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Singapore:Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR): The Singapore International Pre-Graduate Award (SIPGA) supports short-term research attachments for international students at A*STAR. It provides a unique opportunity for top overseas students to experience the vibrant scientific environment in A*STAR Research Institutes and Consortia. Students will be able to work with distinguished and world- renowned researchers in A*STAR labs. For more details, please refer to this link.Nanyang Technological University (NTU): NTU is one of the leading universities of Singapore (and the world). Their Summer Research Internship (SRI) is conducted from 01 June 2016 to 22 July 2016 and students will be given a one-time allowance of SGD3000. The application deadline for the 2016 programme is 30th November, 2015. Hurry up! For more details about the programme, application forms etc, please refer to this link.Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL): TLL is a research institute situated in the campus of NUS, Singapore. Temasek conducts biomolecular science research and specifically focuses on understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie the development and physiology of living organisms. Students in life sciences fields such as Biotechnology and Biological Sciences can apply for their internship positions. For more details, please refer to this link.UK:University of Liverpool:The University of Liverpool invites applications for the India Fellowships Programme 2016. The Fellowship Programme offers opportunities for both outstanding early career and established researchers from India to strengthen their experience of research and teaching in an international research-enriched environment. Up to 10 fellowships will be awarded annually. Application deadline is 26th February, 2016. For more details, please refer here .John Innes Centre, The Sainsbury Laboratory and The Genome Analysis Centre: JIC, TSL and TGA together provide UK and international students the opportunity to take part in a summer research programme conducting research in plant, microbial and computational biology. The 2016 summer programme is from 3rd July to 27th August, 2016. Application deadline is 26th February, 2016. All students from backgrounds such as Biotechnology, Biomedical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Chemical Sciences and Mathematics are eligible to apply. For more details about their application process, forms and faq, please refer to this link.Switzerland:École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL):The School of Life Sciences at EPFL, Lausanne is organizing a summer research programme for undergraduate life sciences students from all over the world. The online application deadline is 31st January, 2016 and the duration of the programme is from July 4th to August 25th, 2015. For more details about the application details and admission process, please refer to thislink.European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN): CERN offers a number of summer research programmes for Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Physics students who are pursuing either bachelor or masters degree programmes. For more details about their summer programmes, please refer to this link.Genedata: Computer Science, Mathematics and Bioinformatics students are invited to apply for internship positions at Genedata, a company that develops computational solutions for drug discovery and life sciences research. Even Biotechnology students interested in this area of specialization can apply for this internship. Genedata is headquartered in switzerland and has offices throughout the world. Even though they have not mentioned the eligibility criteria for the internship positions, it is highly recommended that students contact them for more details about the eligibility criteria. For more details about their internships, please refer to this link.Europe:Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics: The Max Planck Institute in Germany conducts a summer internship programme for international undergraduate students who are pursuing degrees in areas such as Immunology, Genetics, Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology and related fields. The announcement for the 2015 summer programme is yet to be made. For more details about this programme, please refer to this link.Max Planck Institute for Software Systems: MPI-SWS offers undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to conduct research at their institute. The programme is 12 to 14 weeks long and students are provided with free housing, travel expenses and a stipend. The institute also occasionally offers 6-month long internships. For more details about the application process, FAQs etc., please refer to this linkDAAD: Undergraduate Indian Students pursuing courses like engineering, mathematics and natural sciences etc. from selected universities in India can apply for 2-3 month internships at universities and research institutions in Germany. For detailed information, please refer to this link. For a list of the universities from where students can apply for this internship, please refer to this link.Inria, France: Inria, a french institute for research in computer science and automation, invites undergraduate, graduate and PhD students for their research intern positions. However, only students studying in partner institutions can apply. For more details, please refer to this link.USA:Michigan State University: The inGEAR (Internship in Global Engineering & Advanced Research) program at Michigan State University offers summer research opportunities for high achieving undergraduates from international institutions. Funding is provided by the MSU College of Engineering, the MSU International Studies Program, and faculty mentors. During Summer 2016, the inGEAR program will take place on the MSU campus from May 23 through July 31, 2016. inGEAR is an "internship in graduate school" and provides participants with an early opportunity to become involved in research by working with faculty mentors in eight Engineering departments. Application deadline is Jan 15th, 2016. For more details, please refer to this link.Carnegie Mellon University: The Robotics Institute Summer Scholars (RISS) Program is an intensive summer