The CIA's new tech doesn't make sense

0:00 Could the CIA really track your heartbeat from kilometers away?

0:03 On April 3rd, 2026, Iranian forces shot

0:06 down an American fighter plane just over Isfahan.

0:10 Inside were a pilot and a weapon system officer, and both ejected successfully.

0:16 The US forces located the pilot quickly

0:18 and rescued him only seven hours after the crash,

0:22 but they couldn't rescue the weapon system officer.

0:24 He landed elsewhere deep within hostile territory.

0:27 And, worst of all, he was injured.

0:30 With the Iranian forces on his tail,

0:32 the officer needed to hide quickly, so he disappeared into the mountains.

0:39 to rescue an aviator buried deep behind enemy lines.

0:43 Fortunately, the officer had a rescue beacon

0:45 that could signal his location to the US.

0:48 The problem was that he not only had to step

0:50 out of his hiding spot to transmit the signal,

0:52 Iran could potentially intercept it and get to him first.

0:55 So he could only use the beacon sparingly.

0:57 With enemy forces getting closer every hour,

1:00 how is the US going to pinpoint his location in the middle of a desert.

1:09 [Gregor] A blind sweep of the entire area could take days or even weeks,

1:13 but, surprisingly, just 40 hours after the crash,

1:15 the US announced the officer was rescued.

1:18 Still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.

1:22 So how did they do it?

1:24 Well, according to a New York Post article,

1:26 the CIA deployed a futuristic device to rescue him.

1:29 Reportedly they were able to detect the magnetic

1:31 field produced by his heartbeat from kilometers away.

1:35 Such a device would have to overcome

1:36 the magnetic signatures from other soldiers,

1:38 vehicles, and animals in the region, let alone Earth's magnetic field.

1:42 It's like listening for a murmur in a crowd.

1:46 So the technology was appropriately called Ghost Murmur.

1:51 Immediately this kicked off a media frenzy.

1:54 Ghost Murmur.

1:55 This is science fiction.

1:56 Ghost Murmur.

1:56 Did you hear about what the CIA tech that they have called the Ghost Murmur.

2:00 Called the Ghost Murmur.

2:01 All of this sounds too good to be true,

2:02 and there seemed to be no other sources beyond this New York Post article.

2:06 So we dug deep to find out whether

2:09 this supposed technology really 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, are having to sign NDAs.

2:23 The fact that the CIA is involved in leveraging

2:27 technologies consistent with their mission and their charter.

2:30 So is Ghost Murmur fact or fiction?

2:34 There are two lines in this New York Post

2:35 article that hint at what this device can be.

2:38 First, normally this signal is so weak that it can only be measured

2:42 in a hospital setting with sensors pressed

2:44 nearly against the chest, the source said.

2:47 But advances in a field known as quantum magnetometry,

2:50 specifically sensors built around microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds,

2:55 have apparently made it possible to detect

2:57 these signals at dramatically greater distances.

3:00 We're gonna break this down bit by bit.

3:02 First, does the heart actually create detectable magnetic fields?

3:07 Second, what are these synthetic diamonds that could potentially detect them?

3:11 And third, is it all possible at these distances?

3:15 Let's start with a heart.

3:16 Now, if you type heart magnetic field into Google Images,

3:19 you will get a bunch of questionable-looking graphs.

3:24 So is it a real thing?

3:26 Well, whenever current flows through a conductor,

3:28 it generates a magnetic field around it.

3:31 And since our bodies run on electrical impulses traveling through neurons,

3:35 our tissues and organs generate faint magnetic signals.

3:38 But because the heart muscles fire in a coordinated way,

3:41 the magnetic field they produce is the strongest in the body.

3:45 It's around 50 to 100 pico Teslas,

3:48 10 to 100 times more than the next strongest field produced by the brain.

3:52 But even then, this is still a million times weaker than Earth's magnetic field.

