DARPA’s Advanced Plant Technology project seeks to make plants into ‘intelligence gatherers.’

The concept is simple: scientists want to harness plants’ natural sensitivity and sensing capabilities to external stimuli to detect the presence of potentially threatening levels of chemical, biological or radioactive elements in the area.

​Even changing electromagnetic levels won’t go undetected. Click here to learn more.

Naming and shaming hackers the way the Obama administration did in the wake of Russian hackers stealing Democratic National Committee emails doesn’t work.

Hackers are gaining even greater advantages with the automation of cyber attacks. The permutations outpace our ability to react. Ransomware attacks can now take under a minute to execute - far too fast for any cyber defense team to stop them. 

​Click here to see why cybersecurity strategies must change or become irrelevant. 

Micro-assassin drones are coming, folks, and with them, the potential to kill anybody with a drone the size of a small bird or even an insect.

The possibility of taking out a global hazard like Kim Jong-un with just a tiny poisonous or exploding drone is tempting, but like all technology, the risk of abuse is huge.

​One way or another, the bad guys will get hold of it. What then? Click here to find out.  

In a stunning admission, the U.S. Army has determined that the combat communications system it has been rolling out throughout U.S. bases worldwide doesn’t work.

Some units still don’t have the current, flawed battlefield network, which the Army adopted in 2012. What’s more, it’ll be another two years before the Army will know what it needs to replace its broken system.

​In the meantime, the risks are significant. Click here for more. 

In response to North Korea’s rapid advances in ICBM technology - as well as Iran’s nuclear aspirations - Congress is authorizing up to 28 more ground based missile interceptors (GBIs) to be put in place to defend against incoming attacks by nuclear missiles.

The latest round of GBIs was completed on Nov. 2, bringing the total number of GMIs to 44. Adding another 28 tells us just what a threat emerging nuclear powers such as North Korea and Iran truly are. 

​Click here to learn more. 

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) recently posted a screenshot of a video game called “AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron” as “irrefutable evidence” of U.S. collusion with ISIS.

Widely viewed on social media before being removed, the military spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria trolled the embarrassed Russian MoD by calling their claim “about as accurate as their air campaign.” 

​Click here for the best viral marketing campaign ever for a computer game, compliments of the Russian Ministry of Defense

There is a quote from a 1969 training manual (some say it’s Einstein’s, but it’s not) that says, “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. On the other hand, a well trained operator as compared with a computer is incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant.”

This insight about the power of combined human and machine intelligence is the basis for Jim Rickards and my predictive analytics fintech startup, Meraglim. It’s also been recognized by the U.S. Army Chief of Staff as the future of cybersecurity. Because the few, best white hat hackers might be a hundred times better than their peers, enhancing their amazing skills is critical for advanced cyber defenses.

​Leveraging artificial intelligence will allow them to drive scale and maximize their capabilities. Click here for more details.

Despite protests by Kaspersky Labs that they were “caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight,” the United States Senate banned the 20 year old Moscow-based cybersecurity firm with over 400 million customers from the U.S. market.

Unfortunately for the U.S. narrative, on Nov. 9, Wikileaks published the source code and the development logs of a CIA program called “Hive” that enabled the CIA to “misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data” to the Kaspersky Labs. 

​Click here for more details.

According to DefenseNews, a team led by China's top naval engineer, Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, has developed a new system that allows conventionally powered aircraft carriers to operate an electromagnetic aircraft launch system, or EMALS, with advantages over the traditional steam catapults in use by the U.S. Navy.

This medium voltage direct current transmission network replaces an earlier system based on alternating current. Click here to read more.