Two-time Super Bowl champion Logan Ryan was left ‘unbelievably freaked out’ and questioning if his thoughts can be tracked after learning that a headband he wore in his career shared data with the Chinese government.
Ryan was told in an appearance on ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’ that a BrainCo headband he used to help calm his mind was collecting data about his brainwaves every half-a-second. BrainCo is a Chinese company, meaning it is legally obligated to share its data with the Chinese government.
Torre also told Ryan that BrainCo receives investment from the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which by extension has links to the Chinese military.
Ryan, who won both of his Super Bowls with Tom Brady’s New England Patriots, told Torre that until now, he had no idea how his data was being used.
‘As athletes, we wear a lot of wearables,’ Ryan, who retired in 2024, said. ‘Everyone has to kind of wear it. I realized if I could think faster, I could play faster as I got older.
‘The way it was presented to me obviously was not that way (data being shared with China). You try to get better in your field and you’re willing to do what it takes, legally, to get better at your craft.
Logan Ryan was said to be ‘unbelievably freaked out’ that his brain data was shared with China
Longtime NFL defensive back Logan Ryan is a two-time Super Bowl champion and has intercepted passes from Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Aaron Rodgers. He attributes much of his success to his usage of the FocusCalm headband.
He had no idea it was sharing his brain data with the… pic.twitter.com/gzTKzIQN1R
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 16, 2025
‘I believe in training the brain. But you’ve got to be careful who you do it with, you’ve got to make sure you do your research.
‘Nobody on my team could even have thought it was a possibility but that’s the world we live in nowadays with all this AI and technology.’
He continued: ‘Who knows, the information that we are putting in, what that could be used for. We need a right to protect ourselves from that.
‘I don’t know how personalized it is to me, I don’t know if they’re able to track my thoughts or something with that but that’s all pretty alarming to me. I definitely need to look into that.’
Torre explained after sharing clips of his interview with Ryan that a representative for the former player who was not on their Zoom interview later reached out to ‘reiterate how unbelievably freaked out’ he was after their discussion.
Ryan played as a cornerback in the NFL and recorded interceptions against three of the best quarterbacks to have ever played the game in Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning.
He credited BrainCo for helping him with the success he enjoyed in his later years on the field. He even appeared in a commercial for the company in 2022.
Ryan explained to Torre that he was introduced to the device by a yoga instructor who encouraged him to focus on breathwork.
Ryan even appeared in a commercial for the device during his later NFL playing days
Ryan won two Super Bowls in his career and retired from the NFL in 2024 after 11 seasons
‘You’d put the device on your head, there’s an app you’d put on your phone,’ he said. ‘You’d play a race car game. The more you were in the right breathing and mental space, the faster your car would go.
‘The harder you tried, the slower it would go. It made me realize we can’t just will everything to happen.
‘So when the two-minute warning in the final drive against Tom Brady is happening, I’m not freaking out like some players.’
Torre later shared a statement from BrainCo, where the organization said it was not sharing data with government military.
‘We have no collaboration with any kind of military in any country,’ the statement said. ‘To the best of our knowledge, our technology is not being used for any military purposes.’