3:57 So it's no surprise that we only detected

3:59 the magnetic field of the heart in 1963.

4:03 It had to be done in a remote field

4:05 away from the magnetic noise produced by lab equipment, elevators, and cars.

4:09 And the setup had to be incredibly still.

4:12 Even the slightest vibration of the detector would corrupt the measurement,

4:15 not something that could work on a helicopter or a military drone.

4:19 But, pretty soon, magnetometers got better.

4:22 By the 1970s, we got superconducting quantum interference devices, or SQUIDs.

4:28 These magnetometers were incredibly sensitive,

4:30 detecting fields as weak as a few femto Tesla.

4:33 To no surprise, the US military quickly

4:36 strapped these SQUIDs to planes and helicopters,

4:38 and they tried to use them to detect

4:40 large magnetic signatures like submarines in the ocean.

4:44 But the project never really picked up.

4:46 Nonetheless, SQUIDs also made it easier to detect the heart's magnetic field,

4:51 but with a key caveat.

4:53 They typically need to be operated under a very tightly controlled conditions,

4:58 often inside of shielded rooms.

4:59 They can't handle large dynamic range

5:02 of background fields and electromagnetic interference.

5:05 Future magnetometers offered solutions, but they also had their own drawbacks.

5:09 There were always issues with either shielding or sensitivity or dynamic

5:13 range that made them impractical for detecting heartbeats out in the field.

5:18 Until the 1990s when physicists started

5:21 looking into diamonds that might eventually

5:23 be able to sense magnetic fields while potentially getting around the drawbacks.

5:29 These new quantum magnetometers work at room temperature operation,

5:33 and that's what's really exciting about them.

5:35 They're also a solid state sensor, which, you know,

5:38 can be very practical for some applications and can

5:42 be made into like a more robust kind of sensor.

5:45 These are the diamonds mentioned in the New York Post article.

5:48 So how do they work?

5:51 Now, the overall coverage of the story is

5:53 actually very interesting because this tech is supposedly classified.

5:57 There's a lot of uncertainty about

5:58 whether what's being reported is actually real.

6:00 And depending on which outlet you see first,

6:03 you might arrive at completely different conclusions.

6:05 For example, if you saw this headline first,

6:07 you might be really impressed with the technology,

6:10 but this one you'd be a bit more skeptical,

6:12 and the last one might not even make you care about the tech.

6:15 So three headlines, three completely different conclusions,

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7:33 and now let's go figure out how those diamonds actually detect magnetic fields.

7:37 Well, for something to function as a magnetometer,

7:40 it needs to respond to a magnetic field in a way that we can detect.

7:43 Now, a pure diamond is just an ordered lattice of carbon atoms,

7:47 so it doesn't react to magnetic fields in a meaningful way.

7:50 But this changes when you start adding defects to the lattice.

7:54 You can replace one of the carbon atoms in the lattice with, say, a nitrogen.

7:58 And if you remove one of the carbons next to it completely,

8:01 well, that creates a vacancy.

8:03 This defect is called a nitrogen vacancy or an NV center.

8:08 And these NV centers become particularly

8:11 useful when they trap two unpaired electrons.

8:14 That's because electrons have this intrinsic property called spin.

8:18 A simple and flawed analogy is that spin is kind of like a tiny bar

8:22 magnet that gives electrons their own magnetic signature

8:25 and it can point either up or down.

8:28 So when an electron is exposed to an external magnetic field,

8:32 this magnetic signature will either align itself with the field or against it.

8:36 Also note that particles that have no net

8:39 spin will not respond to an external magnetic field.

8:43 Now, the two trapped electrons can arrange their spins in the following way.

8:47 They could both point up, which would give you a spin magnetic number of 1.

8:52 They could both point down for a quantum number of -1,

8:56 or they could point in opposite directions for a quantum number of 0.

9:00 We'll denote this spin magnetic quantum number with ms,

9:04 and it essentially acts as a bar magnet for the whole NV center.