research program for talented undergraduate students. Summer Scholars have the opportunity to participate in state-of-the-art research projects, interact with a diverse research team, and to be mentored by leading faculty and technical staff. The program introduces aspiring students to dynamic research resources and methods, RI graduate education programs and research projects. The Summer Scholars program lasts 11 weeks and begins in June and runs until mid-August. Only scholars who are available for the entirety of that time will be considered. Undergraduate students from both US and international institutions are eligible to apply by completing an online application with attachments (including resume, transcripts, recommendations, and personal statement) from December 1 through January 31 to the RI Summer Scholars Program. For more details, please refer to thislink.Vanderbilt University: Vanderbilt University’s School Of Medicine invites students for their short term fellowship programme and VISRA undergrad programme. The short term programme takes care of the student’s travel and visa expenses but no stipend will be provided. The VISRA programme comes with a stipend. This internship focuses on Biomedical research. Therefore, undergraduate students in Biotechnology and allied fields can apply to this programme. For further details, please refer to this link and this.University of Notre Dame: UND offers a research experience programme to final year undergraduate students from IIT Bombay alone. IIT Bombay students from engineering and sciences can apply for this programme. For further details, please refer to this link.Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts: Are you interested in oceanic research? If yes, then this internship will be perfect for you. WHOI conducts a summer student fellowship each year for 10-12 weeks. International students are funded and visa process is taken care of by the institute. Application deadline is February 15th, 2016. For further details, please refer to this link.Harvard University: Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) is organizing a 10 week summer research programme from June 6th to August 12th, 2016. Undergraduate students interested in performing stem cell research can apply for this programme. A stipend of $4500 will be provided. Students who are doing their undergraduate degrees in Biotechnology and related fields can apply for this internship. This programme is only for undergraduate students and Harvard will sponsor the visas. Application deadline is January 29th, 2016. For more details, please visit link.Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Janelia Farm, a world class biomedical research institute, situated in the campus of Howard Hughes Medical Institute is inviting students from all over the world to participate in their Janelia Undergraduate Summer Scholar programme. Students in fields such as Biotechnology, Biomedical Engineering, Biomedical Sciences, Natural Sciences etc. can apply for this programme. The 2016 programme is from June to August and visas are sponsored for international students. Application deadline is January 7th, 2016. For further details, please refer to this link.Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL): Do you want to conduct research under eminent professors and scientists? If yes, then CSHL will be perfect for aspiring researchers in fields such as neuroscience, genetics, genomics, molecular biology, cancer etc. What more, CSHL is the home of 8 nobel prize winners!! The 2015 programme will be held from June 13th - August 13th, 2016. Application deadline is Jan 15th, 2016. This programme is only for undergraduate students and students from all nationalities are welcome to apply. For further details about eligibility, application process etc, please refer to this link.Rockefeller University: Rockefeller University is a premier university devoted solely to biomedical research. Rockefeller University is home to numerous nobel prize winners in science. If you are a highly ambitious student who wants to work on breakthrough research, then this place is perfect for you. Application deadline is February 1, 2016. For more details, please refer to this link.Cornell University: Do you want to be a part of this famous ivy league institution? The Department of Food Science at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences of Cornell University is conducting summer scholar research programme for students from all over the world. The programme is for 10 weeks from June 1 to August 7. The programme states that it accepts international students. However, it is not clear if they will sponsor visa. Therefore, before applying please contact the programme coordinator for more information about the visa sponsorship etc. For more details about the programme, please refer to this link.University Of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): The Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) programme of UCLA provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to work on real-world research projects proposed by sponsors from industry or the public sector. The programme is nine weeks. Each undergraduate student will be provided with a travel allowance and a stipend of $3,000. Housing and most meals are also included. RIPS-LA students will live in residence halls on the UCLA campus and will work at IPAM. International students, including students attending a university outside the U.S., are eligible to apply for RIPS-LA and visa will be sponsored by UCLA. Application deadline is in February.Caltech University: Caltech, one of the most premier institutions in this world, invites students apply for their SURF summer research fellowship programme. Undergraduate students interested in sciences and engineering research can apply for this programme. Caltech will take of visa sponsorship for international students. The deadline for applying is February 22.Lunar Planetary Institute: LPI, is a research institute dedicated to the study of the solar system. The institute is part of USRA and supported by NASA. Undergraduate students who are pursuing degrees in engineering, natural sciences, mathematics and computer science are eligible to apply. This programme also accepts international students. The deadline for application is January.Space Telescope Science