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There are two words that evoke instant anxiety in nearly every academic—research paper. In this article, we’ll break down the steps to writing a research paper.Here’s a tip: Although the research paper format is fairly standardized, writing guidelines may vary not only among academic institutions but also among individual professors. Pay attention to any how-to handouts you’ve received, and don’t forget to check your university’s writing lab for more resources.There are 4 best legit research paper writing services in the world (for students from US, UK, UAE, Australia, Singapore and other countries):99ResearchPapers - with low prices and good quality!MyResearchPapersHelp - high quality papers!FirstResearchPaper - too more years experience from 2005!GreatResearchPapers - the best US writing service.How does a research paper differ from a research proposal?A research paper is different from a research proposal (also known as a prospectus), although the writing process is similar. Research papers are intended to demonstrate a student’s academic knowledge of a subject. A proposal is a persuasive piece meant to convince its audience of the value of a research project. Think of the proposal as the pitch and the paper as the finished product.A prospectus is a formal proposal of a research project developed to convince a reader (a professor or research committee, or later in life, a project coordinator, funding agency, or the like) that the research can be carried out and will yield worthwhile results.Dig into the research process.Although we’ll focus more on the organization and writing of a research paper in this article, the research process is an important first step. Research will help you in several ways:understanding your subjectformulating ideas for your paperdeveloping a thesis statementspeaking about your topic with authorityGather resource materials and begin reviewing them. Here are a few good information sources:Google ScholarOnline encyclopedias, almanacs, and databasesBooks and periodicalsNewspapersGovernment publications, guides, and reportsAs you read and evaluate the information you discover, take notes. Keep track of your reference materials so you can cite them and build your bibliography later. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) and other university writing lab websites are excellent resources to help you understand what information you’ll need to collect to properly cite references.Here’s a tip: Try storing your notes in a spreadsheet. Create columns for elements you want to include in your paper as well as information necessary for your citations/bibliography. Columns can include headings such as Title, Author, Reference link, Page number, and Quotes.Here’s a tip: Check with your instructor or university writing lab to determine the preferred citation style. Grammarly Premium identifies things that need to be cited and helps you cite them.Organize before you start writing.Your research spawned tons of ideas. Great! Now you’re ready to begin the process of organizing your presentation . . . before you begin writing. Don’t skip the organization step—it’s critical to your paper’s success. Without it, your paper will lack focus and you’ll spend much more time in the revision process trying to make sense of your jumbled thoughts.The Thesis StatementThe thesis statement is a sentence that summarizes the main point of your essay and previews your supporting points. The thesis statement is important because it guides your readers from the beginning of your essay by telling them the main idea and supporting points of your essay.—Purdue OWL – Developing a ThesisMost research papers begin with a thesis statement at the end of an introductory paragraph. Even if it’s not a requirement, it’s a good idea to write a thesis statement as you begin to organize your research. Writing the thesis statement first is helpful because every argument or point you make in your paper should support this central idea you’re putting forward.Most research papers fall into one of three categories: analytical, expository, or argumentative. If you’re presenting an analysis of information, then your paper is analytical. If you’re writing to explain information, then your paper is expository. If you’re arguing a conclusion, then it’s argumentative or persuasive. Your thesis statement should match the type of paper you’re writing.Invest time in writing your thesis statement—it’s the main idea of your paper, from which everything else flows. Without a well-thought-out thesis statement, your paper is likely to end up jumbled and with an unclear purpose. Here’s more guidancefrom Purdue OWL.The OutlineAn outline will help you organize your thoughts before you dig into the writing process. Once you’ve developed your thesis statement, think about the main points you’ll need to present to support that statement. Those main points are your sub-headings. Now, organize your thoughts and information under each sub-heading.Any information that doesn’t fit within the framework of your outline, and doesn’t directly support your thesis statement, no matter how interesting, doesn’t belong in your research paper. Keep your focus narrow and avoid the kitchen sink approach. (You know, the one where you throw in every bit of interesting research you uncovered, including the fungal growth in the U-joint of your kitchen sink?) Everything you learn may be fascinating, but not all of it is going to be relevant to your paper.Need more help? Here’s an effective outlining strategy.Writing the Research PaperThe good news is, once you reach this point in the process you’re likely to feel energized by all the ideas and thoughts you’ve uncovered in your research, and you’ll have a clear direction because you’ve taken the time to create a thesis statement and organize your presentation with an outline.Need help? Try to use one of 4 best legit research paper writing services in the world :99ResearchPapers - with low prices and good quality!MyResearchPapersHelp - high quality papers!FirstResearchPaper - too more years experience from 2005!GreatResearchPapers - the best US writing service.Here are the best elements to a research paper:1 The IntroductionHere’s where you present the background and context for the rest of your article. Craft a strong opening sentence that will engage the reader. Just because you’re writing an academic research paper doesn’t mean you have to be dry and boring.Here’s a tip: See Step 4 in our guide to better content writing. Although it’s about writing for the web, it’s relevant here, too.Explain the purpose of your paper and how you plan to approach the topic. (Is this a factual report? An analysis? A persuasive piece?) Describe how you’ve organized your approach to the topic. Conclude the introductory paragraph with your thesis statement.The introduction is the broad beginning of the paper that answers three important questions:What is this?Why am I reading it?What do you want me to do?You should answer these questions by doing the following:Set the context – Provide general information about the main idea, explaining the situation so the reader can make sense of the topic and the claims you make and support.State why the main idea is important – Tell the reader why he or she should care and keep reading. Your goal is to create a compelling, clear, and convincing essay people will want to read and act upon.State your thesis/claim – Compose a sentence or two stating the position you will support with logos (sound reasoning: induction, deduction), pathos(balanced emotional appeal), and ethos (author credibility).—Purdue OWLMORE INFO: Starting Your Research Paper: Writing an Introductory Paragraph2 The BodyHere’s where your outline will come in handy. As you’re writing, remember that your outline isn’t meant to be a prison—it’s a guideline to keep you on track. Your paper may evolve, so keep it fluid, but do remember to stay focused on your thesis statement and proving your points. Don’t let your sources organize your paper! Organize first and use your sources as they become relevant.Consider the Rule of Three. Find supporting arguments for each point you make, and present a strong point first, followed by an even stronger one, and finish with your strongest point.MORE INFO: Strong Body Paragraphs3 ConclusionNow, it’s time to wrap it up. Most research papers conclude with a restated thesis statement. Present your thesis again, but reword it. Briefly summarize the points you’ve made. Take a moment to explain why you believe those points support your case. If your research is inconclusive, take a moment to point out why you believe this topic bears further research.MORE INFO: USC Libraries Research Guides: The ConclusionChecklist for Revising Your Research Paper DraftMake sure you allow time to revise and edit after you’ve completed your first draft. This part of the process is about much more than just fixing typos and adding or subtracting commas. Here’s a handy checklist to help you make sure your paper is on point.Developmental EditIs your thesis statement clear and concise?Is your paper well-organized and does it flow from beginning to end with logical transitions?Do your ideas follow a logical sequence in each paragraph?Have you used concrete details and facts and avoided generalizations?Do your arguments support and prove your thesis?Have you avoided repetition?Are your sources properly cited?Have you checked for accidental plagiarism?Line EditIs your language clear and specific?Do your sentences flow smoothly and clearly? (Hint: Read your paper aloud to help you catch syntax problems.)Have you avoided filler words and phrases?Have you checked for proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation? (Hint: Grammarly can help!)Thorough research, thoughtful organization and presentation, and attention to detail in your developmental and final line edit will help you succeed in crafting a winning research paper.How to Write a Research Paper in 11 StepsIt’s a beautiful sunny day, you had a big delicious breakfast, and you show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for your first class of the day. Just as you’re getting comfortable in your chair, your teacher hits you with it:A 5-page, size 12 font research paper… due in 2 weeks.The sky goes black, your breakfast turns to a brick in your stomach. A research paper? FIVE pages long? Why???Maybe I’m being a little over-dramatic here. But not all of us are born gifted writers. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that most of us struggle a little or a lot with writing a research paper.But fear not!! I can help you through it. If you follow these 11 steps I promise you will write a better essay, faster.Oh… and before we get started, I HAVE to share with you the # 1 tool needed to write your research paper…It is the same tool I used to write this blog article and make sure my grammar errors were caught without having to hire an expensive editor!1. Start earlyWe all do it. We wait until the LAST day to start an assignment, and then something goes wrong at the LAST minute, and Woops! We get a bad grade.ALWAYS start your essays early. This is what I recommend. Especially since writing a research paper requires more effort than a regular paper might.I have a 3-week timeline you can follow when writing a research paper. YES, 3 weeks!! It may sound like waaay too early to start, but it gives you enough time to:Outline and write your paperCheck for errorsGet pointers from your teacher on what to improveAll of this = a better grade on your assignment. You’re already going through all the effort — why not be positive that you’ll get the best results??2. Read the GuidelinesEver taken a shirt out of the dryer to find it has shrunk 10 sizes too small?It’s because the shirt probably wasn’t meant to go in the dryer, and if you had read the tag, you’d have saved yourself one whole article of clothing!Before you even START on writing a research paper, READ THE GUIDELINES.What is your teacher looking for in your essay?Are there any specific things you need to include?This way, you don’t have to finish your essay only to find that it needs to be re-done!3. Brainstorm research paper topicsSometimes we’re assigned essays where we know exactly what we want to write about before we start.Write an essay on my favorite place to travel?? I know where I’M going to choose!But there are probably more times where we DON’T know exactly what we want to write about, and we may even experience writer’s block.To overcome that writer’s block, or simply avoid it happening in the first place, we can use a skill called mind-mapping (or brainstorming) to come up with a topic that is relevant and that we’re interested in writing about!Here’s an example of a mind-map I just did for Influential People!By writing whatever came to my mind and connecting those thoughts, I was able to come up with quite a few influential people to write about — I could come up with EVEN MORE if I kept writing!!See here I can choose to write about Hillary Clinton and how she may have an influence on women and women’s rights in society.Following this method, you can determine your own research paper topics to write about in a way that’s quick and painless.4. Write out your questionsTo get the BEST research, you have to ask questions. Questions on questions on questions. The idea is that you get to the root of whatever you are talking about so you can write a quality essay on it.Let’s say you have the question: “How do I write a research paper?”Can you answer this without more information?Not so easy, right? That’s because when you “write a research paper”, you do a lot of smaller things that ADD UP to “writing a research paper”.Break your questions down. Ask until you can’t ask anymore, or until it’s no longer relevant to your topic. This is how you can achieve quality research.5. Do the researchIt IS a research paper, after all. But you don’t want to just type all your questions into Google and pick the first source you see. Not every piece of information on the internet is true, or accurate.Here’s a way you can easily check your sources for credibility: Look for the who, what, and when.WHOWho is the author of the source?What are they known for?Do they have a background in the subject they wrote about?Does the author reference other sources?Are those sources credible too?WHATWhat does the “Main” or “Home” page of a website look like?Is it professional looking?Is there an organization sponsoring the information, and do they seem legitimateDo they specialize in the subject?WHENWhen was the source generated — today, last week, a month, a year ago?Has there been new or additional information provided since this information was published?Double-check all your sources this way. Because this is a research paper, your writing is meaningless without other sources to back it up.Keep track of your credible sources!When you find useful information from a credible source, DON’T LET IT GO. You need to save the original place you found that information from so that you can cite it in your essay, and later on in the bibliography.You don’t want to have to go back later and dig up the information a second time just to list the source you got it from!To help with this, you may be familiar with the option to “Bookmark” your pages online — do this for online sources.There IS another tool you can use to keep track of your sources. It’s called Diigo, and it’s what we use at Student-Tutor to build an online database of valuable educational resources!You can create a Diigo account and one free group for your links. Check out this video on how to use Diigo to save all your sources in one convenient location.Now, of course there are other ways besides the Internet to get information, and there’s nothing wrong with cracking open a well-written book to enrich your essay’s content!Ways to get information when writing a research paperThe InternetBooksNewspapersMagazinesJournalsInterviews6. Create a Thesis StatementHow to write a thesis statement is something that a lot of people overlook. That’s a mistake.The thesis statement is part of your research paper outline but deserves its own step. That’s because the thesis statement is SUPER important! It is what sets the stage for the entire essay.How do you write a thesis statement?Here’s a color-coded example:7. Create an outlineOnce you have constructed your thesis, the rest of the outline is pretty simple. It should mimic the structure of your thesis!Here’s a color-coded research paper outline you can follow:8. Write your research paperHere it is — the dreaded writing. But see how far we’ve already come?We already know what we’re going to write about, and where we’re going to write it. That’s a lot easier than taking a pen straight to your paper and hoping for some magical, monk-like inspiration to come, am I right?As you write, be sure to pin-point the places where you are inserting sources. I’ll talk about in-text citations in just a moment!Here are some basic tips for writing your essay from International Student:Generally, don’t use “I/My” unless it’s a personal narrativeUse specific examples to support your statementsVary your language — don’t use the same adjective 5 times in a rowPRO TIP: Write is using a FREE app like Grammarly so it catches all your grammar and spelling mistakes! Click here to download it for FREE!9. Cite your sourcesThis goes along with the second step — make sure to check your essay guidelines and find out BEFOREHAND what kind of citation style your teacher wants you to use.Like I promised earlier, Purdue University has a great article that provides instructions on and examples on how to cite different types of sources WITHIN your text. Reference this when you’re not sure what to do.As a general rule of thumb, in-text citations usually go AFTER the sentence drawing from the source, but BEFORE the period of that sentence, in parentheses. If more than one sentence is referencing the same source, try to place it at the last of those sentences.However, no matter what you cite INSIDE your writing, all the sources you use for the paper need to be included in your bibliography.This goes on a separate page, after your main essay and may be titled “Works Cited” or “Bibliography”. (Make sure to check the guidelines, and ask your teacher!)For this, I’m going to introduce you to an awesome, totally free citation tool called EasyBib.Important Tip: Make sure that when you use EasyBib, you are filling in a template provided by EasyBib and NOT asking EasyBib to pull information directly from the source. EasyBib can’t always find information that is there, and your citation will be incomplete without it!By selecting “Manual Cite”, EasyBib will provide you with a template for filling in the necessary information to create your citation.You can then ask EasyBib to generate the source in the citation format you’ve selected. Copy and paste that source into your bibliography — easy!10. Read your essayWhy do I need to read my essay if I wrote it?You’d be surprised what you’ll catch the second, third, and bazillionth time around reading your own writing! Not that you have to read THIS a bazillion times… just once or twice over will do.I recommend that you read your essay once-through, and the second time read it aloud. Reading your essay aloud reinforces your words and makes it easier to recognize when something is phrased strangely, or if you are using a word too often.And if you use a tool like Grammarly it will even give you tips on using active vs. passive voice. Not sure what that means? It tells you!Seriously… I know I keep talking about this app but it is a lifesaver!11. Have someone else read your essayLastly it is always important that someone else besides you read your essay before you submit it.Find a professional who can give you constructive feedback on how to improve your essay — this may be a tutor or a teacher. It can also be someone who specializes in the subject you are writing about.The absolute BEST person to review your essay would be the teacher that assigned it to you.And yes, many teachers WILL read the essay they assigned before it is due and give you pointers on how to make it better. They want you to succeed and they’re the ones grading it — I think it’s safe to say they know what they’re talking about!ConclusionFor most of us, writing a research paper is no walk in the park. Unfortunately, it’s important that you know how to do it!Let’s review the steps to make this process as PAINLESS as possible:Start early — 3 weeks in advance!Read the guidelinesMind map/Brainstorm research paper topicsWrite out your questionsDo the research (Remember to keep track of your sources!)Create a Thesis StatementCreate an outlineWrite your essayCite your sources (In-text and in your bibliography)Read your essay (twice and once aloud!)Have someone ELSE read your essay — try your teacher first.Do you have experience writing a research paper? What process did you use, and was it effective? Tell us about it in the comments below!In addition, if you haven’t already… please download Grammerly! I would hate for you to hand in your research paper and for it to have all these grammar and spelling errors that Microsoft Word doesn’t catch!From the first day of their university life, students know that they will have to write a lot - each professor requires them to create an essay or a research paper. It appears that picking research paper topics is the most difficult process. You cannot choose the first idea you see on the web or in the print publishing – it is about choosing interesting research paper themes on the relevant issues.If you need to create only one research paper at the end of the term, you can breathe out because you are blessed. If more – an appropriate solution exists. Turn to the professional online writing company. Contact them via email and get any college assignment solved within the set period of time! In this guide, we will answer some questions. How much time will you spend on finishing your research paper and what themes for a research paper should gain teacher’s appreciation? Follow our guide to find the answers.What is a Research Paper?A research paper is an N-page, size 12 font college-level document to be written due in several weeks. Why is it important? It trains several crucial skills to improve your language and other traits:ResearchReadingCritical thinkingEnglish WritingAnalyzingHow to Write a Research Paper?Picking exceptional research paper themes for high school scholars is half the way. Explore with our guide how to create each component of this type of assignment including thesis statement, outline and others.How to write a research paper