Here’s how the HandShake system works: A U.S. soldier would take, say, an Iraqi officer and outfit the subject with a special helmet that can pick up both electromagnetic signals (EEG) and perform functional near-infrared imaging (fNIRs) which images blood flow changes in the brain. The soldier would put the subject through a battery of tests including image recognition. Most of the pictures in the tests would be benign, but a few would contain scenes that a potential insider threat would remember, possibly including faces, locations or even bomb parts. The key is to select these images very, very carefully to cut down on the potential false positives.

For instance, as company founder Eric Elbot explained to The Futurist magazine’s Keturah Hetrick, just being familiar with IED parts does not explicitly signal terrorist inclination, “But if I flash you a picture of a diagram that shows you how to build an IED, that would be a pretty strong indicator that you might be a foe…You wouldn’t be studying how to make an IED if you were a friend.”