9:08 And just like for individual electrons,

9:10 this bar magnet is also sensitive to external magnetic fields.

9:14 So now that we've created a diamond that responds to magnetic fields,

9:19 the challenge is, how do we measure this response to detect a heartbeat?

9:25 Okay, so I reached out to experts to try and figure this out,

9:29 but basically out of the 20 or so emails that I sent,

9:31 I only got a few responses,

9:32 but then I got an impromptu call from one of these experts who said

9:36 that many of these researchers in the NV diamond area are having to sign NDAs.

9:40 This is getting a lot more interesting.

9:42 But with how secretive everyone was being,

9:43 I had to use publicly available research.

9:46 And I think the key idea is

9:48 to figure out how diamonds respond to magnetic fields, you have to use light.

9:53 When you shine light at an atom,

9:55 the atom can either absorb the light or ignore it.

9:58 An absorbed photon of light will excite an electron

10:00 within the atom to a higher energy level.

10:03 You can think of these energy levels

10:05 as discrete platforms that the electrons can jump between,

10:07 just like in a video game.

10:09 All atoms of the same element, for example, carbon,

10:12 have the same energy levels when the atoms are far enough apart.

10:16 But when you bring them together,

10:18 like inside a diamond lattice, their energy levels shift.

10:21 They come together to form a series

10:23 of closely spaced energy levels or an energy band.

10:27 Now, an electron will only ever absorb a photon if the photon has

10:32 enough energy to move the electron across the gap to a higher band.

10:36 This gap between the last electron occupied band and the first

10:40 empty band above it is called the band gap.

10:43 In a pure diamond, it's big.

10:45 It's around 5.5 electron volts, which means that only ultraviolet photons

10:49 have enough energy to excite the electrons.

10:52 All lower energy light, including visible light,

10:55 will mostly be ignored by the diamond and just pass through.

10:58 This is why a perfect pure diamond is transparent.

11:02 It doesn't absorb any of the light,

11:03 but if you start adding defects, they disrupt that organized lattice.

11:08 The defects unlock different energy levels.

11:10 Secret platforms within this band gap for nearby electrons to jump to.

11:15 A boron defect, for example,

11:16 creates a low energy level at only 0.37 electron volts.

11:21 This is a platform that electrons can

11:22 jump to by absorbing infrared or red light.

11:25 And with enough boron defects,

11:27 a significant amount of red light gets absorbed this way.

11:31 The rest of the visible spectrum mostly makes it through.

11:34 So without this red, the diamond appears blue.

11:37 Similarly, a nitrogen vacancy defect unlocks other secret platforms.

11:42 And these can help us detect how the NV center responds to a magnetic field.

11:47 At first glance, it looks like

11:49 the nitrogen vacancy generates a few unique levels,

11:51 and these are exclusive to the two unpaired electrons trapped within the defect.

11:56 But if you look closer at, for example, the lowest level,

12:00 you'll notice that it actually contains

12:02 three closely spaced but separate energy levels.

12:05 The second and third levels are actually at the same height,

12:08 but will draw them separately.

12:10 And the fact that there are three isn't a coincidence.

12:13 Remember, the NV center can adopt one of three ms numbers, 0, -1,

12:18 or 1, depending on how the spins of the two electrons inside are arranged.

12:23 If you think of the two spins as bar magnets, the most relaxed,

12:27 lowest energy way for them to sit is this, one pointing up and the other down.

12:33 This is analogous to the ms= 0 state, which is why it has the lowest energy.

12:38 Forcing both magnets to point down together or up together,

12:41 like the ms= 1 or -1 states requires more energy.

12:45 They oppose you.

12:46 So these two states are at an equal, slightly higher energy sub level.

12:51 These differences are tiny.

12:52 Jumping from the 0 to the +/-1 levels requires only a small amount of energy.