outlineWrite My OutlineAn outline of research paper is a primary thing to include before the process begins. It looks like a map of your work. Check the necessary sections of the paper. In case of a research paper, clear outline looks this way:Title pageAbstractIntroductionMethodsResultsDiscussionConclusionBibliographyAppendixHow to write an introduction for a research paperIt is the opening section of the research paper, and we can call this paragraph the face of the entire document. Begin with a clear hook to make a reader go through it to the end. Use one word or collocation:Joke or anecdoteFactStatisticsMetaphorSimileAllegoryFamous person quoteLiterary quotationRhetorical questionHow to write a thesis statement for a research paperA thesis statement is the foundation of any academic assignment. It reflects the main argument of the entire text. Postpone writing a thesis statement until the last minute: once you have an overall picture, it is better to come up with the thesis statement. It should be clear, concise, and to-the-point. Check the correctness and grammar mistakes of this section.How to write a conclusion for a research paperEnd up your paper by summarizing the main points (those are the topic sentences from each body paragraphs). Rewrite the thesis and propose an impressive fact or rhetorical question to summarize crucial facts make the reader want to continue personal research.Good Topics for Research Paper: Things to Know about the Writing ProcessIs there something more complicated like a term paper to complete? It is possible to learn more about term papers here. Visit this link and find the answers. Writing an essay like research paper is never fast and easy. Once you consider on the subjects to write about for a research paper, there are things you should remember while working on the chosen topic:Do in-depth researchPrefer several interesting subjects to choose fromMake a plan of your workWrite all sections that include body parts and conclusionCite related resourcesEdit & proofread the writing to polish your English and avoid grammar mistakesMany scholars believe an initial couple of steps are the least problematic. It is not true. An extensive scientific research and proper topic ideas for academic paper are the steps that define the whole process. The better and clearer picture is in a person’s head, the easier the process of writing will be. Brainstorming activities and personal coaching might help. It is a crucial moment in writing a research paper because it shapes author’s abstract thoughts into a topic of the paper.Exciting Research Paper: Writing Process OverviewOrder Research PaperWithout a decent content, good college research paper themes will not make sense. The outline is the thing every scholar should begin the writing of research paper.An extended research paper outline assists in structuring the writer’s personal thoughts, and it prevents from getting lost in the middle of the process.Another thing you should plan ahead is the writing style and formatting. Once you obtain the prompt, try to adjust the academic style (APA, MLA, Chicago and more) with the help of numerous writing and formatting services. The APA style is the one most research paper writers use.Once an author picks one of the easy subjects, MLA or another style one more challenge comes out: preparing the primary sentence of the beginning, which is called a research problem, thesis statement, or hypothesis. The primary aim of a statement is to respond to this question.A final structure of research paper is stiff, it serves a particular purpose. The main goal of a tricky structure and formatting is to discover credible resources without obstacles and help organize the ideas you have regarding the picked issue. Remember the structure of an empiric research paper – it works no matter which themes to write about for a research paper the author prefers:Cover pageAbstract (1/3 of a page)Table of contentsIntroductionMethodology (equipment + tools)Results & Discussion (R&D)ConclusionReferencesAppendices (the list of images, graphs, reports, tables, and other visual elements applied to support the findings)A research paper example:Do you find it tricky? Experts recommend picking an appropriate language style for your research paper and focusing on every section separately. Don’t forget to check grammar carefully. Write the project step-by-step rather than complete research paper at one time.Find more advanced writing tips by going the link shared by the most successful scholars who used to survive their hardest academic years!Discover Ways to Cite Excellent Research Paper Ideas CorrectlyCiting/Referencing the primary sources in this type of academic paper is important. Without recalling the authors of the original resources in a decent manner, students will lose credits. It is an integral component of a grading rubric you have to include.Here are several recommendations for research paper in our guide to prevent you from falling into the trap associated with citing.Expert Advice:“Keep track of every book, scholarly article, academic journal, newspaper, magazine, video, website or other resources you attend to obtain relevant information. Taking notes is a clue to success with research paper.Always begin with the draft. It is the map of your paper. Check whether each bibliography entry has such information as the work’s complete title, writer’s name, place of publication, publisher, and date of publication.It is a good idea to have some note cards. Use them to write down the information about the selected sources in the top right corner to see if the bibliography list of the paper matches it in the end.”Prof. Marry Johnson, an expert English editor at WriteMyPaper4MeHow to Select Research Paper Topics to Impress a Teacher?Lucky you are if the themes for research papers were assigned to you by your professor. It makes the process more pleasant because a student already knows what source of information to search for. A huge piece of work is ready. A student should find the appropriate books, articles, journals, and other sources to begin research paper writing. The primary aim is to develop the extremely valuable skills of selecting a research paper topic and conducting a study.Get a little self-centeredIt may sound not too helpful, but at the point of choosing a theme for research paper, you should check those subject aspects that are easy and exciting for you. Does your professor of English want you to decide on the subject of matter? Feel free to go in whichever direction your heart desires and prefer your personal style for research paper.Get background information for research paperIf you do not understand the subject completely, never hesitate to contact your professor and ask thousands of questions. Your purpose is to understand the discipline enough and explore plenty of resources to get curious and ask questions. You may also subscribe on useful online guides that help to complete any academic paper.Look for review articlesDo not be lazy to read more and vary your resources. Professors provide a catalog of research articles useful for the class. It is your guide. You will have to read most of these sources during the course of the term along with other materials.Find your field and focus on it!Once you have an idea of what you want to write about in your research paper, make sure your topic is neither broad or narrow. If the research paper topic is too narrow, you might hardly find the appropriate literature. In-depth themes provide too many sources.200 Most Brilliant Research Paper TopicsResearch Paper Topics for CollegeDomestic political scandalsBusiness struggles & triumphs in certain market areaCollege battles in the particular regionUpcoming political regulations and their possible result and impact on societyPros & cons of hunting the wild deer in the specific areaMountaintop removal miningHealthcare privilege of youth in the United StatesJuvenile crime: contemporary methods of punishment & their effectivenessCollege tuition planningThe role of gambling/online gaming in the life of a studentGay, bisexual, and transgender - differences & similaritiesThe way menstruation affects young girlsPsychology Research Paper Topics for CollegeNon-experimental research methods in psychologyImportance of following ethics in psychological researchSubstance abuseEvolutionary aspects of mate preferencesAdvantages of social education in groupsFactors that impact animal behavior/growthEyewitness testimony & memory: the correlation between themAttention-deficit syndrome: myth to justify persons or reality?Is artificial intelligence going to dominate the planet?How do stereotypes appear in society?Steps necessary to end cyber crimesMethods criminals target cyber zonesThe components of the modern sex education: Is it effective or not?How comes that sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise?Facts that prove monkeys are the carriers of AIDsReasons why safe sex is the best way to avoid STDsReasons for the females below 18 to make abortionsThe most dangerous dissociative disordersGambling from the psychological perspectiveResearch Paper Topics for Middle SchoolThe song that made people betterThe way student contributes to his/her communityHow student’s ancestors arrived at where they are currently livingPrincess Diana & her dynastyPresident Obama and politicsThe Trail of Tears: What does it mean to the history of the US?How did the code talkers survive and won the war?Who is the greatest general that has lived on this planet?10 ways to start protecting the environmentEfficient options to achieve academic goalsText messaging & teen literacyWalmart influence in the development of the US economiesThe origins of EBMThe methods ancient sailors navigated the globeScience Research Paper TopicsReasons why flu virus is different from year to yearMedical services to save babies born before 27 weeksDifferent types of stem cells and their usageSleep disorders’ impact on the overall health conditionProof that screening for breast cancer is helpfulA correlation between breastfeeding & improved baby’s healthStem cells to assist in reducing death rates in heart attack casesSeveral reasons why eating disorders can lead to the patient's deathThe healthiest diet does not existStop smoking to improve mental healthNever-ending society evolution“Avengers” from Marvel from the scientific point of viewGood Research Paper TopicsFollow preventive measures against weaponFactors that define police brutalityThree Strikes Law effects on the communityDrug testing convenience for the patientsFactors that motivate society to get involved in sexual harassmentGreek letter society existsPrayer in schools: Be or not to be?Is there a way to minimize radioactive waste disposal?Children’s programming and commercial usage: legal or not?Social Security Reform: Possible Pros & ConsMeasures taken to intensify the airport security after September 11thMagna Carta: How it changed EnglandStages involved in making a music videoThe ingredients found in some hot dogsBusiness Research Paper TopicsCompare & contrast the effectiveness of various managerial techniquesElucidate the pros of the small businessesDoes franchising make it easier to run a business?What are the impacts of global warming on a specific type of business?Pros & cons of outsourcing servicesOld & rigid corporate traditions that save some popular companiesReasons to contribute some company’s assets to charityUseful techniques to attract the attention of a celebrity to take part in the marketing campaignThe impact of Burger King on the US economiesThe Great Depression VS the RecessionThe Manhattan Project: Expectations & realityHow communism affects business in Northern KoreaHistory Research Paper TopicsCentral Asian art: Its influence on contemporary artThe correlation between Greek culture & Roman cultureThe correlation between history & culture on the example of JapanDifferent monetary systems’ influences in the development of humanityThe act of Green Revolution in the history of mankindThe most effective military strategy of all timesFactors that initiated WWIIWill humans face WWIII in the closest few years?Is liberalism the most optimal solution?What are some of the consequences of the women’s suffrage movements?The impact of mass media in the US war attempts in VietnamHow Genghis Khan conquered PersiaMartin Luther King’s protest against the Catholic ChurchAztec Empire and its architectureResearch Paper Topics for Computer ScienceMultiple-Access Control ProtocolSymbian mobile OS: Main benefitsMethods to measure universal intelligenceReasons to choose Google appsWhat makes Macs safer than Windows computers?When will humanity start implementing brain chips?Confidential data storage & detection: Associated risksThe effectiveness of online grammar checkers & plagiarism detectorsSelf-defending networks: Their importanceThe most useful way to connect to the internet and use your emailExploring how GPS system functionsControlling airport security via computer technologiesThe primary dangerous computer virusesThe basics of search engine optimization (SEO)Literature Research Paper TopicsDuma’s “Three Musketeers” are not historically accurate in many sensesThe way Harry Potter reflects the ideal of the timeDiscuss and evaluate the allegory of 2 random novelsThe imagery within novel: The basic usesExplore the reasons why some authors use similes/metaphorsWhich factors help to identify the genre of the certain novel?What are the differences between a horror story and a thriller?Can you share a new aspect of prose based on independent research?A historical event of your interest depicted in different storiesExplain how a particular literary genre emerged and developedWomen’s suffrage movement in proseAlchemy as described in some literary piecesBooks on Joan of Arc: Her image in themThe down of literature in the current societyLaw Research Paper TopicsInternational Criminal Law Court Tools: Evaluate their effectivenessComparative criminal procedure: report & analysis with detailsThe mission of WIPO: World Intellectual Property OrganizationThe US Copyright Office: Does it really help the local writers to defend their business?What a European Patent Office does?Why is it important to learn GATT documents?Women’s authority in different parts of the planetInter-American Human Rights Library: Exciting outtakes & full reportMass communications lawECOLEX: A gateway to environmental lawElection laws of the United StatesIslamic law: The way people around the globe perceive itControversial Topics for Research PaperStudents must obtain a right to opt out of standardized testing if they do not find it necessaryNSA can purge the gathered phone records for safety purposesShould parents be severer?Is it ethical to force humans to attend church?Is it legal to do abortions?Circumstances under which a biological father replaces a child’s momTeaching teenagers about sex is immoralIt is okay for contemporary partners to live together before marriageIdeas on free-ranging parentingThe society would be better without organized religionTechnology affects religionOvereating VS consuming an insufficient amount of foodArgumentative Research Paper TopicsDADT repeal and its significanceThe United States border control: The collected insights & analysisAdvantages & disadvantages of breastfeedingChild adoption by a gay familyThe average wage in the USWhy is it immoral for an old lady to date a young boy?Money is not the root of all evil but the way people use themLegalizing prostitution does not make senseScholars should be given less homeworkThe techniques to fight obesity safelyCurfews help to keep young adults out of troubleResearch Paper Topics on EducationE-Learning at home VS traditional educationThe meaning of standardized testsNo Child Left Behind Act: Assessment of its effectivenessDoes grade inflation take place in the United States?Living on campus help to develop independenceReading & literacy in the early daysCurriculum, teaching, and assessment nowadaysHistory of schooling statementSteps to complex language learning at homeThe efficiency of self-regulated schoolingLearning style in limited groupsUrban education VS village educationGeneral tests and their effectiveness in various institutionsHR Research Paper TopicsThe negative impact of feminism on the progress of contemporary employment cultureThe role of business ethics in the company of student’s choiceWorkplace diversity is helpful in creating a productive work environmentThe possibility of erasing one’s memoryMaking a doll out of a personMembers of Congress must have specific term limitsCEOs receive unfairly huge wagesPeople’s Rights Research Paper TopicsSocial dramas in the area of livingWhy do so many girls get pregnant at the early age?Is there racial discrimination in present schools?Should a placement by academic ability take place?Police have a right to use drones to record the private life of citizensChildren’s interests in various parts of the EarthHumans should marry someone with the same political viewpointMethods to prevent high school bullyingDispute Topics for Research PapersWhite collar jobs are losing its significance: Main reasonsCrime taking place every day in some industriesThe impact of plastic bag usage on present-day consumers and their healthDrug & alcohol abuse among childrenHomeschooling & its consequencesSexual assault: Various methods to punish itSubstance abuse and its consequencesHow to deal with the narcissistic personality disorderWe hope that your next research paper won’t bring you any difficulties, and you will easily select a perfect topic and enjoy the writing. Follow our guide and keep in mind each student can count on online help. Contact us, subscribe to our newsletters, and qualified writing service will solve issues with homework at any level without any delays.You’ve spent months or years conducting your academic research. Now it’s time to write your journal article. For some, this can become a daunting task because writing is not their forte. It might become difficult to even start writing. However, once you organize your thoughts and begin writing them down, the overall task will become easier.We provide some helpful tips for you here.Organize Your ThoughtsPerhaps one of the most important tasks before you even begin to write is to get organized. By this point, your data is compiled and analyzed. You most likely also have many pages of “notes”. These must also be organized. Fortunately, this is much easier to do than in the past with hand-written notes. Presuming that these tasks are completed, what’s next?When suggesting that you organize your thoughts, we mean to take a look at what you have compiled. Ask yourself what you are trying to convey to the reader. What is the most important message from your research? How will your results affect others? Is more research necessary?Write your answers down and keep them where you can see them while writing. This will help you focus on your goals.Aim for ClarityYour paper should be presented as clearly as possible. You want your readers to understand your research. You also do not want them to stop reading because the text is too technical.Keep in mind that your published research will be available in academic journals all over the world. This means that people of different languages will read it. Moreover, even with scientists, this could present a language barrier. According to a recent article, always remember the following points as you write:Clarity: Cleary define terms; avoid nonrelevant information.Simplicity: Keep sentence structure simple and direct.Accuracy: Represent all data and illustrations accurately.For example, consider the following sentence:“Chemical x had an effect on metabolism.”This is an ambiguous statement. It does not tell the reader much. State the results instead:“Chemical x increased fat metabolism by 20 percent.”All scientific research also provide significance of findings, usually presented as defined “P” values. Be sure to explain these findings using descriptive terms. For example, rather than using the words “significant effect,” use a more descriptive term, such as “significant increase.”For more tips, please also see “Tips and Techniques for Scientific Writing”. In addition, it is very important to have your paper edited by a native English speaking professional editor. There are many editing services available for academic manuscripts and publication support services.Research Paper StructureWith the above in mind, you can now focus on structure. Scientific papers are organized into specific sections and each has a goal. We have listed them here.TitleYour title is the most important part of your paper. It draws the reader in and tells them what you are presenting. Moreover, if you think about the titles of papers that you might browse in a day and which papers you actually read, you’ll agree.The title should be clear and interesting otherwise the reader will not continue reading.Authors’ names and affiliations are on the title page.AbstractThe abstract is a summary of your research. It is nearly as important as the title because the reader will be able to quickly read through it.Most journals, the abstract can become divided into very short sections to guide the reader through the summaries.Keep the sentences short and focused.Avoid acronyms and citations.IntroductionInclude background information on the subject and your objectives here.Materials and MethodsDescribe the materials used and include the names and locations of the manufacturers.For any animal studies, include where you obtained the animals and a statement of humane treatment.Clearly and succinctly explain your methods so that it can be duplicated.Criteria for inclusion and exclusion in the study and statistical analyses should be included.ResultsDiscuss your findings here.Be careful to not make definitive statements.Your results suggest that something is or is not true.This is true even when your results prove your hypothesis.DiscussionDiscuss what your results mean in this section.LimitationsDiscuss any study limitations. Suggest additional studies.AcknowledgmentsAcknowledge all contributors.ReferencesAll citations in the text must have a corresponding reference.Check your author guidelines for format protocols.Tables and FiguresIn most cases, your tables and figures appear at the end of your paper or in a separate file.The titles (legends) usually become listed after the reference http://section.Be sure that you define each acronym and abbreviation in each table and figure.Helpful RulesIn their article entitled, “Ten simple rules for structuring papers,” in PLOS Computational Biology, authors Mensh and Kording provided 10 helpful tips as