What would be a government's motives for keeping talented telepaths a secret?

Question

This is a pseudo-fictional scenario, we suppose telepaths exist and that governments keep them secret.

Why?

Answer 1

Telepathic people already help police departments.  I do not know why a government would try to keep them a secret.

May God bless you.

Answer 2

To put this simply, because Governments want to control/manipulate everything.

Answer 3

If such a thing as psychic powers exists then the telepaths would no doubt be subcontracted to the government.  I doubt if they would be held prisoner by the government.  If we had them, then wouldn't it be safe to assume that other governments have them as well?  If they did, would we be concerned about a psychic gap?

Answer 4

Imagine having the only army in the world armed with talented telepaths. It would be a defensive and offensive advantage that would make our armies unbeatable. We would not want other countries to know about such things, and thus it would need to be completely secret.

They test secret weapons all the time, trying not to let the public know anything in the name of national security.

Have you ever heard of the philidelphia project? Supposedly they tested a cloaking device, which caused thier ship to become invisible to the eye and transported it to another port. Of course, there are alternate versions of the story. They were testing a radar cloaking device and to see if the military could find them they used inland waterways instead of the ocean to travel from one base to another.

Answer 5

You need to reverse your logic.

What benefit would a government gain by making their telepathic aids public.

Government and secrecy are synonymous

Answer 6

Fun question :D

It would be simple. Telepaths would just be another surveillance and encrypted communications technology. Maybe not as reliable as our current technology (accuracy aside, if telepaths exist at all, there's other telepaths out there that AREN'T controlled by the government in question, or ARE controlled by foriegn governments, and there's absolutely no way to tell who could be "listening in"), but the benefit would be that no matter how advanced anyone's counterintelligence measures got, the government employing psychics would always have a "brute force" surveillance and, if not encrypted, at least obfuscated communications method.

Also, telepaths could simply read encrypted messages off pieces of paper or computer screens to other telepaths, which would allow for short encrypted communications as well.

Of course, like all our other toys, most governments would eventually let the world know about telepaths - once they got something better, of course.

The downside, is that it's extremely hard to sell human beings as war munitions to many countries, especially countries that take issue with slavery. Not all, but most.

Answer 7

It's not so much that the government wants to keep this a secret, but they fear reprisal from the so-called "normal" humans, perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps fear.

This is why Professor Xavier tries to keep a low profile, But Magneto, is a true revolutionary.

Gee, my answer seems as ludicrous as your question.

Answer 8

the most simple argument would be they are practically "living

weapons",or the other way around ,why would they have to make them public?

Answer 9

You presume that the government is controlling the telepaths and keeping them secret.

On the contrary, were telepaths to exist in reality then *they* would control the government and thus be interested in keeping themselves secret.  By knowing everyone's secrets, they can control the politicians.