First, let me say that I hope all Eccentric readers and their families and friends are all safe and well in these challenging times. I want to address how the developing advanced technologies that I’ve briefly referred to in the past can help deal with several of the most insidious national and international threats that affect us all. I’ve talked about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in some detail earlier. Bear that in mind for a moment. Let’s recall “Quantum Computing” and its likely impact on what may in the future be called the “Quantum Internet.” The US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, together with the University of Chicago, has successfully tested a “Quantum Loop,” the first stage of a Quantum Internet. Recall that “Quantum” replaces the zeros and ones in current digital computing with the revolutionary use of neutrons, protons, electrons, and protons. The security applications in sensing, computing, and communications across the board are legion in every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Fiber links will know no bounds once this US technology is further developed and commercialized. Remember, in 1969, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created the ARPANET that led to the creation of the INTERNET, followed by the creation of the World Wide Web, the British Oxford scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee. We’re at that point in time again, a step change. With the experiences of the past well understood, the 17 National Laboratories managed by the US Department of Energy can forge ahead much more quickly than it took the nascent ARPANET to emerge. Watch what happens next between Argonne and the National accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. I managed highly classified programs with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the Department of Defense and the National Intelligence Community at the height of the Cold War. The capabilities inside the National Laboratories and the universities that are now on board at, for example, MIT, Caltech, and Yale are, very simply, prodigious. Quantum Science (QS) I predict will be the wave of the future. If we tie Artificial Intelligence applications to QS, then we will have real-time means to challenge the likes of Vladimir Putin and his extensive international network of cohorts, operating, for example, in dingy places in Nigeria and the like, when coming at us through the Internet. Unconventional non-state sponsored threats are out there in profusion, the “Little Green Men” that undermine our way of life in the advanced western democracies. I follow in detail the work of the US Army Special Operations Command, for just one example, where these new technologies will help protect our vital national interests against the Russians, the Chinese, North Korea, Iran, and all those surrogate entities working in the shadows, often undercover for Moscow and Beijing. International electronic fraud is just one domain of dozens where bad people do bad things to your interests and mine. We have to protect US intellectual property and national security command, control, and communications. The former is the lifeblood of America’s economic future and the latter what will keep us all safe from emerging threats. With the help of the above technologies, we cannot only break into and prevent the worst effects we will be able to deceive and harass those who seek to violate international legal norms. Moreover, we will be able to identify and bring to justice the guilty parties. I predict that it will be a new Bletchley Park and Station Hypo era, based on the same factors and qualities that led to British and American successes at these historical entities, namely brainpower, ingenuity, adaptability, and technological inventiveness and superiority. The latter was underscored by the kind of extraordinary clever applications that people like my mentors in the 1960s, Sir John Masterman of “Double Cross System” fame, and Sir Harry Hinsley at Bletchley Park in World War Two, taught me. In addition to National Security, the commercial applications will know no bounds. They are exponential. Just in simple and everyday applications, like encryption for example – we will not only know in a flash which is messing with us, (trying to break into our systems, steal our data, technology, and money), we will be able to give them not instant gratification, but instant reprisal if required, a proportionate and appropriate taste of cybercriminals’ own medicine that is of our choosing. Finally, let me introduce a change of subject. Please take a look at a link that I was sent in May, a few weeks ago, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irish-times-fintan-otoole. This is an article by Fintan O’Toole in the Dublin “Irish Times.” Its authenticity was checked by many because of its scathing content. When reading Blue and Red, Eccentric readers may wish to read what the Irish Times journalist has to say about our current US dilemmas. I mention this because it is ostensibly non partisan and comes from a fine country with great historical roots in the United States. Do form your own opinion. I know that you will.
Be well and be safe.