follows:Focus on a central contribution.Write for those who do not know your work.Use the “context-content-conclusion” approach.Avoid superfluous information and use parallel structures.Summarize your research in the abstract.Explain the importance of your research in the introduction.Explain your results in a logical sequence and support them with figures and tables.Discuss any data gaps and limitations.Allocate your time for the most important sections.Get feedback from colleagues.Some of these rules have been briefly discussed above; however, the study done by the authors does provide detailed explanations on all of them.It is important to start thinking about the result since you begin the work. It is a wise solution to start thinking how to write a conclusion for a research paper once a student comes up with a good topic. An outline is an action plan. Developing a research paper outline requires having an overall picture of the research paper conclusion.What if you have no idea how to finish your work? It is not a problem – read these helpful tips, and if the problem remains unsolved, contact professional online academic writers to get quality help.What is a Conclusion: Defining the TermSo, what does conclusion mean? Before moving to the straight answer to this question, it is important to define what a research paper conclusion is. The work itself is the collection of the findings from different studies. The writer gathers information during the process of in-depth observation of the primary sources (books, scholarly articles, scientific reports, academic journals, etc.)What is the Purpose of a Conclusion Paragraph?A conclusion is a closing paragraph or few of the academic/scientific/creative writing, which summarizes the main points of the story. These definitions will help to understand how to write a conclusion for a research paper.Are you ready to learn more secrets distinguished scientists use to succeed in their most famous scientific works? Look at the list of other mistakes to avoid.How to Write a Conclusion for a Research Paper: Things to Cover beforeWithout having a clear idea of the way introduction and the rest of the work’s pats should look like, a student will not succeed with the assignment. This type of academic work has more parts than a regular paper. It is not a regular school essay with an introductory paragraph, 3-5 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. It is a scientific study, which aims to explore the problem under the loop.How to Write a Research Paper OutlineBefore moving to the question how to end a research paper conclusion, have a look at the table of contents to understand the problem deeper:AbstractIntroductionMethodologyResults & DiscussionConclusionBibliography/ReferencesHow to write an outline for a research paper step-by-step? We will cover each section.How to Write an Abstract for a Research PaperAfter the title page, it is necessary to include an abstract. It will not take a while - prepare a summary of the main points and reasons to conduct a study in no longer than 1/3 of a page. It would be something around 250-300 words. Do not go into details!How to Write an Introduction for a Research PaperMany students face a writer’s block from the beginning, and it makes sense they want to know how to start a research paper. Structure the introduction around the outline. Do not go into the details when introducing the topic. The field experts constitute the target audience of a writer, and they possess the background information about the chosen problem. Present the problem briefly.Set the scene - provide short background information;Share some findings from the previous studies;Stress the significance of the problem;Give hints to what you will be talking about;State the thesis.How to Write a Thesis for a Research PaperHow to start a conclusion? One of the effective ways to start a conclusion is to remind the reader of why he/she was reading the paper with the help of paraphrased thesis statement, which appears in the introduction. Answer several critical questions while working on the thesis statement:Is your thesis statement in the right place?Is the thesis statement specific?Does the thesis sound general?An example of a bad thesis would be: “Several serious objections to modern horror films exist.”A better example of a thesis is: “The cinematic methods used nowadays allowed obtaining more graphic, and horror flicks have provoked higher levels of violence among American youth. Slasher films became incapable of delivering the emotional catharsis that retro horror movies did.”Working on the Body ParagraphsIt is impossible to learn how to write a good research paper without covering the sections that constitute the body of this work.Methods: A methodology section is there to describe the equipment and tools. Focus on providing the details about the equipment and tools you used to carry out the experiments necessary to study the problem in-depth. It should be a kind of user’s guide. Tell what you did step-by-step so that another potential writer interested in this topic will be Abel to duplicate your steps and continue the investigation.Results & Discussion (R&D): Writers can combine these two. Interpret the results (numbers and figures) obtained during the process; discuss the findings and explain what they mean in a. Broader sense.Conclusion: This section is similar to the typical essay conclusion - sum up the main points in the R&D section, restate the thesis, and provide some forecasts for the future. One may add a rhetorical question as a hook.How to Write an Effective Conclusion for a Research Paper?If you wish to learn how to write an effective conclusion for a research paper meaning you need the highest possible score, pay attention to the abstract, introduction, and results. These sections predetermine the conclusion. An abstract arrives at the beginning of the work with a summary of the findings, but the student has to compose it after the rest of the sections are ready, including the conclusion. There is no way to develop an abstract without writing a final thought.If a student wants to find out how to write a conclusion paragraph for a research paper, he/she should draw a parallel between the conclusion and introduction. In this situation, a conclusion depends on the opening one. The student should know what he will be writing about in the conclusion when developing an introduction - these two parts must be interconnected. The closing section restates the thesis statement mentioned in the beginning.The final thing to pay attention to is the part that contains study results because the conclusion must reveal the research findings once more and conclude everything mentioned in the Results & Discussion section by adding the ideas to implement them further and provide forecasts for the future.How to Write a Good Conclusion for a Research Paper?We are not interested in explaining how to finish the study – we are trying to explain how to write a good conclusion for a research paper, and these are different things.The conclusion of the research paper conclusion is the discussion. This part predetermines the course of concluding section as it evaluates the way results reply to the main question and explain their relevance to the current knowledge in the proposed area.All conclusion does answer the primary research question stated in the introduction. Try to reply to several questions succinctly even though the author should have answered part of them in the discussion section. The core idea is to leave some unanswered questions and propose forecasts. Other potential scientists will then use this information to support ongoing studies. One day the humanity may obtain the detailed information on the given problem (example: healthcare issue) thanks to you and your followers' investigations.Would you like other people to cite your words and recall your name through ages? In this case, it is important to understand how to write a conclusion paragraph for a research paper according to the rules of great scientific work.BUY SOLUTION ONLINEGet a Free Research Paper Conclusion Example!The students who are in search of the good research paper conclusion example.Example A:“2 different designs of an emission-free fuel cell vehicle have been introduced in the paper. The 1st automobile, a premium-class Jaguar functions thanks to hydrogen. The 2nd vehicle, a small family Suzuki, runs on a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. Every automobile has recyclable elements. Both cars meet the requirements of the Australian design standards regarding overall performance and security. The main point if that the 2nd automobile, Suzuki, is more economical in terms of manufacturing.”The best way to write a conclusion for a research paper is to remain neutral concerning the participants if the study contains comparisons.Another example is:“The presented study presented a couple of environmentally-friendly automobile designs. The team revealed the information about the engine, materials, security, comfort, status, and accessories along with the sketches for every model. Both would be more expensive than regular family automobiles, but they are good regarding the environment.”Grab one more how to write a conclusion for a research paper example!“Physical punishment can be an effective disciplinary measure. It should be the last resort for parents if they want to achieve lower levels of violence in the world. Home violence is not the best alternative. Instead, parents should focus on teaching responsibility to their naughty children.”What about discussing some dangerous sports?“I believe our community would be healthier if more citizens took part in sports of various types, no matter whether those are extreme sports or not. It does not mean we should not go on trying to prevent the adverse consequences of the dangerous sports. The sports must be both challenging and safe. Make it fun is the direct responsibility of the event managers, coaches, participants themselves, and watchers.”The final example to share with our readers would sound this way:“To conclude, the society has to ensure the animals used for laboratory purposes have the minimum of suffering and discomfort. Animal testing is necessary to save human lives. We could benefit from that in multiple ways.”These types of conclusions may be used in a variety of settings. A team/single student may decide to compose the conclusion in the third-person voice or describe everything using the first-person voice. The main goal is to reveal the truth.The Results & Discussion section is what predetermines the conclusion of the study, and it is critical to understand how to write a conclusion for a research paper with the help of so-called transitions words.Top Conclusion Transitions for Research PapersHave you heard about the transition words? Starting from the English Composition 101 class, each student should know what these words mean and how to use them. Those are the building bridges between the sentences/paragraphs. These words help to unite various related ideas into one whole. Transition words constitute an integral part of any world’s language – keep in mind some of them to write papers of any complexity level!Here is the list of the conclusion transitions for research papers. We have chosen the basic categories of the transition words to make it easier for you to search for the most appropriate word.That is everything a student needs to know about the art of concluding a research paper. Was this information useful? If there are any questions left, it is possible to get the immediate help with any homework assignment from the professional academic & scientific writing company without leaving home!

A blank computer screen. That was what the summer before my senior year looked like.Above: A pretty familiar sight my senior summer...The Common Application opened August 1, and in my summer schedule I’d left myself a whole four weeks to sit down and figure out what I was going to send to colleges.Or so I thought. The reality of that August–beach trips, field hockey pre-season, and just generally anything I could do to avoid sitting in front of a blank computer screen with a document titled “Common Application Essay”–was a little different from the four weeks of writing, revising, and finishing my college essays that I’d planned out in May.The college essay (officially your “personal statement,” at least at Harvard) was the most intimidating part of my application process–because, by the beginning of my senior year, it was the only thing I had any real control over. Think about it this way: by the time you hit the summer before you apply to college, most of your application is already complete. You probably have a pretty good idea of what your scores are going to look like, the majority of you high school grades have already been entered into your transcript, your recommending teachers already know you (I hope…), and you’ve already gotten involved in whatever school activities you’ve filled your last three years in high school with.I thought of the Common App essay as my chance to have a voice in the committee room when [fill in college-of-choice here]’s admissions officers sat down to decide my fate–and that made a blank Word document utterly terrifying. I mean, what do you say to convince someone to let you into Harvard?This week, I’ve been asked 14 (I counted…) questions about the essay component of the Harvard application, and most of them have started with the unassuming, “What did you write your application essay on?”If you really want to know, after hours of debate over whether or not writing about my failures was really a good way to attempt to get into college, I picked the Common App essay prompt, “Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure,” and wrote about the two years in high school I spent generally making a mess of my time in a Navy JROTC program–complete with exactly five terrible nautical puns.But, if you ask me, I think you’re asking the wrong question.The whole point of your application essay–and the reason Harvard calls it your “personal statement” instead–is that it’s personal. I wouldn’t recommend including my nautical puns in your writing to Harvard for a lot of reasons, but the most important is that they’re a part of my story, not yours.I’m sitting in an office with four other students right now, and (after a brief poll) it turns out we wrote about everything from writer’s block to being a pastor’s kid to the U.S. Navy. So the answer to the all-important question, “What do you say to convince someone to let you into Harvard?” is that you talk about you.You spend all day with yourself, but your admissions officers meet you for the first time the day they pick up your application. They meet you through your transcript and teacher recommendations and extracurricular resume, but mostly they meet you–the parts of you that don’t revolve around a list of leadership positions or your stellar (or not-so-stellar, in my case) math grades or how helpful you were in English class that one time–in what you write to them.So write about you: what matters to you, how you spend your time, what makes you tick and keeps you up at night. Don’t try to write what you think Harvard wants to hear, whether that’s an essay about a love of mathematical theorems you don’t really have or your “life-changing” experience helping poor orphans in Indonesia that wasn’t really that life-changing at all. If you’re reading (or writing) your essay and it feels like you’re describing someone else, there’s a big problem.So write about your grandmother. Or your gym teacher. Or your after-school job bagging groceries. Or math theorems, if they really are your favorite. Write in your voice, whatever that sounds like–whether you love dialogue or description or have a soft spot for terrible Navy puns. Come up with something that’s uniquely you–no matter how long it takes. I spent the first 27 days of those four August weeks trying to wrap my head around how I was even going to put an essay on that blank page at which I was staring. And on the 28th day, in a corner on the floor of my high school’s senior homeroom right before my last first day of school, something clicked, I grabbed my laptop, and I went from lamenting having nothing to say in my college essay to having 2,500 words of stuff to say that I spent the next eight weeks cutting down to 650.Above: My preferred essay-writing spot.Colleges aren’t asking for your whole life story (please…) or a piece of art in which you expound upon your love of all things Harvard; they’re asking for a little more information about you, and you’re the one who gets to decide what you tell them. It’s a daunting task, but no one is better prepared to write about your life than you are.No one’s college process is all smooth sailing, and that’s because figuring out what you’re all about and then trying to tell someone else about it is hard. As stupid as it can feel sometimes to write answers to canned prompts like, “Write about a person who has had an impact on you” and “Tell your story,” eventually you just have to conquer the blank page, test the waters, and come up with something–even if you end up throwing 2,499 of your initial 2,500 words overboard.After all, I used nautical puns in my college essay (and in this blog post…) and got in. How much crazier could a Harvard application essay get?!On the banks of the Charles River, just outside of Boston, sits Harvard University, a sprawling campus that encompasses not just the hub of undergraduate student life—which begins with and emanates from Harvard Yard—but also a collection of graduate schools for law, business, medicine, and more.One of the eight schools in the Ivy League, Harvard is a private research university that was founded in 1636.Harvard University is known around the world for the research it conducts, the students it shapes, the world leaders it has educated, and the sizeable endowment that it operates.A lively bunch of only about 6,400 students, the undergraduate community is full of energy and new ideas. But because the college is both famous for its myriad historical successes and is simultaneously made up of so few students, the undergraduate acceptance rate is exceptionally low, coming in at 5.2%. This means it takes a lot of hard work to craft a compelling application.DO I NEED TO SUBMIT THE WRITING SUPPLEMENT FOR HARVARD’S APPLICATION?To submit a competitive application to Harvard, you must craft a stand-out response not just to the Common App’s general personal statement question, but also to Harvard’s supplemental essay prompts as well. While Harvard’s supplement is marked as optional, it is certainly in your best interest to, at the very least, reply to it—but it’s even better to craft a thoughtful and meaningful response in order to position yourself as a competitive applicant.THE WRITING SUPPLEMENT PROMPTOccasionally, students feel that college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about themselves or their accomplishments. If you wish to include an additional essay, you may do so.Possible Topics Include:Unusual circumstances in your lifeTravel or living experiences in other countriesA letter to your future college roommateAn intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper or research topic) that has meant the most to youHow you hope to use your college educationA list of books you have read during the past twelve monthsNOTE THESE KEY POINTS ABOUT THE SUPPLEMENT ESSAY:Before we dive into actual content guidelines, it’s important to discuss some key points about the essay itself.First, there is no explicit essay length mentioned. In general, you want your essay between 400-600 words. Anything less is not enough to truly develop your application any further and would just be a waste of time, while anything more would be a bit much for a supplemental essay.Next, make sure that before you submit your application for this essay, the essay fits completely on one page. Harvard adcoms review thousands of apps and do not need to fumble through pages of your essay. If you stay below 600 words, you should be able to completely fit on one page.Now in terms of content, bear in mind that this essay is completely open-ended—you can submit almost anything. If you have written a really strong essay for another school, you can simply recycle that essay. If you are going to write off of the “possible topics” list, be sure to keep in mind the same guidelines we will explain if writing the essay from scratch.GO A DIFFERENT ROUTE WITH THIS ESSAYIf you are writing this essay completely from scratch for Harvard, an important guideline to use in framing your essay is that it should substantially differ from your Common App essay in terms of content (obviously), personality traits developed, and even style/tone.This essay is supposed to add something completely new to your app – a totally different angle – so it’s best to go for a full 180, or an essay that adds shock factor.For example, if your application is heavily themed around research and your Common App essay describes your obsession with biology research and how it has shaped who you’ve become today, then a supplemental essay about how you give haircuts to help raise money for charity can be an unexpected way to develop your personality outside of academic/professional environments. The essay would use your passion as an organizing tool to reflect on your interesting experiences in pursuing an unusual hobby, as well as highlighting your involvement in your community in a very unique way.Another example of a 180-essay is if your app is full of leadership positions (perhaps you are heavily involved in MUN or debate), then writing an essay speaking about your insecurities when getting up in front of a room full of people or in managing others can be a candid way to humanize yourself for readers. Ultimately, the goal is to add unexpected depth to an application that otherwise “makes sense.” If your app makes too much sense, it will be harder to remember than if your app raises eyebrows and causes adcoms to say, “Cool.”REMEMBER THESE HARVARD-SPECIFIC KEY POINTS FOR YOUR ESSAYA few key points to think about when writing this essay (considering it’s for Harvard):First, Harvard definitely values community involvement/passion development over pure academic success.Second, you want to try to convey some sort of curiosity to Harvard – whether that curiosity is academic, intellectual, extracurricular, or philosophical. Harvard students for the most part are really passionate about something; you want to convey how you will also contribute to that pool.Finally, Harvard specifically looks for genuinely good people. Now that may sound unbelievably corny and cliché, but expressing a sense of citizenship or regard for humanity in the essay is a strong plus for the Harvard palette.With these guidelines in mind, you should be well on your way to writing the perfect Harvard Supplement. Best of luck from the CollegeVine team!