Institute (STCSI): STCSI is conducting a space astronomy summer programme aimed at college undergraduate students from all over the world. Application deadline is January 31st, 2016.Georgia Tech: Georgia Tech University’s CRUISE programme admits international undergraduate computer science students for their 10 week summer programme. The application deadline for this year is December 31, 2016.Canada:Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto: This program provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to work throughout the summer in a laboratory at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. Students will work on a project assigned to them by their laboratory supervisor gaining valuable experience and research skills . Students must have completed, at the minimum, their second undergraduate year of a recognized university science program by May 2016. Application deadline is on February 29th, 2016.Mitacs: The Mitacs Globalink summer research internship is open to undergraduate students from Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Vietnam. The programme is held from May to September for 12 weeks each year and students get to work with Canadian university faculty members in various fields such as engineering, science and mathematics. The programme supports students with stipend, visa sponsorship, housing etc. The application deadline for the 2016 programme is 18th November, 2015.Japan:Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST): OIST offers research internships for undergraduate and graduate students from all over the world. These research internships give students the opportunity to work in a lab and conduct research under a professors tutelage. The duration of the internship is 10-12 weeks. Students receive a living allowance of 2400 JPY per day. Research interns are admitted four times a year.Hiyoshi Corporation:Hiyoshi Corporation along with Omihachiman, Japan and ABK-AOTS DOSOKAI are conducting an annual two months summer internship for engineering students in India. The application deadline for 2016 programme is well past date but since this programme is conducted every year, you can always be well prepared for the 2017 programme. Students in their 3rd year of engineering or 1st year of post graduation are eligible to apply.University of Tokyo: The School of Science at the University of Tokyo organizes a summer internship each year for undergraduate students from natural sciences fields such Physics, Chemistry and Biological Sciences. The application deadline is February 9th, 2016.Taiwan:National Tsing Hua University: College of Engineering at Tsinghua University conducts two month summer internship for undergraduate engineering students all across the world. The areas of research includes Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Nanoengineering and Microsystems. The deadline for application submission is December 29th, 2015.National Chiao Tung University: NCTU Taiwan’s elite research internship programme is open to current master’s and PhD students from all over the world. The duration of the internship is 2 months and for more details.Australia:University of Queensland: UQ summer research programme (November - December) is for undergraduate students from Australia and overseas. Students will be provided with stipends and the internships are in varied disciplines from engineering to humanities. They also have a winter programme that takes place in the month of May, June or July as that is when Australia experiences their winter season. for more details about their programmes.Other:Weizmann Institute Of Science, Israel: The Weizmann Institute of Science accepts exceptional undergraduate students for summer internships in areas such as mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry and life sciences. The application deadline for 2016 programme is January 15th, 2015. Travel costs will not be supported but students do receive a stipend each week. The duration of the programme is 8 weeksInternational Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE): IAESTE is an independent, non-political, non-profit student exchange organization that aims to provide paid internships across the world for students in science, engineering and applied arts. IAS\ESTE is represented in India. Therefore, Indian students are eligible to apply to IAESTE for internships abroad.Khorana Program: The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India, Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and WINStep Forward are partnering to support the prestigious Khorana Program for Scholars named in honor of Dr. Har Gobind Khorana, who won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for his work at the interface of Chemistry and Biology while a member of the UW faculty. The Khorana Program will provide opportunities to Indian students to undertake research at University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and partner universities in Summer 2016 for a period of 10 weeks. Application deadline for 2016 is 30th November 2015.S.N. Bose Scholar’s Program: To nurture future innovators and thought leaders, the Science & Engineering Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India, the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and WINStep Forward have partnered to support a dynamic and transformative student exchange program between premier institutions in India and the United States. This program is open to engineering students (BTech and MTech). For more information on application deadline.Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) (Spain): CNIO offers summer training programme for undergraduate students in Biomedical and Life Sciences degrees. This program selects only 9 final year undergraduate students from around the world. Their 2016 application is yet to be open, but here is the linkfor more information.Industrial Technology Research (Taiwan):Each summer ITRI hosts about 30 international students for internships of 2-3 months. ITRI also offers a limited number of longer internships of 4-6 months during Spring, Summer, and Fall.Application for 2016 Summer Internships will open in early January, 2016. If you want to apply for 4-6 month internship during Winter 2015 or Spring 2016, please send a message with your CV/resume, a brief description of your research interests.

