A speech by the Russian Defense Minister promising to modernize his army caused a firestorm in the Western media – which accused Russia of developing mind control weapons that turn people into zombies. The truth is more complex, but no less scary.

­“The development of weaponry based on new physics principles – direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, and so on – is part of the state arms procurement program until 2020,” Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov reported to President-in-waiting Vladimir Putin during their latest meeting.

Some media focused on “psychotronic” weapons – wonder devices that use energy waves to control enemy behavior, effectively turning him into a “zombie.” The paper went on to speculate that these would be used internally against political “dissidents.”