A lot of people have asked me for a warning on this answer. It's very long, and very detailed explanation to support my belief of what the future is going to hinge on us getting right. That said, if at any time you feel yourself losing interest, please take that time to skip to the bottom section, after the family on the beach, to see why I wrote it. Thanks and please enjoy the essay.If one scrolls through the many answers of this question, "What are the biggest ways in which the world will be be different 20 years from now, the greatest 'X factors' that will change our lives," they'll see many wildly bold, exciting, and optimistic predictions of a future not far from us today. So far, they have ranged from technological leaps in machine automation, biotech, robotic swarms, and 3D printing; to social evolutions such as the conversion to all credit economies, an end to diseases, the post-scarcity, and new levels of international individual equality. Yet more promise better governance via more openness, and even a possible end to war through an even more interconnected world. Of course, others are going the other direction with predictions of diseases we haven't yet discovered, or worse, haven't yet invented. Some warn weapons too terrifying to detail. Others have echoed cautionary tales against the possible destruction of us all through climate change, energy crisis, nuclear devastation, and now to add to the list... radical religious fundamentalism.As I scroll through I, like many of you reading, are wondering to myself what the odds of any one of these outcomes may be. Some seem well thought out, bringing in insights from brilliant minds. Some are simply ridiculous. I am left, however, with one surreal and terrifying truth... at least a few of them will be right. Some of these predictions, wild as they may be, will come true. The sad thing is, we aren't really sure which ones. All we can be sure of, is that there will be change. Change, however it happens, is the one certainty among all this speculation.Change will most certainly come, but it won't come alone. After great change, there is always a period of disruption. Disruption is often used in Silicon Valley to symbolize the moment one company strikes it rich by finding an unknown vacuum to fill, a need to satiate, or dismantling an inefficient system. For many others, it is the fear that automation will leave them and millions of others out of a job and no hope to fill it. To some governments, disruption means a protest of thousands of angry and jobless people turning into a riot, or even a full blown rebellion. Disruption may be in the creation or destruction of entire industries, or as has been the case very recently, entire regimes. Most of the world has already experienced a decade pass where we feel less safe, less secure, and less sure that some catastrophic event won't destroy our lives in the blink of an eye or the click of a mouse. Likewise, many millions have already felt the effects of change destabilize their nations with ramifications that will echo for years to come. Many of the other answers to this question have illustrated why, whether they intended to or not.Consider a case study in change and disruption that was the Arab Spring of 2010. Then, new technology gave way to empowering the youth of several nations with information. A wave of democratic energy swept across the region. Caught in this wave were dictators over nations like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. The world watched in amazement as millions upon millions flooded streets to demand change. To them, change indeed came. In several nations, reforms are taking root, and dictatorial regimes have been replaced, if not ousted entirely. Millions are indeed living freer lives.But...At the same time, today there are three nations currently gripped in struggles of civil war, numerous uprisings already violently crushed, millions already killed, and many tens of millions of people displaced from their homes both nearby and across the world. Worse yet, chaos and anarchy in the region formed in the void of power that once existed under the despots who ruled there. In that void grew medieval death cults bent on absolute devastation and the full scale disruption of the Western world, for no other reason than that the West needed to be disrupted. Today, news of the Middle East centers only on one word - Chaos.This isn't to say that change is necessarily a bad thing, nor even that the disruption that change brings is evil in itself. It is just acknowledging that change happens, and that where change occurs, not far behind it, disruption is sure to follow. Finally, where disruption takes place, as we have seen in Middle East, instability is sure to follow, as well. It is this instability that leads to the crises which we hear about daily, and this instability that creates an ever widening gulf between where are today and the world we envisioned for it twenty years ago. Furthermore, as we experience yet more change, the kinds of technological, social, and political changes highlighted over and over throughout this question, instability will build upon itself, sometimes making way for progress and improvements, but other times, most of the time, preparing the ground for the kinds of horrors that only come from the vacuum where order once existed. It is in these environments desperation happens, and the kind of dangerous actions take place which only further dismantle everything. We see a model of this in Syria, where a desperate leader does unspeakable things to his people, to stop rebels and religious fanatics, all empowered by modern technology, both military and civilian. From the chaos of that nation we have seen yet more chaos spread far beyond when millions fled to Europe, bringing with them terror hidden as one of the refugees.For this reason, the real "X factor" won't be any one technology or suite of technologies. It won't be an idea or a revolutionary act of governance, nor will be the culmination of one single ideological movement. The real "X factor" will be how we deal with all of these changes that are sure to come. How do we deal with change which could come from any source, at any time? How can we continue our operations when others fall into chaos? How do we guarantee safety when we have no guarantees on what tomorrow will look like? The world will change, but it will be the people who can adapt to that change that will survive it the best. Those people are going to be the ones who protect themselves, their communities, and their assets. As others fail and a little bit more chaos is built, these groups and individuals will be those who provide the long term stability needed and become anchors in ever changing worlds. For that reason, the true "X factor" in the future will be the force, in all its forms, that allows the most positive change for the greatest numbers of people, while preventing the kinds of negative change that pulls us all a little bit closer to the abyss.The factor, is security.But wait, security isn't something that is "possible." It is everywhere around us already. While I would agree, this answer will seek to explain just how good our security needs to be in the future, and how it has failed us today. More so than this, I want to show all the needs we have for security already, and how improbable it is that we will live in perfect peace in the next twenty years. Internationally, 2015 saw a surge in terrorism born from conflicts in the Middle East. Attacks in Paris, one at the beginning and again the end of the year, along with another in California, woke many in the West to the present threat that exists when terrorists inspired by jihad overseas are brewed at home. The year also saw tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of individuals hacked in some of the largest information attacks in history. Going beyond this, privately operated drones are now being empowered not only to deliver mail to our doorstep, but to look right in on our lives, as well. What this means for today is a desperate scramble to attempt to find a new normal which we can all feel a sense of peace. What it will mean in the next twenty years is a complete change in the way we see the security industry, and scale which we deal with it in our daily lives.The rest of this answer will be dedicated to listing some of the ways the security industry will need change, and how those changes will affect off all of us. Perhaps more than the question asked, this answer will leave you realizing one truth. Anyone can handle when something goes right, and some new technology makes your life better, but who is going to be left when everything goes to Hell?Information SecurityNot every bad thing can kill you. Oh sure, there are many things that can still ruin your life, but most won't kill you.Something that has remarkably changed in last twenty years is something that didn't exist twenty years before it - online security. The information we publish online about ourselves, the groups we associate with, and even our country, can devastate our lives, or even the lives of people we will never meet. This is so true, that to sign on to read this article, you no doubt had to fill out at least four passwords. Then there is work email, phone keys, banking password, anything associate with a bill, your firewall software (that one's ironic) and anything with the Apple logo that assumes anyone with fat fingers are criminals and forces you redo your freaking password every single time I try to buy a song... legally (that'll teach me the punishment for being good.)In fact, the information that exists in the open is an entire field of spycraft. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence collected from publicly available sources. It is the science of gathering executable knowledge to use against someone which they have willingly left available to the world. That's not true, some of that knowledge could be stolen and published already, without the subject's knowledge, and certainly without their permission. In my book, The Next Warrior, which deals with exploring the real way technology will change the face of warfare in the next few decades, this concept is explored with a young female spy named Samantha Avery. In 2026, Avery isn't like the modern day spies, case officers that are employed by the CIA. She sits at a desk and gathers information at her comfortable office outside Washington DC. What makes her special is the ability to find and pool vast databases and other intelligence sources hidden throughout the internet to decipher useful information and patterns her clients are willing to pay desperately for. Why is this special in 2026, when we have Google today? One might only look back to 2006, when there were only 85,507,314 websites in existence. For a better understanding of how much things have changed, as I write, there are 998,253,877[1], just shy of a billion. Sure Google will still be a valuable tool, but as the rest of this section will show you, the information you can access via Google is limited. Beyond the reach of search engines is information hidden in the dark web, databases and forums which house classified, illegal, or personal information that some would pay well to know, or for Avery's case, just pay well to know what to do with it.That said, Cyber Security is already a big deal today. The world isn't waiting for 2026 when Supersleuthes have already mastered the art of unburrying skeletons. Between personal invasions of privacy, to massive breaches of corporate firms and even national governments, the industry surrounding cyber security has exploded to levels we haven't seen ever. In the future, this will be even more true. When we consider the other answers, which show a future possible (almost certain) marriage between our electronics, communications, cars, homes, and entertainment unseen today, and add with them more levels of privately controlled automated drones, our augmented reality suites, driverless everything; all at work, school, home, and at play, security analysts cringe at the myriad of ways in which these technologies will interlock and overlap - each time creating a new vulnerability and entry into our own private motherload of personal information. In truth, swarm technology and the internet of things is a terrifying concept, because with each new device that enters our sphere of influence, we experience a new breach point to our data, one that hackers can use to enter into our lives.Take Nicholas Allegra. He's a hacker who makes a hobby out of defeating Apple's best and brightest security chiefs. [2]“It feels like editing an English paper,” Allegra says simply, his voice croaking as if he just woke up, though we’re speaking at 9:30 pm. “You just go through and look for errors. I don’t know why I seem to be so effective at it.”Going by the hacker name Comex, Allegra created the JailbreakMe code, which allowed millions of users to upload any applications they wanted to Apple's infamously restrictive devices. The way he did it was through exploiting a bug in how Apple’s mobile operating system iOS handles PDFs fonts. That allowed him to both locate and repurpose hidden commands. That critical flaw allowed a series of exploits that not only gains... blah, blah, blah, technical nerd jargon. The point is, this kid was able to publish code allowing millions of people to manipulate their phone against the creator's wishes because of the way the phone read fonts on pdfs.“I spent a lot of time on the polish,” Allegra says with a hint of pride.As I said before, these sorts of security failures aren't limited to phones. In the next era of technological revolutions, new methods will open to new exploits in the same way that a 19 year old can crack the world's safest phone. In a further example of how more tech means more problems, security researcher Nils Rodday is preparing a demonstration for the RSA security conference in San Francisco that will show how he is able to hack and take control of police drones from more than a mile away.[3]"...flaws in the security of a $30,000 to $35,000 drone’s radio connection allow him to take full control over the quadcopter with just a laptop and a cheap radio chip connected via USB. By exploiting a lack of encryption between the drone and its controller module known as a “telemetry box,” any hacker who’s able to reverse engineer the drone’s flight software can impersonate that controller to send navigation commands, meanwhile blocking all commands from the drone’s legitimate operator.I'm just going to take this opportunity to remind people that these things exist, and leave it at that.Personally, I'm just glad people like Nils Rodday and Comex aka Nicholas Allegra are at worst chaotic good, working for the betterment of us all through nefarious means, rather than a full on evil geniuses.There are, however, lots of evil people on the internet and many of these people want to do you great harm, or at least, have no concern for your well being as they attempt to make a better life for themselves. Whether it is because of a lone wolf cyber idealist like Comex; a community of hackers with motivations ranging from patriotism, sexism, anarchism, or just for the lulz; corporate hackers out to steal your money; or national hackers out to bring down the power grid, the internet is growing a more dangerous place, and Wall Street knows it.HACK, the exchange-traded fund bundling 30 cyber security companies, has seen quite a year for just these reasons. Last year, following a spree of high profile hacks across several industries, the fund skyrocketed, increasing in value nearly 30% in only six months to over a $1 billion market cap.[4] Since June, the value in the fund has receded, along with the entire sector. Since the downturn, however, these security companies are coming together, literally, to shake up the security industry again. In the last quarter, niche security companies that weren't able to compete on their own, are merging together and with much larger firms to solve problems some thought we wouldn't have cracked for another decade, along with others, no one predicted.Last year, there were 133 security M&A deals, up from 105 in 2014, according to 451 Research’s February report on the tech outlook for 2016. Its recent survey of investment bankers showed that security is expected to have the most M&A activity this year, surpassing mobile technology for the first time in six years.What this means is that many of today's fears and concerns for tomorrow are getting a lot of attention, and new methods to solve them are gathering steam and energy to attempt the mitigate the flood of invasions expected in the next two decades. One of the biggest leaders in this is a company you know well. Microsoft is shoring up their defense against cyberattacks by purchasing many of these fledgling firms into their corporate umbrella, creating several new layers between its customers (along with itself) and would be hackers. [5]The majority of the new additions came from startups that didn't really have a place in the industry, solving problems too specific to truly go it on their own, but filled with good ideas and brilliant people. Microsoft's recent acquisitions have been intended to add new capabilities, as well as new minds to the brain pool of Seattle. The hope is that, as these new units are integrated, the company will be capable of creating value and new technologies that will keep Microsoft and its users secure for at least the span of this question.So here's the real question. What exactly is it that Microsoft is afraid of? Throughout this answer, I'll attempt to explain some the risks that have the world's largest tech firms, and even the world's largest nations, preparing for a battle that we all need them to win. We will start off small with things that can only ruin your life, and then work up to the stuff that can legitimately break the world.Beginning in August 2014, a the hashtag #GamerGate[6] began to form. It was began by groups of video gamer enthusiasts with the stated purpose of combatting political correctness, censorship, and poor journalistic ethics in video game reporting. Specifically, those who organized their efforts with the hashtag targeted several female members of the gaming community for attacks against the genre norms and values. In retribution, these women and commenters denied the ethical basis and condemned the affair as misogynistic.Which it sorta totally was. That last paragraph really churched up the #GamerGaters, but when you get right down to it, most of what came from the debacle was anything other than advocacy for ethics in video game reporting. The roots of the debate began as a progressive pull to make females in video games less... um... genetically improbable babes.Designers and other feminist gamers argued against the exploitive nature in which females were depicted in many games, showcasing outrageous body types, and surfacing new controversies like "Same Armor/Same Stats" and "Less Armor/More Protection".So yeah, anyone who argues that is pretty much arguing, "I want more boobs! Don't take away the boobs!" Granted, in the defense of the status quo, some interesting arguments did come out, such as asking whether a very popular, very buxom, character from the 1990's should be "reduced" for the upcoming remake. The argument there was that to retool, some said sensor, a character which is already well known on account of her body type is an attack on anyone who legitimately has that body type. In this case, it sends the message that simply having large breasts or long legs is wrong, and something to be ashamed of. [7]I honestly didn't know if I just heard a masterful counterargument supporting both sides of the controversy from the feminist perspective or simply some grade A BS. Regardless, many of the feminists dismissed such views outright, some retaliating through the absolute attack on what it meant it meant to be a "gamer", coinciding the meaning with being synonymous with misogyny. That was wrong, but what happened next disappointed many as conversation wasn't the only thing that came out. Users operating, mostly anonymously via sites like Reddit, 4Chan, and 8Chan, began attacking the feminist taking the stances that games need to redirect. The attacks eventually grew to threats, including the threat of rape and murder. Most of us were surprised it got as bad as it did. I wondered why so many male gamers became so visceral in their attacks against female activists in the industry, or even just their defense of the boobs. I, along with much of the rest of the gaming community with large internet followings, just wondered with a bit of surprise how it got that bad.And that is what is really scary about online security threats like these. People online can get really mean, hateful, and even cruel. I'm not talking about calling you an "asshat" cruel. I mean subjecting people to the constant barrage of hate that results in IRL (in real life) ugliness. There is even a hashtag going out on snapchat called #TBR. For those of us blessed not to work with children on a daily basis, you've probably never heard of #TBR, but it stands for To Be Rude. Literally, it is nothing but children being hateful to one another, insulting one another in "secret", via Snapchat. Snapchat is a novel tool for kids because it allows sharing of content that will "delete" after a predetermined time or number of views, and only to those you choose. I suppose this may be useful to revolutionaries fighting against totalitarian regimes, but mostly kids just use it to post pictures of themselves naked and be monsters to one another. It sort of explains the ghost icon, though; a hint of secrecy.Now where this fits into the GamerGate controversy was that we didn't just see children acting like children. We saw adults acting very maliciously with the intent to cause fear and psychological harm, with the intended purpose of manipulation. By most accounts, that's terrorism. What made normal, boring actually, twenty and thirtysomething year old gamers turn into, well let's call it what it was, terrorists is a question we all need to answer, but it is probably the same reason kids use snapchat to post hateful videos instead of Youtube.Not getting caught.In both cases of Snapchat or #Gamergate, the offenders function behind a wall of protection from authority. For middle schoolers acting badly, it is really no different than any other time when mean girls said mean things when no teachers were around. With #Gamergate, we saw something very different. Grown adults behaving online in a way they never would in the real world. Many attribute this to the anonymous nature in which they gathered, communicated, and executed their "operations."Anonymity on the internet is an important thing if for no other reason than to understand how people act when functioning under the guise of anonymity. Dr. John Suler is a Professor of Psychology and has written on the subject of online behavior. In his paper The Online Disinhibition Effect, Suler argues that those on the internet are able to disconnect from their normal behaviors and can frequently do or say as they wish without fear of any kind of meaningful reprisal. An example being most Internet communities, even one such as Quora which uses real names. The worst kind of punishment an offender can expect for bad behavior is being banned from interaction. In practice, however, this serves little use; the person involved can usually circumvent the ban by simply registering another username and continuing the same behavior as before[8]. Suler calls this toxic disinhibition.CB radio during the 1970s saw similar bad behavior:Most of what you hear on CB radio is either tedious (truck drivers warning one another about speed traps) or banal (schoolgirls exchanging notes on homework), but at its occasional—and illegal—worst it sinks a pipeline to the depths of the American unconscious. Your ears are assaulted by the sound of racism at its most rampant, and by masturbation fantasies that are the aural equivalent of rape. The sleep of reason, to quote Goya's phrase, brings forth monsters, and the anonymity of CB encourages the monsters to emerge.Suler's work was a brilliant synopsis, but we on the internet need a simplified version. "John Gabriel's Greater Internet F***wad Theory" was a posted comic strip by Penny Arcade. The post regards reflects the unsocial tendencies of other internet users as described by the online disinhibition effect. Krahulik and Holkins, Penny Arcade's creators suggest that, given both anonymity and an audience, an otherwise regular person becomes aggressively antisocial.