Read this and you be the judge. The FBI’s current director, Christopher Wray, recently said his first priority is to “try to bring a sense of calm and stability back to the bureau.” However, the FBI is facing one of the greatest tests of its 110 year history. It must fix a culture of internal problems and rebuild its trustworthiness with the law enforcement community and public. Worst yet, this comes at the same time many Americans are asking themselves, can we really trust the FBI after the McCabe findings have shaken the Bureau to the core. The FBI has massive power, and as a result, it has strict rules that they must follow to the letter. Lying to FBI investigators is considered a dire breach in an organization built on trust and honesty. The recent criminal referrals sent to the U.S. Attorney’s office, which emerged after the IG report was released will probably result in charges against McCabe of making a false sworn statement. McCabe has challenged the findings, disputing even the most basic elements like the number people who were in the room that are witnesses to his conversations. The IG said it did not find many of McCabe’s objections credible, with some elements contradicted by notes taken by other FBI agents. McCabe previously called his firing a “war on the FBI and the Russia investigation.” However, viewed against the facts of Horowitz reports, McCabe’s lack of credibility and misconduct is part of a much larger internal problem for the Bureau. Horowitz found that bureau investigators had allowed employees with negative polygraph results to keep their top-secret clearances for months and even years, posing “potential risks to U.S. national security.” In one instance, an FBI IT specialist with top-secret security clearance failed four (4) polygraph examinations and admitted to having created a fictitious Facebook account to communicate with a foreign national, but received no disciplinary action for his misconduct. Horowitz found that the FBI was getting information it shouldn’t have had access to when it used controversial parts of the Patriot Act to obtain business records in terrorism and counterintelligence cases.Just as troubling are recent FBI misconduct under the IG’s microscope. For example, on Jan. 5, the FBI’s round-the-clock tip center in West Virginia received a chilling phone call. The caller gave her name and said she was close to the family of an 18-year-old in Parkland, Fla., named Nikolas Cruz. Over 13 minutes, the female caller said Cruz had posted photos of rifles he owned and animals he mutilated and that he wanted “to kill people.” She listed his Instagram accounts and suggested the FBI check it for itself, saying she was worried about the thought of his “getting into a school and just shooting the place up,” according to a transcript of the call. The FBI specialist checked Cruz’s name against a database and found that another tipster had reported 3½ months earlier that a “Nikolas Cruz” posted a comment on his YouTube channel saying, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” But neither tip was passed on to the FBI field agents in Miami or local officials in Parkland. After Cruz allegedly killed seventeen (17) students with an AR-15 rifle at his former school just six weeks later, the bureau admitted that it had dropped the ball and ordered a full review. Anyone hearing this can easily say: “You’ve got to be kidding.”The Parkland shooting was only one gross oversight in a string of devastating errors by the keystone cops. After Omar Mateen shot and killed forty nine (49) people at a nightclub named “Pulse” in Orlando in June 2016, the FBI said it had investigated him twice before on terrorism related suspicions, but shut the inquiries down for lack of evidence. The year before, after Dylann Roof shot to death nine (9) African-American parishioners at a South Carolina church, the FBI acknowledged that lapses in its gun background-check system allowed him to illegally buy the .45-caliber handgun he used in the massacre. In 2011, the FBI received a tip from Russian intelligence that one of the Boston Marathon bombers had become radicalized and was planning an overseas trip to join radical Islamic groups. The FBI in Boston investigated him but found no “nexus” to terrorism.The Orlando shooting provoked more problems for the bureau. In late March, when the shooter’s widow, Noor Salman, was acquitted on charges of aiding and abetting him and obstructing justice. The jury foreman pointed to inconsistencies in the FBI’s accounts of the disputed admissions that agents said Salman had made, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The judge also reprimanded the bureau after an FBI agent contradicted the government’s earlier claims that Salman and Mateen had cased the club.There are serious concerns about the FBI and their record of major terrorist prosecutions or lack there of underscore a larger question: Is anyone less likely to believe what the bureau is saying these days? A federal judge threw out all the criminal charges against renegade Nevada cattleman Cliven Bundy, his two sons and a supporter who had been in an armed standoff over unpaid grazing fees. Judge Gloria Navarro accused the FBI of “outrageous” and “flagrant” misconduct, citing failures by both prosecutors and the FBI to produce at least 1,000 pages of required documents. The judge said the FBI misplaced–or “perhaps hid”–a thumb drive revealing the existence of snipers and a surveillance camera at the site of the standoff.A related case in Oregon, growing out of the 2016 takeover of a wildlife refuge by Bundy’s sons and their followers, has not gone well for the FBI either. An agent at the scene, W. Joseph Astarita, is now charged with five criminal counts after prosecutors say he falsely denied shooting twice at an occupation leader who was fatally shot by police, who said he appeared to be