(OPINION) It sounds like bad science fiction, but it is rapidly becoming reality. Some of the most powerful people on the planet think they are going to “upgrade” human beings — or at least some human beings — through genetic engineering and technological schemes such as “brain implants.” Yes, really. In fact, they are publicly touting alleged benefits, supposedly including eternal life, and even evolving into “gods.”

If that all sounds crazy or even diabolical — good, it should, because it is. And yet, the technologies to make some of these nightmarish visions possible are progressing so fast it would make your brain spin.

In some cases, the tech already exists. Meanwhile, children around the world are being prepared to embrace it through public schools and “entertainment.”

World Economic Forum chief Klaus Schwab, the global frontman for the so-called “Great Reset,” has been celebrating it all for years as part of what he calls the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

In his book on the subject and in speeches, Schwab outlined a plan to merge people with computer technologies, brain implants, and even to genetically “improve” them.

“Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us — they will become part of us,” Schwab writes in his book Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a narrative that he has been peddling for almost a decade in speeches, articles, essays, and books. “Indeed, some of us already feel that our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves.”

“Today’s external devices — from wearable computers to virtual reality headsets — will almost certainly become implantable in our bodies and brains,” he continues in the book.

“These implantable devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a ‘built-in’ smartphone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brain waves and other signals.”

Schwab, who oversees a sprawling organization bringing together political and business leaders from around the world, goes on to suggest that governments can and perhaps should mandate submission to such intrusive technology.

“As capabilities in this area improve, the temptation for law enforcement agencies and courts to use techniques to determine the likelihood of criminal activity, assess guilt or even possibly retrieve memories directly from people’s brains will increase,” adds the professor, saying governments could even require “a detailed brain scan to assess an individual’s security risk.”

Eventually, humans will merge with technology and become one with it, according to Schwab. “At the end, what the Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological identities,” he declared at a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and many since then. And he means it, too. (READ MORE)