[9]How this relates to security is obvious to those who have experience it. The internet can feel like an unsafe place sometimes. The internet can be an unsafe place sometimes. Looking to the long term effects of bullying that are being better understood every day[10], sometimes I wonder if this place I've called a second home is a place I want my kids to play on. Most of us who are active on this playground understand this as the status quo, but in the future of internet security, the debate will center around the freedom to be private and the freedom to be anonymous. Many fear, given precedence, what may happen under this veil of anonymity. I can't help but agree that his is a rational concern for many. Sometimes the internet comments go far beyond words or threats, which carry lasting psychological damage to some of the victims, but transforming to very legitimate real world threats. What this will mean for the future is that companies is deciding what kind of culture they want to deal with. For the internet to stay the internet we want to be on, we may see more companies adopt guidelines like Quora's, with it's real names policy and Be Nice Be Respectful Policy, a place where people feel welcome and safe to exchange and interact.The Gamergate scandal didn't end at name calling, though. Several key individuals suffered far more than the traditional effects of the average internet rabble. Along with threats of rape and murder, which are disturbing, but easily dismissed given the safety that online anonymity provides, there was another threat, one which pierced that veil of safety and put the power directly in the hands of the mob.Doxxing.Doxxing - from documents - search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent."hackers and online vigilantes routinely dox both public and private figures."[11]During Gamergate the ugly side of the conflict saw the threat, "We will dox you," begin to surface for the first time. Doxxing, as the definition states is when online users attempt to publish personal information about other users, celebrities, or public figures against their will. This personal information ranges from your real name to private email, banking information, and anything that hackers can get hold of. Once one member discovers it and is able to publish it, the fear is that it may lead to future attacks, such as flooding email accounts with harassment emails via a botnet attack, or worse, people literally able to knock on your door.And this is exactly what happened to the internet's Queen, Felicia Day.Day commented that she had thus far remained silent on the issue of Gamergate to fans and the media, including over 2.3 million Twitter followers at the time, not because she wanted to or didn't care, but out of fear of getting doxxed – and seeing her personal information become public knowledge on the seedy parts of the internet.“I realised my silence on the issue was not motivated by some grand strategy, but out of fear that the issue has created about speaking out. ... I have tried to retweet a few of the articles I’ve seen dissecting the issue in support, but personally I am terrified to be doxxed for even typing the words ‘gamer gate’. I have had stalkers and restraining orders issued in the past, I have had people show up on my doorstep when my personal information was hard to get.”This was posted on her personal blog, in a post titled simply The Only Thing I have to Say about Gamergate.[12]She was immediately attacked online and doxxed. Felicia's experiences in the past have included direct encounters with stalkers, empowered by knowledge about her that they shouldn't have access to. Others, such as one of the women central to the beginning of Gamergate, Anita Sarkeesian a game designer who also makes videos explaining misogynist tropes in gaming, were far more disturbing.According to Time, Sarkeesian, had to flee her home because of violent threats. She was even forced to cancel a speaking engagement at Utah State University after an anonymous person sent a letter to the school administration threatening to massacre students if she spoke. “I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America,” the letter read.Now, perhaps, we are getting the reason that anonymity is something of a concern for security analysts. With abilities such as doxxing, which is just one among many possible issues that internet users face, those who use the internet, or everyone, is going to need to learn to deal with some new and very profound threats. In the way that we prepared ourselves for active shooters with things like A.L.I.C.E. training, training is going to have to be done to teach people how to protect their personal information from slippage, the military term for unwanted dispersal of sensitive information. If we don't take that initiative,I'm afraid of an internet where anonymity creates a world where there are no activists. Many who have read and follow my work know, if nothing else, one thing about me; I am super American. I like that I have this right and freedom to speak up and speak out, but at the point where living room vigilantes are able to threaten the safety of women for complaining about big tits in video games, along with anyone who happens to listen... I'm seriously afraid of a world twenty years down the road. That anonymity grants protection for criminal acts is something we should very seriously be concerned and something the leaders of the internet need to seriously consider when they list their values. As was mentioned before, to quote Goya, "fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters." That said, don't be surprised if in your next annual security briefing, you see the "Dox" for the first, but not the last time.Having said that, there is more power to the open internet than you think. Your private information, while important to you for reasons shown in the previous section, is very little compared to what organized groups with an agenda are really after - complete system change. These groups have proven the means to bring down massive sites and even fight terrorism. Of course, they have also cost thousands of innocent people their personal information, destroyed companies, and ruin marriages, along with more than a few lives.To begin, one needs to look into the (perfectly named) Ashley Madison Affair[13]. Ashley Madison was and is the internet's largest website for cheating. Literally, that's all they do is help people who are married cheat on one another. After a savvy campaign including talk shows and clever advertising, one which brought tons of open scorn, but just enough silent attention to keep the profits rolling in, a group calling themselves, "The Impact Group" decided they weren't amused with the salacious shenanigans. The Impact Group researched Ashley Madison and found it to be under the ownership Avid Life Media, which also owns other hookup sites like Cougar Life and Established Men, which they claimed supported prostitution and human trafficking. When Ashley Madison reported that they offered a service to completely delete the accounts of users no longer interested in their services, the Impact Group moved out to show that this service wasn't all it was cracked out to be. 37 million disclosed users later and the site which sold itself on discretion, was in the midst of its worst nightmare.The impact group is only one such online Robin Hood alliance which exists. Others out there have proven themselves time and time again to be able to affect change, either through direct action, or the threat of it via hacking individuals, corporations, and even governments. One such group calls itself, aptly enough, Anonymous.Wikipedia describes Anonymous as a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as "an Internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives".To understand them further, a group of users of various internet forums Reddit and 4Chan, all functioning under anonymous user names began coordinating efforts towards various political and social agendas. Conversation in the all anonymous sites would form, ranging on the spectrum of enlightened social commentary and debate, to outright bigoted hate groups. Within these conversations, like minded leaders would collectively pool resources, and take the conversation into a more private level.To use a metaphor, the internet is a single massive room where everyone is screaming to be heard. The chaos and confusion that follows allows a small group to gather by a wall, completely visible to anyone who were to look, and speak openly to where anyone could listen, but their voices still lost because of the constant noise of internet traffic and news. In these "private open sessions" the leader groups came to a consensus of some action which should be taken. Among them were many who were legitimately talented crackers, the term for internet hackers with malicious intents. Their skills, along with a few who just executed their wishes, were able to achieve some crazy results. From here, the cell would plan an operation, in their parlance, and if successful disintegrate back into the crowed. From there, they may join a new operation, or never be heard from again. For this, they describe their movement as "leaderless."In the beginning operations or "attacks" ranged on the low end with benign acts of internet weirdness, such as the when hundreds of Anons gathered in an online Finnish Hotel with identical black avatars, forming swastikas and closing down the pool due to "fail and AIDS". A bit higher up were a few high profile "operations" including attacks on the Church of Scientology, Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, various international copywriting offices, Paypal, and eventually Sony's Playstation Network.The group's preferred method of attack were a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS). A DDoS attack is one in which an asset is bombarded with fake traffic, slowing down the service or bringing them down all together. Consider a telethon for kids with cancer or adopting puppies. A version of a DDoS attack (by seriously mean people) would be hundreds of people who all collectively call in with prank calls, tying up all the operators, thus making it impossible to actually take real donations. On the internet, this is done through special programs written to cause a single normal device, such as the phone or computer you are reading this article on, to send false traffic to a website with its spare processing power in the background. Your devices are actually quite powerful and the spare processing power can generate a lot of worthless traffic for the receiver. This is often compounded through the use of botnets, programs which control many devices, sometime thousands, with or without their owner's consent, all generating traffic to bring down the target websites or online assets. Technically, this attack is harmless, unlike uploading a malicious computer virus, as all effects end the moment the attack stops. The servers go back to operating as normal, no harm done... except for the millions lost through down time and breaches in their security.Of course, this is all extremely illegal. Many anonymous members found that their movements weren't as secretive as they believed. Various Anons were jailed or suffered massive fines for their infractions. Sadly, many of the people who suffered the most were not leaders in the movements, or operations, but people who didn't understand the risks and were just acting under instructions from other Anons more versed in what could go wrong. One example of this is Dmitriy Guzner[14], a 19 year old American given a one year prison sentence for attacking a protected computer. It was around this time that Anonymous truly began evolving in an attempt to be more than just internet pranksters. Seeing many hauled off to long prison stays saw the movement break into various camps; namely those motivated for ideological reasons and those seeking to provoke for entertainment, ie. trolls for the lulz.Following this period of internal rebranding, and backed by energy gained through the Occupy Wall Street Movement[15], there was some realistic clout to those who participated in the online actions. Brought together by the idealistic sides of Anonymous, operations became more complex, as legitimately talented media experts, artists, videographers, and yes, more hackers, were able to add their capabilities to spread their message and their actions. In the next few years their major operations were more focused and even altruistic. Charitable actions included events like #OpOk and Operation Safe Winter, as well as attempts to intervene in what they viewed as unlawful police brutality, attacking the KKK, and taking down child pornagraphers[16]. Most recently, in an attempt to fight back against the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism and Middle East born terrorism, operations like #OpSaudi and #OpISIS, sought to disrupt funding for the Islamic State and their vast online propaganda presence. According to some reports, as many as 20,000 accounts on Twitter of ISIS affiliates and recruiters have been brought down[17], as well as the hundreds of websites, and the releasing of ISIS recruiter's personal information including their home address. [18]While many question Anonymous as nothing but a bunch of unaccountable internet pranksters with various and chaotic agendas, others are impressed by their power and the complexity their operations are taking, if for no other reason, than the attention they are able to garnish for their causes and themselves. Others, however, aren't happy with what they are considering a virtual lynch mob. Some are leaving the group for its rather chaotic history of attacking innocent people, which have included people in the random databases Anons have gained access to, as well as anyone who speaks badly about Anonymous.[19]“When I started with Anon I thought I was helping people but over the past few months things inside anon have changed,” the hacker said in a statement posted to the Web. “I am mostly talking about AntiSec and LulzSec. They both go against what I stand for (and what anonymous says they stand for). Antisec has released gig after gig of innocent peoples information. For what? What did they do? Does anon have the right to remove the anonymity of innocent people?At least one commentator went so far as to consider them the living embodiment of George Orwell's thought police from his classic science fiction 1984. [20]There thinking anything against the Party was deemed a criminal act - a “thoughtcrime”, which brought about arrest and rehabilitation (read that as torture) under the Thought Police.1984 is considered a definitive cautionary tale, but what makes Orwell’s masterpiece particularly terrifying is how close 2015 mimics Orwell’s dystopian fiction. You see it in hacktivist groups like Anonymous, commentary shows like The Hannity Show, and online across social networks, the Thought Police has become a reality. If you are outside of their thinking, you become Public Enemy #1 and must be destroyed.What this means for businesses and organizations is yet another threat to security which has to be accounted for. No one knows when something they do, or some policy they have, will catch the attention of Anonymous, or any other major group of like minded internet anarchists to bring about action in numbers that the government can't actually do much about. You never know what kind of vulnerability you have until 10,000 angry hackers start inspecting the cracks in your walls.Ok, so maybe various versions of making people look bad on the internet aren't nearly as terrifying as legitimate terrorism, but what about the presence of true cybercrime, those who use the internet with no agenda for reform, no desire for publicity, and who 99% of the time, you never knew existed? What about when the threats aren't out to make you think about some subjective moral wrongdoing, but steal your money and ruin your life. What's really scary is that no one is safe - quite literally no one. Not even the director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.A group of young hackers, using rather unsophisticated methods, broke into the CIA Director John Brennan's personal email. So that we are all aware, the director of the CIA is the guy in charge of all US spies and one would thing be well beyond the reach of hackers... especially a group of teenagers. Much to the chagrin of the US government, he really wasn't. This one, however, wasn't really his fault. The method the hackers used was to implement a tactic that predates modern computing by only a few thousand years. They pretended to be people they weren't, tricked a Verizon worker and got Brennan's email password changed the old fashioned way... by lying. The term they used is "social engineering". While they didn't find much, they did find were some documents important to him. Then they bragged about it on Wired. While all of us think this one is hilarious, if a story turns up about a few of these kids turning up missing in a couple of years when no one remembers their antics... don't say this wasn't foreseeable.The same group were responsible for this breach also targeted the FBI... because they are just ballsy I guess... and broke into portals used by police and federal agents to share intel. The site is also used to book suspects, and while it isn't known how much was taken, hundreds of thousands of users may be vulnerable, many already being leaked following the hack.2015 saw attack after attack like these, and some of the most massive breaches to internet security the world has yet seen, all with little other incentive than stealing money, stealing information, and extortion. Like my fictional spy from the future, there are many who profit heavily from the information you keep secret. Over the course of the last year, it is estimated that some 70% of the US population experienced some form of cyber attack and over 2.1 billion internet users worldwide. In a Verizon Study of 90 Security breaches, there were 285 million data exposures. Unsurprisingly, attacks are getting much more advanced, with hackers sometimes using multiple attacks simultaneously to succeed in a breach, such as malware, brute force, and SQL injection. Furthermore, 74% of the attacks were external, meaning that 26% were executed from within the companies we are trusting with our data. [21]In a related vein, but just as disturbing, we are now seeing more breaches being discovered by employees than outsiders. Traditionally, these sorts of attacks were discovered by feds or other companies detecting the irregularities.[22] Now, it is much more likely that when you're breached, you'll be the first to know... which for some of us, isn't that comforting.Depending on how you look at this, it could either be welcome news or utterly terrifying. On the one hand, this means that internal security is at least able to grow to the point that they become aware of their own breaches. On the other hand, it means that the number of breaches, and all the possible avenues of failure have become so numerous, that no government agency can possibly be aware of the threats anymore, let alone protect us from them.The next troubling discovery, this one from the 2014 report, was exactly how big the hacking business is. In spite of the whole last section of activities by groups such as Anonymous, malicious hackers working with financial motives still account for some 60% of cyber crime. Corporate spying, those seeking intellectual property and trade secrets accounted for some 25% (up from previous years). Those hackers who were not set on serious crimes (you know, for the lulz) or hacktivists with some ideological agenda, in spite of all the news, accounted for next to nothing.[23]That means that in spite of internet hacktivists publicised achievements, the vast majority of illicit attacks happen for no other reason than to rob of us of something precious.Some of the biggest of these hits last year:Excellus Blue Cross/Blue Shield - 10 million records lost including names, birth dates, social security numbers, mailing addresses, financial accounts, and claims information[24]Anthem Health Insurance - Access to 80 million current and former customers names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and income data[25]Experian - 15 million T-Mobile customers names, addresses, birth dates, drivers’ license ID numbers, and passport numbers. Encrypted Social Security numbers were also stolen, which may provide some measure of safety, but the company warned that encryption may have been compromised[26]Scottrade - 4-6 million customers contact details compromised[27]CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and Costco - millions of customers' credit card, email, postal addresses, phone numbers, and passwords.