Reflections on Day One of the Neurotechnology Summit: Where Mind Meets Machine and Governance Tries to Keep Up
There was a moment on Day One of the 2025 Neurotechnology Summit, superbly crafted by Andra Müller of Jewelrock and Dr. Allan McCay , when I looked around the room and realised something quietly extraordinary. This was not a gathering of technologists on one side and ethicists on the other. It was a room full of people who understood, instinctively, that neurotechnology cannot be discussed without cybersecurity, governance, trust and safety, and human rights sitting beside it. The appetite to bring cyber expertise into the conversation was not polite lip service. It was genuine recognition that the people who understand risk need to be at the table while the future is being designed.
That set the tone for the entire day. Neurotechnology is no longer emerging. It is here, it is scaling, and it is demanding a new social contract.
Below are the five tensions that defined Day One, each threaded with the people, ideas and conversations that shaped the day.
1. Freedom of Thought vs the Neurodata Economy
Anchored in the session “Neurotechnology, Human Rights and the Law”.
The morning opened with Distinguished Professor Nita Farahany reminding us that neural data is not just another dataset. It is the closest proxy we have to thought itself. Once brain signals become machine-interpretable, they reveal emotions, preferences, intentions, vulnerabilities and patterns of behaviour that even traditional biometrics cannot approach.
This is where the governance conversation truly begins. Freedom of thought is an absolute human right, yet neurotechnology introduces soft violations long before any obvious coercion occurs. A soft violation is the kind you barely notice, like a device inferring that you are stressed or distracted from your neural signals and adjusting your experience without your explicit permission. The real risk is not the collection of data itself but what inference models — algorithms that predict something about you from patterns they see, even if you never said or did that thing outright — can extract from it.
And here again, cybersecurity expertise matters. People who understand inference attacks, profiling and behavioural prediction have decades of experience seeing how systems can be used against the very people who trust them.
2. Consent vs Comprehension in a Rapidly Scaling Ecosystem
Informed by the session “The Right to Freedom of Thought and Neuroprivacy”.
Throughout the day, I kept coming back to a single question. How can anyone meaningfully consent to a neurotechnology system they cannot possibly understand. Clinical environments struggle with this already, and they at least have ethics committees. Commercial environments have none of that scaffolding.
Researchers spoke about the difficulty of explaining neural inference to study participants. Clinicians described the gap between what neurotech companies promise and what patients assume. Once consumer neuro-wearables enter workplaces, classrooms and homes, the consent problem becomes even more pronounced. Consent is not meaningful when opting out carries social, educational or economic consequences.
This is also where cybersecurity and trust and safety teams add real value. They understand coercion patterns, like when a person technically has a choice but feels they will fall behind if they opt out, and power asymmetries, where one party gains insight or advantage from neural data that the other never intended to reveal.
3. Brilliant Science vs Australia’s Structural Weaknesses
Shaped by the sessions “Innovation in Neurotechnology” and “Practical Applications for Neurotechnology”.
Australia excels at invention. We struggle with everything that comes after.
Session Two highlighted this tension sharply. Investors here are cautious. Manufacturing pathways are thin. Clinical trial capacity is limited. Regulation is fragmented. And despite our world-class researchers, we continue to lose IP to countries whose systems are built to commercialise deep tech rather than admire it.
One speaker described Australia as a place of “moments of brilliance surrounded by valleys of structural weakness”. That line stayed with me. It captures the frustration and the opportunity. There is room for bold policy and meaningful reform if we decide to treat neurotechnology as a strategic national capability instead of an occasional headline.
Cybersecurity, trust and safety and data governance are central to this. If Australia wants to lead in neurotechnology, we must lead in the responsible design of the systems that surround it.
4. Breakthroughs vs Boundaries
Grounded in the session “Practical Applications for Neurotechnology”.
Session Four shifted the tone from theory to reality. We heard about real clinical trials involving implanted BCIs. We heard about wetware computing built from living neurons. We heard about defence use cases that blur the line between augmentation and surveillance. Neurotechnology is no longer something on the horizon. It is something being implanted, tested, marketed and scaled.
And with every breakthrough comes a boundary that must be negotiated.
What does ethical commercialisation look like when the technology itself introduces philosophical questions about consciousness and autonomy? How do we distinguish genuine benefit from a hype cycle that could push vulnerable people into risky trials or unregulated consumer devices? How do we prevent defence applications from drifting into forms of coercive monitoring?
This is where the cyber-aware energy in the room felt so important. People were not assuming things would go well. They were assuming that risk is inherent and that the job is to reduce it without stifling innovation.
5. Commercial Momentum vs Ethical Restraint
Anchored in the session “Neurotech Commercialisation”.
The final session of the day brought everything together. The commercialisation pathway for neurotechnology is opening. Investors want certainty. Companies want speed. Consumers will want access. Patients need hope. Governments want strategy. Defence wants capability. And regulators want a map that does not yet exist.
Commercialisation can lead to democratisation. It can also lead to exploitation. Much depends on whether rights and ethical safeguards move at the same pace as capital. The consensus on Day One was clear. Neurotechnology cannot follow the “move fast and break things” playbook. Once thoughts can be inferred, nudged, analysed or misinterpreted, the cost of breaking things becomes unacceptably high.
This is why the growing recognition of cybersecurity expertise matters. The neurotech industry is waking up to the reality that trust is not a branding exercise. It is an engineering requirement. A design requirement. A governance requirement. A rights requirement. Trust must be built at the same speed as innovation, not patched in after the fact.
Closing reflection
What struck me most about Day One was not the brilliance of the science, though it was impressive. It was the shared understanding that neurotechnology is not simply another emerging technology. It is a societal pivot point. One that touches autonomy, equity, vulnerability, power and the fabric of cognitive freedom itself.
And it was encouraging to see so many voices acknowledging that cybersecurity, governance and trust and safety must be at the centre of these conversations. That alone signals a level of maturity that other emerging tech sectors took years to reach.
Neurotechnology will shape the next decade. The question is whether we shape it intentionally, transparently and ethically. Day One made the stakes clear. What we build now determines whether neurotechnology becomes a tool of empowerment or a new vector for exploitation.
I left the room hopeful, not because the risks are small, but because the people in the room understood them.
I’ll return to this topic next week when I’ll share my reflections on Day Two, where the conversations shifted toward scale, ambition and the societal implications of who may eventually control these emerging datasets.
As this reflection follows a Chatham House–style approach, I have not named individual speakers. The insights shared here draw on the themes, discussions and atmosphere of the day rather than verbatim quotations.
About the Author
Kim Chandler McDonald is the Co-Founder and CEO of 3 Steps Data, driving data/digital governance solutions.
She is the Global VP of CyAN, an award-winning author, storyteller, and advocate for cybersecurity, digital sovereignty, compliance, governance, and end-user empowerment.