reaching for his handgun during a roadside encounter. The Bundy sons and five supporters who helped in the takeover were found not guilty of conspiracy and weapons charges, in another jarring setback for the government.The on-going string of not guilty verdicts as a sign that jurors and judges are less inclined to take what the FBI says in court at face value. The evidence support that conclusion. The court statistics shows a surprisingly low rate of success for the thousands of cases the FBI investigates and sends to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. The Justice Department has won convictions in fewer than half the cases the FBI referred for prosecution, with a conviction rate of 47% the data showed. That fell well below the average of 72% for all other government agencies. Prosecutors themselves have rejected many of the FBI’s referrals before they ever got to court. The bureau’s low success rate in these cases has remained largely unchanged in recent years.In a national case, Gina Nichols, says she never had strong impressions one way or the other about the FBI until her daughter Maggie Nichols, who was a member of the national gymnastics team, reported three years prior that team physician Larry Nassar had molested her. Gina waited anxiously for the FBI to contact her and interview Maggie. But no one in the FBI did so for over a year as the case languished among different FBI field offices in Indianapolis, Detroit and Los Angeles. Nassar is believed to have molested dozens of additional victims over the course of that same time frame.The FBI had opened an internal inquiry to determine why the Nassar investigations appear to have dragged on for so long. John Manly, a Southern California lawyer representing many of the female victims, says he is angry that no one from the FBI has contacted the victims to explain the delay. “Knowing that the best law-enforcement agency in the world knew exactly what he was up to and did nothing can’t be explain that to them,” Manly says. “You’ve got people who were really hurt here and the FBI took their time until the heat was on them.”Then there is Mueller’s Russia probe has found that Moscow’s operation against the 2016 election first got under way in 2014, but the FBI failed to grasp the scope and danger of what was unfolding. The bureau missed the significance of the damaging 2015 hack of the DNC database. Then when the Russian operation began to heat up in the summer of 2016, the FBI was always a step behind the Russians, struggling to understand intelligence reports they were getting about possible connections between Moscow and Trump aides. The bureau also sat on the disputed “dossier” prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Then now we find out that the FBI knew Carter Page was a CIA agent and intentionality left the exculpatory evidence out of the FISA application thereby duping a FISA Judge. The FBI then sought three additional renewals of the highly classified FISA warrant. To make matters worse, Carter Page was never charged or indicted because he was actually telling the truth that he was spying on the Russians for the CIA and not colluding with them to help Trump win the 2016, election.A report released by the House Intelligence Committee found that the FBI was slow to confront the election meddling, especially in its failure to notify U.S. victims of Russian hacking quickly enough. The committee also charged that the bureau’s decision to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was influenced by politics and biased FBI agents. At the same time, the IG has pointed to text messages between FBI special agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, which were critical of Trump as well as many Democrats to argue the bureau is fundamentally rotten to the core and needs a complete overhaul to fix their serious internal cultural problems.The most important short term goal for America is how can the FBI be fixed when they don’t even follow their own internal regulations they teach new agents at Quantico as noted in their Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide “DIOG. In the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe ahead of the 2016 election, Comey acted without telling the Justice Department what he planned to do. He then stripped the case from a field office and kept it in the headquarters and had the same agents working on it and all other high profile cases and the Russian collusion probe at the same time. Comey is the main culprit who came under fire in the IG report for breaking with Justice Department rules and norms by assuming authority usually held by prosecutors and speaking in public about a case that did not produce criminal charges. What was disclosed is Comey allowed the Bureau to be weaponized by the Obama Administration.At FBI headquarters, agents and supervisors are currently saying that they are keeping their heads down and focusing on their jobs and investigations while the building is crumbling around them and the criticism of the Bureau is blowing the shingles off the roof.Trump’s attacks on the FBI was proven to be true after the IG released his reports. Some worry that the damage to the FBI may take years to fix. Trump’s public attacks on the Bureau is having an effect on the public’s confidence in the FBI.Jeffrey Danik, a retired FBI agent in Florida who now works with whistle-blowers at the bureau, blames the state of affairs on a severe lack of leadership and transparency at headquarters in owning up to recent blunders and gross misconduct. Those damaging failures have just about pushed an incredible organization over the brink. For now, everyone inside and out who cares about the reliability of law enforcement in America is left hoping that the Bureau can rebuild itself as a premier law enforcement agency.

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