[28]Donald Trump's hotel chain - many thousands of guests' credit card data[29]Several people probably noticed that last line and thought to themselves, "Ha, that will show the asshat." Well, we need to think about that one again, don't we? Who was hurt by the breach at Trump hotels? Innocent people. Really think about who these people are who are hurt; people who slept at a place. Imagine yourself, really just you, getting a hotel anywhere in the world, never really thinking about the guy whose name is on the side of the exterior wall and if one day he may potentially run for President of the United Freaking States. No, you just slept in a place and now your information is floating around the internet by people who are trading it for money. So to those who are getting their lulz right now from finding out that the "Orange carpeted clown" got pwned ("laughing hard at the misfortunes of Donald Trump" for those not accustomed to the vernacular of the lower internet), you're real a-holes.To illustrate this point, as shown already, some the biggest breaches didn't steal money directly. The big payoff was information. Hackers who can get access to data about real people, not just one, but millions of people at a time, are the biggest scores in the illicit industry of online invasion. Stealing a whole database with customer or employee names, birthdays, SSNs, or any other useful private information can open the door for those people to be targeted later for individual attacks. These attacks may be for money, or they can be for more information, perhaps even national secrets, incriminating information for blackmail, or worse. Often, this information is collected and merged into larger databases, where users are profiled and where that which is stolen can be used against them in some of the most terrifying ways imaginable later... like a hack on the Internal Revenue Service.The IRS is a common target of hacking. As the central collection agency for all taxes of all people of the United States, it is one of the largest gold mines ever created. In 2015 it suffered the largest breach in its history. It acknowledged that hackers had gained access to view more than 300,000 previous tax returns. They did this through a tool made available by the IRS called "Get Transcript". Get Transcript allows users to view old returns. The safety in this system is that it requires numerous layers of identifying information to access Get Transcript and view those old returns. The types of information needed: names, social security numbers, birthdates, addresses - the very same items stolen from the other hacks mentioned above. This means that the hackers were able to make one of the largest internet heists in history, only through access of stolen information, gathered, collected, and organized by other hackers in a cyber black market where your information is the most valuable and most traded commodity there is.Relying on personal information — like Social Security numbers, birth dates and street addresses — the hackers got through a multistep authentication process. They then used information from the returns to file fraudulent ones, generating nearly $50 million in refunds.[30]That means that each of the victims were hacked not once, but twice. The big takeaway from the 2015 IRS Hack is that there is growing evidence of the existence of something we are all afraid of. Databases out there that are growing day by day, where cells of each of our data are collected and merged without our permission or our knowledge, and that these databases are being traded by people across the world, with no good intention for us. This leads many to believe in a future decades from now which has no secrets, where all of our information is direct and open to the public. For those of us with bank accounts, street addresses, or children, that's not the idealistic image of an open society that some would paint. The fact is, we live in a state of danger everyday because of the secrets we entrust to others. In the next few decades, for companies to remain viable, they are going to have to prove they can be trusted with our information. More so than this, if we ever want to feel safe again, perhaps the most valuable enterprise in the future of internet security might not be the next guy who is able to steal our information, but the first guys who figure out how to get it back.Now that we have thoroughly made it clear that there is no place left safe on the internet for the common individual, or even major corporations and government organizations, what about the governments themselves? What role do they play in this story.To begin with, let's talk about Hacking Team. Hacking Team is a company out of Milan that deals in "offensive intrusion and surveillance" capabilities. This includes the ability to monitor communications of internet users, decipher encrypted files and emails, record Skype and VoIP phone calls, as well as remotely activate microphones and cameras on the devices they target. Their primary clients include governments and major corporations, including a few governments with shady human rights records. Basically, they are the most terrifying conspiracy theories on the internet come to life.Hacking Team are leaders in the growing industry to help governments hack in ways that make the rest of this article look like child's play. The Hacking Team gives its clients, through use of their Da Vinci and Galileo platforms the ability to do everything from keystroke logging, GPS tracking on cell phones, and extracting wifi passwords, among many other capabilities.[31] Perhaps most interesting is their ability to steal data on local accounts, contacts and transaction histories by decrypting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency wallet files.[32]The tools they use, or rather sell, have been used by governments to... well... you've seen the movies. Before you start getting up in arms, you might want to check their previous clients, regimes such as Sudan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, and have been accused of being used against activists and protesters in Morocco, Syria, the United Arab Emirates.[33]They even basically serve as the intelligence agency of the Uganda. Some of those relationships landed them in hot water with the UN. To make matters even more frightening, the Italian company maintains two satellite offices within the United States, one in Annapolis and another in Washington DC. That shouldn't lead people think this relationship buys the US anything though, since Hacking Team is suspected of selling tools to clients in Turkey who used it on a woman in the US[34]and is now suspected of selling their technology to Syria, as well.What's put Hacking Team in the news now? Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, they too were also hacked in 2015. At some point their network was breached and published online - over 400 gigabytes of data. Like I said before, no one is safe.Hacking Team's fate, while ironic, only served to open the eyes of millions to existence of real companies whose only profession is equipping governments with the tools to break down any wall, crack any password, end any online uprising, and own our digital lives. For an example, let's start with something small, like a foreign government hacking into a major American company to determine what media Americans and the rest of the world were allowed to see.You know, I've always wondered if any of the "A movie they don't want you to see," advertisements were ever real. Turns out, there was one that absolutely was. In late 2014, Sony pictures planned to release a movie about a talk show host invited to North Korea. Oh, and he tries to assassinate the dictator. It was an okay movie, but honestly, not something you would watch twice on purpose. Where things went terribly, horribly wrong was when Sony pictures suddenly pulled the movie. In the weeks leading up to the release, the North Korean government expressed their "disapproval" of the film. With its ending scene depicting the violent death of their glorious leader, the North Koreans demanded the movie never show... or else. Whatever, we're Americans, or sort of. Sony Pictures was in America at least. What are they really going to do, bomb us?No, they didn't bomb anyone. Instead, what they did was hack Sony Pictures. In that breach, they stole data that included personal information about Sony Pictures employees and their families, e-mails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of then-unreleased Sony films, and other information. They threatened to release the information, which any of it could have been deadly to the company, from its employee's information to scripts of movies that haven't been made. What happened next?Sony pulled the film.Not long after, popular demand, and there was a lot of us who now demanded to see this movie, made it available for streaming. Eventually, we were all able to get our fill of the death of the most infamous man alive, but it cost us. The Guardian called the event a massive defeat on American soil and the message was received, international government sponsored hackers can scare Americans into doing whatever they want.It pissed us off as it introduced a new word into our collective lexicon: Cyberwarfare.CyberwarfareAccording to the Rand Corporation,[35] Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks. RAND research provides recommendations to military and civilian decisionmakers on methods of defending against the damaging effects of cyber warfare on a nation's digital infrastructure because, when nations involve themselves in the acts of cracking, all bets are off. As previously mentioned, even massive companies like Sony can be leveled by a national attack. Second, we have to ask what counts as warfare? Can it really be an act of war if no one can possibly die from it? Does it matter that this was an American company? Does it change things that it is American citizens? What does retaliation look like? The truth is, we don't have a lot of answers for this right now, but where it might lead to is nerve racking.Joel Brenner, a Senior Counsel at the National Security Agency, in his book America the Vulnerable, focuses on the subject of cyber warfare. He speaks at length about the vulnerabilities to the United States, some already proven and some hypothetical. One threat we may one day face which he poses, comes in the form of an attack on our infrastructure. An attack centered on the Los Angeles powergrid could hold half the West Coast hostage. A similar attack against the DOD or VA could publish every scrap of data on over 22 million veterans for the whole world to see. What's worse, he showed how capabilities already exist that could do this.He continues in his book to describe the threat posed by China. China is a special case in that, besides a cyber warfare branch of the People's Liberation Army[36], China also has the added asset of tens of thousands of nationalistic, "Patriot Hackers". These individuals form a community of cracker groups which focus on exploiting all international information vulnerabilities from corporate, to military, and even personal. This core group of international hackers has been responsible for countless patent thefts and billions in lost research and development to the benefit of Chinese corporations, but is also responsible for compromising classified information worldwide. China's hacker community is distinctly different from that of nations like the United States, which, if a pattern could be set, would be better described as anarchistic and anti-government (remember Anonymous), and even those in Russia, who are much more geared to cyber crime for profit. China's hackers, instead work together alongside, or at least to the benefit of, China's national government. All this while still be officially "unaffiliated" with the government for diplomatic and legal reasons. Effectively, the Chinese have a clandestine cyber national guard, growing in capabilities and there isn't really a thing the world can do about it.In fact, the largest breach of security for information in an American database last year didn't come from someone hacking some corporation to turn a quick profit. It came from China.[37] Last year, the Office of Personnel Management discovered that information over 21 million victims had slipped into hacker's hands. [38]The attack lasted over a year and included some 19 million people who applied for government security clearances and the information pertaining to their background checks, along with 1.8 million spouses, friends, and family members. To throw gasoline onto the fire, another 5.6 million fingerprint files of federal employees may have been lost[39], as well.Moving Westward, Russia is a concern, as well. Having lost much of their technological edge in the last twenty years, they're working to reclaim lost ground. Currently, when one thinks of Russian hackers, they are probably thinking of internet fraud and child pornography. Over the last few years, however, their capabilities have attempted to close the gap. Recently, in their ongoing conflict between Ukraine, Russian hackers were able to shutdown major sections of the Ukrainian power grid. [40]More concerning, however, is Russia's attempts to control the media through the very bottom up. Called The 50 Ruble Army, Russia has copied a Chinese tactic to start employing professional commenters, people who scroll the internet commenting on content that weighs negatively against Russia with links to pro-Russian content, articles, and propaganda.[41] (Oh, yeah. Did I forget that about China, too?[42])If you speak about Russia long enough, you'll see these guys.But Russia and China aren't the only concern in cyberwarfare. What's surprising many, is the capabilities of players that weren't normally seen in traditional spheres of computing capability. In 2011, by all accounts, Iran was able to steal a United States CIA stealth drone, literally out of the sky. [43]According to Iranian sources, they were able to capture the US drone by "spoofing" the onboard GPS system. After technicians were able to hack into the drone, they broke the link with the systems remote controllers. From this point, according to the Iranian source, they simply told the drone to land in on an Iranian base, believing it to be its home in Afghanistan. [44]Quite frankly, if any part of that story is true, that is a real head scratcher for the Americans. More so than that, given the relatively unharmed state of the drone, at least from the pictures, it very well could be true. As far back as 2012, the concept of GPS spoofing was a proven concept by researchers at the University of Texas. [45]Given the resources of an entire nation, it wouldn't surprise me terribly if they figured it out faster than a single American college.Granted, the loss of our drone rattled many, but it wasn't the first attack in the Iran/American Cyber War. Nor would it be the last.Let's take a step back to the 1980's. Russia had poor abilities to produce microchips and the soviets worked to steal technology from the West, decades aheads of them technologically speaking. Because of a defector, the United States was able to know what it was Soviet spies were after. The Americans allowed flawed microprocessors to be stolen and their programs copied. These were made so well that they passed an initial inspection, only break down chemical and manufacturing facilities and overpower turbines in the Trans-Siberian pipeline. When soviet spies stole plans for gas-line pumps, they were unaware that it was intentionally designed to pump with much more pressure than the pipes were ever meant to handle. William Safire of the New York Times in 2004 was the first to break this story 25 years later. In his words, "The result was the most monumental, non-nuclear explosion and fire, ever seen from space."Fast forward a few decades.In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency visiting the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran noticed that centrifuges used to enrich uranium gas were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete mystery—apparently as much to the Iranian technicians replacing the centrifuges as to the inspectors observing them.Five months later a seemingly unrelated event occurred. A computer security firm in Belarus was called in to troubleshoot a series of computers in Iran that were crashing and rebooting repeatedly. Again, the cause of the problem was a mystery. That is, until the researchers found a handful of malicious files on one of the systems and discovered the world’s first digital weapon.Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm that came before. Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it escaped the digital realm to wreak physical destruction on equipment the computers controlled.WIRED senior staff writer Kim Zetter[46]A piece of code began showing itself around which became known as the Stuxnet virus, made famous for its approach to disabling Iranian nuclear refinement operations. Brenner describes why Stuxnet was so incredible. It was a worm, a self-replicating virus, which utilized not just one, but four previously unknown vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems to spread itself throughout a worldwide infection. Once spread, it sought out particular Siemens centrifuges, like those used by the Iranians to refine Uranium, and bring them down. This virus baffled engineers for months, unaware that random system outages were really the result of advanced sabotage efforts from outside the country. What it showed was the threat to even extremely powerful and well defended military systems were possible via online attack. More perplexing, the Stuxnet virus, Brenner postulates, could have only have been created by one of a very few groups who would have had the technological capability to create it, that being the national governments of either United States, Russia, China, Israel, or one of a few members of the European Community. It goes way beyond the capability of the midnight hacker savant or the college computer science nerd out for kicks. This was deliberate and ingeniously engineered attack conducted by nations.Enter: The US Cyber Command. All the necessary ingredients are in place for the possibility of cyber-threats from other nations, or even cyber-terrorism. For all intents and purposes, the United States built them. For that reason, the United States military created the US Cyber Command. On June 23, 2009, the Secretary of Defense directed the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command to establish a sub-unified command, United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). Full Operational Capability (FOC) was achieved Oct. 31, 2010. The Command has three main focus areas: Defending the Department of Defense's Intelligence assets, providing support to combatant commanders for execution of their missions around the world, and strengthening our nation's ability to withstand and respond to cyber attack. I couldn't find a video. I don't think they want me talking about it.Many speculate that either the US Cyber Command, or some other third party affiliate with the CIA, or even companies like Hacking Team to have created the Stuxnet virus, in conjunction with allies in Israel. As of yet, US Cyber Command has only once, very recently admitted ever taking part in any offensive actions. In the fight to retake Mosul, Iraq US forces are working with allies in the region to stop ISIS on the ground, in the air, and via the web. [47]Meanwhile, U.S. forces are waging a cyber offensive to cut or spy on ISIS communications in Mosul. Carter said cyber attacks are being used “to interrupt [and] disrupt ISIL’s command and control, to cause them to lose confidence in their networks, to overload their network so that they can’t function, and do all of these things that will interrupt their ability to command and control forces there, control the population and the economy.”While this is the first admitted time the US Cyber Command has officially been used in an act of cyber warfare, it will certainly not be the last. Along with this, many fear a future where it is needed. In an answer on a similar vein, I was once asked how vulnerable the US Naval fleet was to attack.Future state-on-state conflict, as well as conflicts involving non-state actors such as al-Qaida, would increasingly be characterised by reliance on asymmetric warfare techniques, chiefly cyber-warfare, Chipman said. Hostile governments could hide behind rapidly advancing technology to launch attacks undetected. And unlike conventional and nuclear arms, there were no agreed international controls on the use of cyber weapons."Cyber-warfare [may be used] to disable a country's infrastructure, meddle with the integrity of another country's internal military data, try to confuse its financial transactions or to accomplish any number of other possibly crippling aims," he said. Yet governments and national defence establishments at present have only limited ability to tell when they were under attack, by whom, and how they might respond.The US Defence Department's Quadrennial Defence Review, published this week, also highlighted the rising threat posed by cyber-warfare on space-based surveillance and communications systems."On any given day, there are as many as 7 million DoD (Department of Defence) computers and telecommunications tools in use in 88 countries using thousands of war-fighting and support applications. The number of potential vulnerabilities, therefore, is staggering." the review said."Moreover, the speed of cyber attacks and the anonymity of cyberspace greatly favour the offence. This advantage is growing as hacker tools become cheaper and easier to employ by adversaries whose skills are growing in sophistication."[48]Some of those vulnerabilities are forehead-smackingly simple, once you know where to look. “You can walk around any ship, most aircraft, and you can find either USB ports or serial ports that were put there for maintenance,” said Leigher. “They were done for good engineering reasons” — to download diagnostic data, for example — “but the engineer wasn’t thinking about computer security.” What if an enemy agent under cover as a contractor or even as a civilian on a good-will tour slipped a virus-loaded thumb drive into one of those ports? What if the bad guy simply tricked a sailor into doing it for him?