12:57 A microwave photon of 10.4 centimeters will be enough.

13:01 Now, these secret energy platforms of NV centers were mapped out by the '90s.

13:06 But for a long time, no one thought to use them as magnetometers.

13:09 There was a decade before the light bulb went

13:12 on for a bunch of us to think about them as sensors.

13:14 It takes a mindset switch to think differently.

13:17 And once you do, you realize, "Oh my goodness,

13:19 this could be useful."- So let's apply a magnetic

13:22 field to this diamond and see what happens.

13:25 If we slowly turn up the field strength,

13:28 you'll see that the +1 and -1 levels are starting to shift.

13:32 To understand why, we can use a compass needle as an analogy.

13:36 Naturally, a compass needle will align itself

13:38 with the magnetic field of the Earth.

13:41 And this is the lowest energy relaxed state that the needle can be in.

13:46 And it's analogous to the behavior of the system in the ms= -1 state,

13:51 which is why its energy level drops slightly.

13:54 But if ms= 1, the system flips.

13:57 This would be like taking an external

13:59 magnet and applying it to this compass needle, flipping it 180 degrees.

14:04 And then if I'm careful in retracting this magnet,

14:07 I can actually get the needle to stay in this place.

14:11 And this is the highest energy this needle

14:14 can have sitting in this unstable position.

14:17 Now if I tap it, it will actually go back.

14:19 It's possible, but it's a higher energy state.

14:22 So the ms= 1 level slightly rises.

14:26 And if ms= 0, it doesn't react to the field,

14:28 which is why this level hasn't changed.

14:31 Now, if you keep turning up the magnetic field strength,

14:34 you'll notice that the levels get further and further apart.

14:37 This phenomenon is called Zeeman splitting.

14:39 It's described by a simple formula that gives you a direct

14:42 link between the energy split and the magnetic field strength.

14:46 So in the presence of a periodic

14:48 magnetic field like that generated by the heart,

14:50 we would theoretically see a rhythmic separation of these lines.

14:55 And these two energy levels absorb light at two different microwave wavelengths,

15:00 which change depending on the strength of the field.

15:03 So what we can actually measure is

15:05 which microwave wavelengths the diamond is absorbing.

15:08 When there's no magnetic field, the levels are fused and produce a single

15:12 absorption line at the wavelength of 10.4 centimeters.

15:15 But when there's an external magnetic field,

15:17 they produce two separate absorption lines.

15:20 Now, we've simplified it a bit,

15:22 but by measuring how spaced apart these lines are, you get the field strength.

15:27 This is how an NV diamond magnetometer works.

15:30 Was the diamond magnetometer ever used to detect a heartbeat?

15:33 So what has been done for sure is, you know,

15:35 for certain is detection of magnetic fields generated by neurons.

15:39 Yeah, I mean, which is to some extent connected to the heartbeat question.

15:44 Neuron activity, to my knowledge, has been first seen in 2015.

15:48 Okay, well, that's, wow, that's impressive.

15:52 So could it pick up a heartbeat from kilometers away?

15:55 Well, in 2022, researchers were able to pick

15:58 up the magnetic field of a rat's heart, but it was done using a thoracotomy,

16:02 which means the rat's chest was open and the diamond

16:05 was less than two millimeters away from the heart.

16:08 Okay, but the human heart produces a stronger magnetic field.

16:11 And the tech, the CIA might have deployed,

16:13 could be decades ahead of what is publicly known.

16:16 You're former CIA operations officer and you've

16:19 worked in the Middle East, right?

16:21 So what was your first reaction to this news?

16:24 Well, the fact that the CIA's involved in leveraging

16:28 technology is consistent with their mission and their charter.

16:32 But I defer to smarter people in engineering and science like

16:35 yourself to figure out the exact technique that might be used.

16:39 But the processes, of course, are consistent for what we've done.

