI…it’s worth pausing.

Not to mention, a bunch of ChatGPT users are already experiencing hallucinations and delusions, so what’s next?

Hackable Minds

What if someone hacks your brain?
Not your phone, not your emails, your actual thoughts.

If Neuralink connects the mind to a device, then the mind becomes vulnerable in the same way every single device is. To surveillance. To manipulation.

We already laugh about how ads follow us after we say something near our phones (still creepy). Now imagine that level of targeting with direct access to your neural signals. The ad doesn’t just know you want coffee, it knows you craved it before you did.

So what’s the defense? New privacy laws? A mental firewall?
Or do we just shrug and call it the cost of progress, the way we did with social media?

Because if we’ve learned anything from Big Tech, it’s this: when the product is free, you are the product.
But what happens when the product costs $1,000 and lives inside your brain? Who owns the data then, you, or the chip?

1,000 Chips by 2026

Neuralink isn’t speaking in decades. They’re talking in years right now. By 2026, Musk says a thousand people could already be living with brain chips.

The first human trials have begun. A handful of patients have chips in their skulls, moving cursors across screens with nothing but thought. It’s ambitious, it’s audacious, and it’s happening insanely fast.

If it works, this could be the start of the brain–computer revolution.
A new era where chips heal disease, restore movement, and even change what it means to be human.

But there’s another path. One where implants aren’t just medicine, but status.
The “upgraded” and the “unplugged.” The rich racing ahead while everyone else falls behind.

Will brain chips become the next iPhone?
A shiny upgrade every two years, with the pressure to stay current stitched right into our skulls?

What Makes Us Human?

At the center of it all is the question no chip can answer.

If memories live on a hard drive…are they still ours?
If choices are nudged by algorithms…are they still choices?
If feelings can be dialed up or down…are they still human?

Every new tool changes us. From stone blades to smartphones, we’ve always merged with what we build. But Neuralink feels different. The tool isn’t in our hands anymore, it’s in our heads.

That doesn’t make the future evil. It makes it fragile.

Because when the brain becomes editable, meaning itself goes on the line.

And whoever holds the pen…scientist, company, or billionaire…is holding more than circuits.
They’re holding us.

If you’re not quite ready for a brain chip but still want to boost your brain power, try Onnit Alpha Brain. It's a nootropic supplement with some decent clinical backing…and no surgery required.

Reads You Might Enjoy:

Sources:

“About Neuralink.” Neuralink, Neuralink Corp., 2025, https://neuralink.com.

Conger, Kate. “Elon Musk’s Neuralink Gets FDA Approval for Human Clinical Trials.” The New York Times, 25 May 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/technology/elon-musk-neuralink-fda-approval.html.

Metz, Cade. “The Brain Implant That Musk Says Could Help the Blind See.” The New York Times, 30 Nov. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/technology/elon-musk-neuralink.html.

Reardon, Sara. “Neuralink: The Truth about Elon Musk’s Brain Chip.” Nature, vol. 618, no. 7964, 2023, pp. 442–444.

Vincent, James. “Elon Musk’s Neuralink and the Ethics of Brain-Computer Interfaces.” The Verge, 30 Aug. 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/30/elon-musk-neuralink-ethics.

Michele Gargiulo http://michelegargiulo.com