[49]U.S. computer experts playing the part of foreign hackers managed to shut down all communications among the U.S. Pacific fleet, and could have shut down the entire western half of the U.S. power grid.[50]In that answer, given everything we know about the numerous breaks in our defenses, the capabilities of hackers across the globe, and the outdated systems of much of our Navy, it is plausible a group of hackers which are well enough organized and with enough backing, could compromise our carrier's systems. It is possible that infected equipment could be installed on the ships themselves, since it is economically impossible to produce all the technologies built for these ships in government controlled factories, nor even, all in the United States. Foreign manufacturing produces gateway points for hardware to be slipped in with infected files that could then reproduce throughout the vessel's internal secured networks and systems. If this were to happen, it is possible that these ships could be brought down through their own control systems, locking up, halting their communications, melting down their reactors, crashing them into the rocks or even city docks, or just causing them to float dead in the water defenseless against enemy attack and unable to protect us here at home.Physical SecurityChanging gears from cyber security to the tangible world, 2015 saw one of bloodiest years on record since the end of World War II. Terrorism that originated in Middle Eastern conflicts has spread out and is beginning to become commonplace in Europe and even starting to appear, yet again, in the United States. The Charlie Hebdo and November 2015 Paris Attacks, along with a third attempt foiled by the presence of American military veterans rocked Europe as the world mourned for them. In the US, a similar, though far less attack, took place in San Bernardino, California. Between these three major attacks, around 160 people were killed. This, however, pales in comparison to the world-wide effects of terrorism. In total, there were nearly 400 terrorist attacks around the world that we know of[51]. In that, it is likely that more than ten thousand people lost their lives in acts of pure terror. I say pure terror, not to add drama to the point, but to differentiate these acts from the similar acts of violence. Acts of warfare, kidnapping, and social strong-arming are being ignored, as their practice has exploded in the last decade to unestimatable levels.How this will affect the world in the next twenty years is that people, meaning nations, firms, and individuals, will be taking greater steps towards ensuring their own safety in the event of attack. For many, this will see annual trainings being required at many workplaces and schools. Many are already doing this. In another answer, I described how the last decade of terror and threat of "active shooters" has led to new methods and tactics aimed at empowering the individual victim to better deal with theses threats in a way that mitigates their danger, or when cornered in the worst case scenario, confront and attempt to neutralize the attackers. One such training program is ALICE, controversial in that it actually coaches victims of an active shooter incident to fight back as a very last.[52]Private Security CompaniesBeyond the need for standard training, which will introduce a new vocabulary and the mindset to go with it, is traditional security, which is getting a remarkably untraditional makeover. Companies today are forming which are consolidating the need for security. Less and less often are you seeing security divisions within companies which are not in the business of providing security. Instead, the role of security guard for most companies is often filled by an agent of companies which specialize in the outsourcing of such skillsets. What this means for the future is that we won't see the old mall cops drifting around on their segways, whose only real talents don't actually center on tactics and prevention, but on finding a job where they are being paid to stand there.Instead, these jobs are going to be going more and more to the larger security companies who specialize in the role. Soon, we will likely see a time where all private security for public places, such as malls, workplaces, and schools, all wear an inconspicuous similar uniform labeled with the same logo throughout. Instead of working directly for the companies that employ them, they will be contracted in, all centrally trained and networked with their other satellite offices and local police, all working under a centralized headquarters somewhere in the city, or perhaps across the globe. One such example is Sweden's Securitas, a logo known throughout the West.A recent article followed Securitas and the year it has had[53]. According to the Association for Financial Professionals, Securitas experienced "a sharp rise in profits for 2015 amid an increased threat of terrorism and the European migrant crisis."Net profit for the full-year rose by 18 percent to 2.44 billion kronor (258 million euros, $288 million), or eight percent excluding currency effects.Sales climbed by 15 percent to 80.8 billion kronor.In Europe, sales rose by eight percent to 37.5 billion for 2015 and by 11 percent in the fourth quarter, bolstered by the November 13 attacks in Paris and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants in Europe.The company earnings report cites the increased need for security services owed to terrorism alerts and the refugee situation has impacted organic sales growth in Western Europe, mostly in countries like France, Belgium, Germany and Sweden. They also reported a similar rise in Turkey, a country which has welcomed around two million Syrian refugees and saw numerous terrorist attacks within the last year. Securitas also saw a 24 percent increase in North American sales, as well.Securitas isn't alone, however. Spain's Prosegur has a healthy share of the European public security market along with an American based security firm G4S. G4S started becoming more known for its role as the principal security provider for the 2012 London Summer Olympics, a significant role ever since the Munich massacre where eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were killed. They have also been called by some the largest company you've never heard of[54], since they maintain the third largest corporate workforce of any company Earth (660,000 employees) and are considered (loosely) by some to be the largest private military that has ever existed.[55]While training for you and me will be mandated behavior to attempt to control and mitigate threats, and very large, very structured private security companies will provide for the broader public to help prevent the dangers, another tier of security will create a phenomenon never before seen - the million dollar bodyguard.High Value Body Guards and Military ContractorsExecutive security is the industry of protection for VIP and High Value Individuals. While this includes those who specialize in shuttling primped up primadonna starlets like Justin Beiber from show to show, unharassed by throngs of fans, there is a much deeper need for experienced, battle ready security teams.Due to the attention grabbing nature of these massive catastrophes, many other acts of overt criminal activities have grown in practice, but go relatively unnoticed by those not engaged in foreign policy news. First among these is the threat of kidnapping. While assassination or general acts of terror surely rank high on the list, kidnapping has a special role to play in the story of international chaos that exists today and which will continue in the future.To understand why this is, one needs to understand how criminal empires and murder crazed caliphates primarily get funding. According to documents discovered following a raid of a prominent ISIS leader[56], the organization is funded massively through the use of kidnapping with the purpose of ransom. CNN and Business Insider investigate further to show the staggering amounts of money generated by these tactics[57] and the rationale for why the act of kidnapping is really such a good idea for such criminal and terrorist organizations.[58]The kidnapping of Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa rattled the international press for this reason. This time, however, it wasn't for the sheer barbarity that their fellow news agents were experiencing, (those attempting to report the news in the region are a favorite flavor of victim for the Islamic State, along with female humanitarian aid workers [59]) but the magnitude of the ransom being demanded. The Islamic State demanded of the government of Japan $200 million for their safe return. Like so many others, this negotiation broke down and both were eventually beheaded in brutal fashion.ISIS' rationale seems similar to other terror groups: Kidnappings help raise money and, if ransoms aren't paid, make a point, such as the groups are not to be messed with and even civilians are in danger.$200 million is sizable demand and one which could drastically help fund the operations of the terrorist organization, which is currently already expanding its reach internationally as its borders shrink locally. While these two did not turn a profit, others did. The French have denied that they have paid ransoms[60], but according to a New York Times Report[61]they succeeded in buying back the freedom of kidnapped Frenchman from the Islamic State from ISIS. A second group working for a french nuclear firm were also freed by an al Qaeda affiliate in return for money. In perhaps the greatest coup for the terrorist state, 49 captives of Turkish origin were returned, seemingly for no reason at all to Ankara. Those following the report, myself among them, strongly suspect a major payoff for their safe and uneventful return[62]. There are other reports of three hundred Christians being charged more than $30 million for their release. One victim gave in an interview with New York Magazine that his captors forced him to call his family and a friend while he was being tortured, in hopes that his anguished screams would move them to pay the ransom money.[63][64]“We were blindfolded and chained, and every day they would torture us,” he said. “They would come in, one at a time, and electrocute us or beat us with anything they could find.”“But they didn’t kill me because they wanted to ransom me. One time, they made me speak to my family on the phone as they were electrocuting me. Then, they made me call a friend, who told them he would pay.”However, the practice of criminal kidnapping for profit is not limited to the ISIS threat. Moving to the Gulf of Aden and Somalia in one last example, one only has to recount the story of Captain Phillips. [65]There, Somali pirates attempted to take an American vessel hostage along with its crew. This practice has become common in the narrow straits between Iran and the Horn of Africa. Massive ships with massive shipments worth billions are capable of attracting huge payouts to the pirates and the warlords who control them from the mostly European companies who control them. In the case of Phillips, though, the problem wasn't solved by a financial transaction so much so as the extremely potent delivery of precision fire from the muzzle of US Navy SEAL Snipers.Regardless of the success of the Phillips case, piracy and kidnapping for ransom are not going away. In fact, seeing the financial and propaganda potential for such violations, the value of making such attacks has prompted many, many more. This, perhaps, has only been exacerbated by the American shift in policy that some would say encourages the practice by providing a means for private individuals to pay the ransoms of their friends and families, thus encouraging more like kind kidnappings.Having said all of this, it is no longer safe for most Westerners to travel to the Middle East, and the growing troubles of the region are only spreading more and more throughout the Islamic world, as millions sympathetic to the ideals of the Al Qaeda and the Islamic State begin to copy their tactics and methods. Still, people still have business to do, so Westerners are still going to go there. This leads to the need for private military contractors (PMCs).Mention of the practice of PMCs is one that elicits fear and suspicion in most people unfamiliar with how they are actually used. Often, they can't be mentioned without imaginations of secret mercenary black helicopter events and Orwellian fears of off the books private armies. In all honesty, very few such companies are used for anything other than bodyguards for individuals of extremely high value in the region, rather than elite soldiers willing to kill for the highest dollar. The US State department often contracts with these companies to provide a greater level of security than they can do otherwise with the military for their foreign dignitaries and ambassadors, and the CIA for their foreign case officers. This is outlined well in the opening chapters of the new book 13 Hours - The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi. The book begins by detailing the lives of the contractors involved, both professional and personal. All of those in the book possessed varied military experience, some US Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marines. They may have in their experience sets Master's Degrees in Criminal Justice, stints as the local police chief, or run warrants as bail bondsmen, and PIs stateside. Other PMCs may come from more diverse backgrounds; internationals with the French Foreign Legion, British SAS, and any number of other places and backgrounds. When I was deployed to Iraq, one team which frequented our Entry Control Point in Al Anbar Province had team members that came from as far off as South Africa, Romania, and Singapore, lead by an English Special Air Service soldier.For the CIA and State Department, the go to is the Global Response Staff, an open secret of an organization created after the attacks on September 11th, 2001. The GRS gathers together teams of the best and most experienced operators from within the United States military with the knowledge and experience to be able to covertly guard its most valuable assets anywhere on the globe. What distinguishes these individuals from the common military they appear to be is the benefits package. Some PMCs today take in over $150,000 annually for their work overseas, on average, around three to five times what they could have expected in any given military career doing much harder work. Why they are useful is their flexibility and potency. Small teams deployed to a city can easily intertwine with the area, and adapt to cover any target that needs their level of protection. They can do this, however, without the massive overhead of the slow moving US military and sticking out like a sore thumb in places where Americans already have a hard enough time blending in. While these men (and women) and their skills don't come cheap, they come without the prohibitive costs of deploying an entire unit of Marines or Army soldiers, which could rank in the millions, assuming an entire base doesn't need to built for the task.As Benghazi itself showed, the need for these individuals does still exist, and the threat of kidnapping, assassination, extortion, and any number of nefarious concerns may confront high value individuals at any time. This is why operators, such as those working with the Global Response Staff or other private military contractors will be in extremely high demand by foreign dignitaries of all nations, local government leaders, spies, journalists, and corporate executives who travel abroad, all doing business in places where business has to be done. These are the types of people who don't want to be recorded in orange jumpsuits, a propaganda tool for murder fiends across the world. What this also means is that over the next twenty years, PMC operators of every brand and color will be in such high demand that they pop up literally everywhere important people can be seen in places where bad things often happen. What's more, many will be more than the sum of high paid former Special Forces operators. They will be homegrown and specialized to their tasks through courses like the various Executive Protection[66][67] courses that exist and under instruction by companies such as the American security services training company Academi[68]or the European Security Academy[69]. Both of these firms provide, alongside their training, mission support in the form of human resources, planning, and operational support. Remember that these people aren't accountants, get creative and realize that that means more or less exactly what you think it does.The big change we will see as a result of this will be rather undemocratic shift in politics across the world. As the means of terrorism continues to grow, the need for higher and higher priced body guards to handle the threat will make some very rich people very safe, while leaving many others with little more than a prayer. In the end, expect to never see another photo again of any person of worth in a critical conflict area of the world without a dedicated staff of very skilled warfighters at their sides and at the ready.Of course, this causes us to ask a very important question, where are all these extremely well paid and well trained operators going to come from?National DefenseAs mentioned before, the vast majority of contractors trace their roots to service with the US military, or the militaries where their company operates. The cream rises to the top, so the best contracts are awarded to those with proven success and training, namely to services like the Navy SEALs, Army Delta Forces, Rangers, or the United States Marine Corps infantry, particularly any of these with experience in combat. Less prestige and pay may be warranted to someone of non-combat military jobs, police officers, and security specialists, and the lowest level bids will likely go to local militia and hired gunman. It must always be remembered, though, that the demand will always come for those elite operators, the Special Forces team members of the US military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).Like any industry built on recruiting the best of a different industry, the first, which expends all the resources to make those operators so valuable, suffers the long term effects of the brain drain. It will be the US military that foots the bill, paying for years, sometimes decades, of training into making civilians into the most lethal warriors on the planet. During their times in, they will amount to the tip of the spear, deploying with units like the SEALs, Marine Raiders, and Army Rangers, to conduct missions in the service of the United States. They will face dangers no one else in the world could handle, able to push through with only the value of the extensive training hours they have logged, the teams they learned to be a part of, and the massive logistical behemoth at their back. As a friend of mine would say, "They are the Dudes of Dudes."At some point though, many just get done with all that. Perhaps they just want to do something else with their life. Underwater basic weaving, maybe. Or crochet. These dudes have enough man cards racked up from 12 years in the SEALs to become professional crochet artists if they want. Many want to retire to their families, while some see the reality that, if they take the PMC jobs, they will experience a better lifestyle with far better pay than the military could ever provide, easier missions, and less chance of death or maiming. It needs to be understood that Benghazi was a freak event. From 2009 to 2012 only 5 members of the Global Response Staff were killed[70]. During the same time 1,808 Americans troops lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan .[71] This includes events like Operation Red Wings, the largest single loss to the US Navy SEALs in its history, when four SEALs on advanced recon were attacked, killing three and a quick reaction force helicopter sent to in to rescue them id was shot down with a rocket propelled grenade, killing all eight Navy SEALs and all eight U.S. Army Special Operations aviators on board.[72]Quite frankly, I wouldn't blame anyone for hanging up the uniform at that point, and it is a wonder why so many of them still don't. But many do, for all the reasons listed before.Now it's important to think about what this means to the military as a whole. The military's job, be it Marines, Army, Navy, or Air Force, are to be the strong arm of American diplomacy and the backbone of defense in NATO. Over the last fifty years, however, we have seen the military reduce in strength, rather drastically, to the point that today we have fewer active duty military than we did prior to the start of World War II.[73]Moreover, the prevailing strategy over the last thirty years has been to obliterate the enemy using advanced weaponry and devastatingly superior technology. The problem we've seen, however, is that the military is proving more and more often to be under equipped to handle the manpower requirements necessary to successfully pacify an occupied territory such as Iraq or Afghanistan, let alone both. Regardless of the number of drones we have in the air, without boots on the ground, we simply don't have enough men to keep the peace. This is particularly true when we consider expending and $80,000 missile on a $200,000 bombing run to kill two insurgents in a tent a sustainable wartime strategy. [74]Instead, the United States has centered its focus on Special Warfare, creating units whose primary focus is in black ops intervention and direct action operations. These forces are truly lethal, the creme of the crop in every sense of the word. They are, as they say, the point of the spear. The problem is, they are only one small point, and not capable of being everywhere at once. For an example, the SEALs are who everyone talks about. For as much as they are mentioned the US Navy SEAL community only has about 2,500 active duty members[75]. There is a reason they are special. Of the three hundred million Americans, almost none of them have what it takes, including the physical desire just to do it, that is required to be a part of these elite teams. This is also why we can't just train to be like them[76]. Of those who try, more than 80% will fail, and according to Marcus Luttrell, the subject of the book Lone Survivor, more candidates die in training than do active duty SEALs in combat.