Almost since it began, however, the HBP has drawn criticism. The project did not achieve its goal of simulating the whole human brain — an aim that many scientists regarded as far-fetched in the first place. It changed direction several times, and its scientific output became “fragmented and mosaic-like”, says HBP member Yves Frégnac

NSA wanted to impress the Japanese. Show them our reach. They loved the live video from drones. This is Pakistan right now [video shows American agents demonstrating drone footage to Japanese officials]. They were not as excited about that we wanted their help to spy on the Japanese population. They said it was against their laws.

Of course we tapped the entire country anyway.

And we did not stop there. Once we owned their communications systems, we started going after the physical infrastructure.

We'd slip these little sleeper programs into power grids, dams, hospitals. The idea was that if the day came when Japan was no longer an ally, it would be "lights out".

And it wasn't just the Japanese. We were planting malware in Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Austria.

I mean, China, I can understand. Russia. Iran. Venezuela, okay.

But Austria?!

[shows footage of cow on an idyllic Alpine mountain grazing field, suggesting that there is nothing in Austria to spy on]

Each of you is going to build a covert communications network in your home city [i.e. their fictitious foreign target location written on each person's desk such as Berlin, Istanbul and Bangkok, not necessarily where they were actually born], you're going to deploy it, backup your site, destroy it, and restore it again.