16:42 We can't say for sure whether the CIA has this tech,

16:45 but we can use physics to estimate how sensitive it would need to be.

16:49 Well, the strength of a magnetic field falls off

16:51 with the cube of the distance from the source.

16:54 So if the magnetic field of the heart

16:55 when measured at the chest is 50 pico Tesla, or 5 times 10 to the -11 Tesla,

17:01 well, then just 100 meters away,

17:04 this falls off by a factor of a billion to 5 times 10 to the -20 Tesla.

17:09 And at 50 to 100 kilometers,

17:11 this could drop to as little as 10 to the -30 Tesla.

17:15 The most sensitive measurement ever made at the frequencies that the human

17:20 heartbeat work at is at the 10 to the -15 Tesla level.

17:25 And that's in a shielded room.

17:27 So you'd need a system that is 15 orders of magnitude more sensitive than

17:33 the superconducting quantum interference devices and 18 orders

17:38 of magnitude more sensitive than diamond NV sensors.

17:43 18 orders of magnitude is a lot, sounds quite unfeasible.

17:48 It's not like the hills of Iran are devoid of animal life.

17:52 They also have heartbeats and possibly larger hearts than humans.

17:57 There's also the magnetic field of the drone

17:59 or the helicopter the device might be mounted on.

18:02 And, finally, there's the fact that a magnetic field of 10 to the -30

18:06 Tesla is weaker than a magnetic field an electron will give you a meter away.

18:11 The New York Post is notoriously a very good place for amusing fiction.

18:17 On the day before we saw this article,

18:20 we also saw an article about how they had a technology where it was a beeper.

18:28 and that was one way that they were able to detect him.

18:34 And these are things that we know about already.

18:37 We also know that there may well have been other intelligence methods used,

18:44 but this isn't really necessary.

18:46 And then that brings you to the point of like, why 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 of the press to report things,

18:59 having seen reality and then seeing what the press reports.

19:02 How about deception stories and like false narratives

19:05 published by not only the CIA, but other agencies?

19:09 Is this often the case?

19:11 If you look historically, the idea of fooling your enemy,

19:15 particularly when you have some vulnerability to protect,

19:19 goes back thousands of years.

19:21 During World War II, German bombers frequently attacked Britain at night.

19:25 And to retaliate, the British would fly up to intercept and somehow

19:28 kept finding these bombers in the dark and would attack them.

19:32 Now, UK officials told the press that the pilots were

19:34 able to do this because they ate a lot of carrots,

19:37 which was improving their vision at night.

19:39 But some experts believe that this was actually a cover story meant

19:43 to distract the Germans from the fact

19:45 the British installed radars on their planes.

19:48 Is that where the idea that carrots give you good eyesight comes from?

19:52 I think so.

19:53 I think this is the original, yeah, the original myth.

19:55 That is crazy.

19:57 Yeah.

19:57 But, okay, there's one thing that still bothers me.

20:00 If this is likely fake,

20:02 then why is everyone saying no comment and declining to talk?

20:06 There must be something here, you know?

20:08 Well, these NV centers and diamonds are also used for quantum computing.

20:11 But the more interesting,

20:13 probably confidential way they could be used is as navigation devices.

20:17 The Earth's magnetic field creates a unique pattern all across the globe.

20:22 Then to place an object into this map,

20:26 and if you know all of these perturbations and in homogeneities,

20:31 you can infer where you are without having any GPS reception anymore.

20:36 With the rise of GPS spoofing and jamming over the last couple of years,

20:41 that could be incredibly powerful.

20:43 So NV magnetometers do exist with these synthetic diamonds,

20:47 and they do have potential military applications.

20:50 It's just that detecting heartbeats kilometers away probably isn't one of them.

20:58 I wanna give a shout-out to a great Scientific American article on this story

21:02 by Deni Béchard that initially expressed skepticism

21:05 in Ghost Murmur as a potential technology.

21:08 It's a great read and you check it out.