[77]It takes a very special person to even consider joining up with the SEALs, but the problem is, there just simply don't seem to be enough special people to accomplish the missions which are placed on the nation's special warfare community. There is a real need for a larger presence on the ground, which given the direction of the American military back towards an isolationist point, doesn't exist in the numbers needed either.Considering this, if the military is getting smaller and smaller, focusing more of its efforts into the actions of very small, very elite units, and those units are the primary source for private military contractors, it lends one to really consider the threat the PMCs have on the standing military. For the last 7o years, the US military has been the go-to force for international peacekeeping and creating security, protecting international sea lanes, and ensuring that diplomatic efforts stay open. In that time, and despite the constant "If it Bleeds, It Leads" sensationalist news to the contrary, the world has become a pretty awesome place. There are fewer violent deaths, fewer deaths from disease, fewer wars, and increased wealth across the globe. Look at this graph. It's a nice graph. Do yourself a solid and realize that Coca-cola and the Kardashians didn't cause this. Globalization did, and globalization doesn't happen without someone ensuring everyone playing the game is playing by a minimum acceptable set of behaviors.That job of "globo-cop", in the words of Ian Morris in his book War - What is it Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots, has traditionally fallen on the Americans. Now considering that the world's current state of relative peace is reliant on a strong force to serve as its backbone[78], what happens when the backbone of world order is weakened, or removed altogether?When that backbone, in this case the US military, is suffering from attrition both in the form of budgetary cutbacks in a belief that it can get by with replacing thinking soldiers with more advanced, but ultimately fewer remote controlled or autonomous systems[79], as it continues to pull back it's overseas holdings[80] and is constantly being cannibalized by the United States' own State Department, CIA, and numerous multinational corporations to provide for their own security needs, where does that put the rest of the world?Focusing on the PMCs, when the highest order performers, in this case the Special Forces operators, no longer provide the kind of support often needed of people with their skillsets, but instead act as a force of protection for VIPs, they are not fulfilling their true potential or carrying the burden the world needs of them. They babysit high value targets rather than killing terrorists and dethroning evil regimes. Instead of getting things done and making peace, they simply serve as a force ensuring peace for those they work for. I want to be clear, I have nothing but respect for these men, and everyone should feel free to enjoy life and pursue happiness, but one has to ask if this path the United States is setting itself on will make for a very, very ugly world twenty years down the line when the best of the best simply aren't where the world needs them anymore.Quite frankly, this story is already starting to play itself out. Military .com posted a review of the United States Army where an industry think tank warned the service was "weak" and incapable of performing the necessary role of sustained conflict in two theaters. [81]Add to this a recent Gallop Poll asking asking if Americans still had faith in their military. The results weren't good.[82]The answer is increasingly 'no,' according to a new Gallup poll. Last year the number of Americans who thought they were protected by the world's strongest military was 59 percent, but this year that number has dropped to 49 percent – the lowest figure in the 23 years Gallup has recorded the trend.While polls are only polls, it does point to a very disturbing trend. People are losing respect for the United States military, and when the world's most important enforcer of global security is no longer respected, one has to wonder what the next twenty years are going to look like. Quite frankly, the United States will be fine. We won't see any existential threats to our way of life any time soon, but the rest of the world may not be so lucky without us. The Middle East, as I have made abundantly clear, is only getting worse as the United States continues to remove itself from the region. Their conflicts are spreading through North Africa and now into Europe and India. Russia is starting to pick up the slack, for better or worse, but their track record for making the world a better place within their shadow is abysmal at best. Perhaps China? Since they have shown little ever to provide security to any foriegn counterparts in spite of their massive military, I don't see security happening outside of the private sites they lease from host countries. Also considering their increasing internal struggles to balance unnatural growth expectations with a workforce growing more demanding every year, and older at the same rate, I doubt they will ever be able to truly challenge American hegemony in the next century. So if no one is capable of ensuring the kind of peace we have grown to expect up to today, what can we expect of tomorrow?I'm not one to usually give into pessimistic fears, but if you want to start getting scared, I wouldn't blame you. The next twenty years are going to get a lot more volatile, and in many places very dangerous. Those who will fare the best will be those who can accept the danger and create a plan to mitigate it.The Black SwanThe last leg of this answer to, "What are the biggest ways in which the world 20 years from now will probably be different from today?" is the Black Swan.Black Swan events, as defined by the guy who proposed their theory are thus:The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs.This is the stuff no one saw coming that will, more or less, invalidate every prediction we have had so far. They are the agents of chaos, and the disorder in ordered states. They are events which cannot be predicted with ease, never predicted together, and barely explained even in hindsight, but which have monumental effects on the hereafter. They are the surprises God throws at us that both level and unlevel the playing fields as industries rise up out of nowhere, nations fall into memory, and cities crumble as the earth shakes. Consider technology, the surprise we all see coming, but no one guesses quite right. Technology is still growing at an exponential pace. Every day it continues to change the way we live, the way we communicate, and how we conduct business. The rise of social media, perhaps the most unexpected event of the last ten years, and the rise of cellular communications in general over the last twenty certainly fits the ticket. Unfortunately, as technology has become a tool which has empowered literally billions of people into a better, more enlightened and more productive life, so too has it empowered millions of others to pursue their own interests at the detriment of everyone else. Twitter, something that was only founded exactly 10 years to this month helped spur revolution in states like Libya and Syria. Of course, now it also serves as a recruiting tool for Islamic State radicals. Drones, the weapons that were only in their infancy during my first deployment to Iraq, are now toys for children and delivery tools for Amazon. Of course, they too have a dark side which many, many already fear.For that reason, from Swarm of Things to Human Augmentation, Crowd-sourcing to Autonomous vehicles, 3D Printing to Genetic Engineering, the brave new world we are all ready to embrace will empower those of ill-aims so greatly that only an equally aggressive improvement in the means by which we secure our safety, both bodily and the information about us, will ensure the dream of tomorrow the builder's of this technology wish to provide today.Beyond technology, Black Swans are the wills of billions of people; competing, converging, colliding. Nearly all you will never meet, but a few of which, will shape your future.A Black Swan is former fighter of the Soviet Union, setting his sights on his former ally.[83]Black Swans are are planes filled with people crashing into buildings on a clear day in September, and from the visceral reaction, war in two nations erupts.As those wars drug on, the Black Swan was an angry and deeply confused young Army private, with a desire to punish the world. He let slip the largest stockpile of military secrets in history. Some were secrets of the United States, but more importantly was what we had learned of everyone else.In the aftermath, a Black Swan was a wave of democratic energy and revolution. Spurred by the leaks, and the revelations about their dictators, millions went to the streets demanding reform.Amidst the cheering, the sounds of bullets rang out and three civil wars began.In the void that arose, one of these saw the Blackest of Swans, a resurrected medieval empire of hate rising from the desert sands to engulf and overwhelm the Levant.In the terror it brought millions set to flight, many overwhelming Europe.And terror following them in.Those of us alive in 1996 remember that time before the towers fell and not a single one could have predicted any of this. Then we lived in a world of plenty where we were all still cheering the fall of the last evil empire which crumbled when its reach was greater than its capabilities. We were building relationships and the world was going closer together. "They were simpler times," is something old ones always say of when they were young, but looking back to the last two decades, do we not all feel old now? Who, in their most honest self could have predicted any of the events of chaos which bears fruit only to more chaos like it? Who standing back before would have suspected a future like we have seen in his next 20 years?What we can be sure of is that not everything will turn out as we hope. Change will come, but not like we expect. We can't turn away from it. It's coming whether we like it or not. And as soon as think we have it all figured out, a black swan will swoop down to remind us how little foresight we had. This post isn't meant to scare or to paint a dark cloud on the future because of a few of the nightmares that exist today. It is simply a reminder that the unexpected is a factor, and that running from it, or being afraid of it, we need to prepare for it. The best we can do is prepare. Learn the threats that exist today and prepare as best we can so that when change come, we... you, me, us, are able to embrace it. Only those who build their houses on solid rock will weather the coming storms or terror, hacking, disasters, cyberware, and the dark abyss of humanity behind a mask of anonymity and a jihadist's mask. Don't be afraid. I'm sure, exactly because of all the answers which existed to this question, that the world of tomorrow will be as a utopia to the one I live in today, but only if we are collectively prepared for the changes utopia brings along the way. That's why, above all else, those who look to their own security, their adaptability, and their capacity to embrace change and endure disruption... they will be the x factor in the next 20 years.For more answers like this, check out Global Outlook and follow my blog War Elephant for more new content.Thank you for reading, seriously. You've probably wondered why I would bother writing a 16,000 word essay on every terrible thing that could happen in the next twenty years. Well, obviously, it's for the money. Whether this answer is viewed as the most enlightened of the 100+ answers so far, I can only hope. That said, I appreciate the Open Philanthropy Project for giving me the place the reason to record my thoughts for all of you now, regardless of whether it makes it to the top or not.That said, I wanted to write on this subject in particular, is a matter of background. I am a Marine, honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps in 2008. My primary military occupational specialty was Tactical Data Network Specialist and this was the role I carried on my first tour in Iraq in 2005 along with my second in 2007.My job centered on building and maintaining the information network with which mission critical information and communications were carried out. Our responsibility was to ensure that that data network was secure from outside threats both physical and through our network. I maintained my base's SIPRnet that is discussed over and over in the Manning case. We knew the information was critical, mission-important and not necessary for the general public at their malls. Below, you'll see what were effectively my area of operations during 2005. Yeah, starting to see why I care so much about internet and military security so specifically now?Since leaving active duty, I went to college and became a writer. It is through writing that my greatest achievements have been realized. I've met people I never thought I would and learned lessons I never would have imagined. In that time, I've focused on educating others about the military. From Iraq to what it was like and what it means to be a military veteran, there was so much that needed to be understood. In doing this, I've learned a great deal about the conflicts of our world and the dangers we face. Since growing to understand all of this, it's been a personal mission of mine to explain all of this to as many as will listen. That said, it's also been among the great joys of my life to build and be a part of a community dedicated to understanding the world, its dangers, and bravely pushing through to live in the world we all want so badly. That said, there is another reason why I have been writing so hard this last week.A few months ago, my wife peed on a stick and now my life is going to change forever.This is my son Alex, and in July we look forward to introducing him to all of you. That said, because I am about to be a dad, this could be one of my last posts like this where I get to drive my focus towards a single massive project, eating away my time for the benefit of others. A good dad has to provide a future and sharing knowledge pro bono, while an endless source of self-fulfillment, doesn't give Alex the life I want him to have. I've been very lucky where I work to be able give time to my second profession. Where do I work? I'm a teaching paraprofessional in Oklahoma. I work with the kids at our school who make bad choices. In my room they mentorship and discipline, learning to write essays and pick up trash in the way only an obsessive compulsive Marine writer could make them.That said, being a teacher, let alone a paraprofessional teacher, isn't all that great. The benefits don't provide much, and the pay is terrible. According to the Washington Post, Oklahoma ranks 48th this year in Teacher Pay at about $44,000 a year[84]. Yeah, and as a para... I can expect about a quarter of that. Did I mention that my wife is also a teacher? If you would like to know what it is like for our house take a look at the title of this little gem: Superintendent: Budget Cuts ‘Worst Financial Crisis To OK Schools In Decades’.That said, the last real chance for me to keep writing projects like this is to appeal to people like you. Over the last year and a half, I have been submitting my work through the crowdsourcing website Patreon. If you follow me, you've probably seen my little at the bottom asking you to pledge to my campaign. My supporters have literally changed my life and allowed me to do projects I never would have imagined, all the way up to the point where I was finally able to write my own book The Next Warrior. Still, if want to give my son the life I really want, I need more. That's why I'm going full mercenary, and writing one of my longest answers ever, just to get your attention. If you really like my submissions, I really need your help.This is a link to my Patreon Support Page: Jon Davis is creating A Military Sci-Fi Novel, Articles, and Essays. Here you can pledge any amount you like and every time I submit an article, post, or chapter to one of my books, you'll donate that amount to the Jonathan Alexander Davis College Fund and/or Leaky Roof Trust. There is also a monthly maximum that you can elect to make, so you don't have to worry about me writing fifty articles at a time. The only ones that make Patreon are big articles... kind of like this one.By supporting me, you also support others. 20% of my donations go to other Patreon users as well, namely other veterans like me. So a donation to me helps others veteran artists as they grow, cope, and share their own experiences with the rest of the world. So once again here's that link: (PS - Baby/Veteran/Poor Teacher - needs your help) Jon Davis is creating A Military Sci-Fi Novel, Articles, and Essays.That said, If you're reading this far, I'm sure you've already upvoted, by the way (cough). All kidding aside and with deepest sincerity, I enjoyed every minute of the research and writing that went into it, and hope each and every one of you enjoyed it too. Thank you for reading and sharing.Semper Fidelis,Jon DavisFootnotes[1] Total number of Websites[2] Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple[3] Hacker Says He Can Hijack a $35K Police Drone a Mile Away[4] Cyber Security Is BIG Business[5] Microsoft Shores Up Its Cyberattack Defenses[6] Gamergate controversy[7] Tifa's Breasts Too Big for the FF7 Remake?[8] Online disinhibition effect[9] Penny Arcade[10] The Long Term Effects of Bullying[11] Page on None[12] The Only Thing I Have To Say About Gamer Gate[13] Page on krebsonsecurity.com[14] Verona teen sentenced to year in prison for online attack of Scientology[15] How Anonymous Turned Occupy Wall Street From A Fledgling Movement Into A Meme[16] Anonymous hackers turn fire on global paedophile menace[17] ‘You’re a virus, we’re the cure’: Anonymous takes down 20,000 ISIS Twitter accounts[18] Anonymous claims to have stopped its first terror attack[19] 'Anonymous' hacker quits, calls group's members hypocrites and its efforts fruitless[20] Tech Tuesday: Considering the (Frightening) Power of the Virtual Lynch Mob[21] Just how many people have been Hacked? -[22] 5 takeaways from Verizon's 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report[23] 5 takeaways from Verizon's 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report[24] This Big U.S. Health Insurer Just Got Hacked[25] Anthem: Hacked Database Included 78.8 Million People[26] Hack Brief: Hackers Steal 15M T-Mobile Customers’ Data From Experian[27] Scottrade suffers hack; 4.6M customers notified of breach | ZDNet[28] CVS Photo website might have been hacked[29] Trump hotels hacked, credit card data at risk[30] Hacking of Tax Returns More Extensive Than First Reported, I.R.S. Says[31] The spies behind your screen[32] Hacking Team broke Bitcoin secrecy by targeting crucial wallet file[33] A Detailed Look at Hacking Team’s Emails About Its Repressive Clients[34] American Gets Targeted by Digital Spy Tool Sold to Foreign Governments[35] Cyber Warfare | RAND[36] PLA Unit 61398[37] As federal agency reels from massive data breach, Chinese hackers blamed | ZDNet[38] The Massive OPM Hack Actually Hit 21 Million People[39] OPM Now Admits 5.6m Feds’ Fingerprints Were Stolen By Hackers[40] http://www.newsweek.com/russian-hackers-shut-ukraine-power-grid-415751[41] Information Warfare: The 50 Ruble Army[42] 50 Cent Party[43] Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer (Video)[44] Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer (Video)[45] Todd Humphreys' Research Team Demonstrates First Successful GPS Spoofing of UAV[46] An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon[47] The Battle for Mosul Has Begun[48] Cyber-warfare 'is growing threat'[49] Navy Battles Cyber Threats: Thumb Drives, Wireless Hacking, & China[50] Page on ali-cle.org[51] It’s Not Just Paris: From Nigeria to Egypt, 10 of 2015’s Worst Terrorist Attacks[52] Jon Davis's answer to In reference to a 2015 Oregon mass shooting, Ben Carson said he would have rushed the shooter. Would rushing a shooter be a good option at any point?[53] Terrorism fears secure profits for Sweden's Securitas[54] The Largest Company You've Never Heard Of: G4S And The London Olympics[55] What's the largest private army in the world?[56] Jon Davis's answer to What are the most striking insights of the recently published ISIS Files?[57] ISIS Is Making An Absurd Amount Of Money On Ransom Payments And Black-Market Oil Sales[58] Huge ransom demand for Japan hostages raises questions[59] Kayla Mueller Helped Homeless Women, HIV Patients, War Victims[60] France denies paying ransom for al-Qaeda hostages[61] Held 3 Years, French Hostages Return Home[62] Turkey Obtains Release of Hostages Held in Iraq[63] ISIS Tortured Christian Hostage Until Family Paid $80K Ransom[64] ISIS Demands $30 Million Ransom for Christian Hostages in Syria - Breitbart[65] Jon Davis's answer to In Captain Phillips (2013 movie), Greengrass clearly seeks to elicit empathy for Muse and the Somali pirates. How are we supposed to feel about them by the end of the film? Are we supposed to feel bad for them?[66] ESI \ Comprehensive Executive Protection Training[67] Executive Protection and Bodyguard Training[68] DCJS Executive Protection/ Personal Protection Specialist (32E)[69] Home Page - European Security Academy[70] CIA’s Global Response Staff emerging from shadows after incidents in Libya and Pakistan[71] Operation Iraqi Freedom[72] Operation Red Wings[73] Defense Department to cut Army to pre-WW II size[74] How much does one airstrike cost?[75] Jon Davis's answer to Why doesn't the US military just train every soldier like a Navy SEAL?[76] Jon Davis's answer to How do I train myself like a Navy Seal? What are the some of the practices a normal person can include in everyday life which can replicate the mind and body of a Navy Seal (meditation, workout, reading)?[77] Marcus Luttrell, speaker New York, 1 of 2 / Operation Red Wings - Lone Survivor[78] Jon Davis's answer to What would happen if the USA stopped trying to "police the world"? What effects would this have, economically and militarily, on the USA and other countries?[79] Robots May Replace One-Fourth Of U.S. Combat Soldiers By 2030, Says General[80] Will Marines be forced to leave Okinawa?[81] US Army Scores 'Weak' in Think Tank's Review of Military Power[82] Why is America losing faith in its military?[83] Jon Davis's answer to To what extent is Al-Qaeda a creation of the CIA?[84] How much teachers get paid — state by state