Cybersecurity Simplified: Don’t follow a mature security program with proper hygiene and best practices to get breached and sued. Follow a mature security program with proper hygiene and best practices to get breached less and avoid meaningful suits. Follow a highly mature security baseline, avoid socially questionable business decisions, and provide extreme transparency to nearly eliminate the ‘need/desire’ to be breached (by anything less than an APT), avoid suits, and promote a positive forward-facing cyber persona.
‘Tapping’ Fiber Optics: I am just pondering this idea and have not concept of the practicality. With that being said, if this idea is not feasible there are other ways to tap fiber optic cabling (they usually are just far more intrusive and fairly easily detectable). I wonder if it is possible to send reverberations of a certain amplitude and frequency down a length of the fiber coating that will be modified by any transmissions that take place within. I suspect the change would be subtle enough that rather fine measurements would be required (just the nature of photons) but I believe the effects on an existing known frequency and amplitude would be far more pronounced that simply trying to measure changes without a baseline or carrier signal. The distortions ( I am hypothesizing) would be perpendicular to the wave and therefore noticeable. I imagine it would be like tapping on a fish tank and measuring how the sound wave changes as a wave in the water passes.
Disrupting Fiber-optics Covertly: Use sound waves (acoustics) on an attached (rogue) device that ‘bends’ light waves that are traveling though the fiber. This could, in effect, create a denial of service condition. If the rogue device is remotely controlled service disruptions can be performed ‘randomly’ or ‘as needed’ to further confuse to operations personnel.
Photon Propagated EMP Cannon: The concept here is to carry alternating currents on high-frequency photon discharges. As the photons hit the “target area” they are dissipated by the electromagnetic static propagates through and enshrouds the target zone disrupting any existing static and dynamic electronic particle positions
Electric “Lightning-Bolt” Gun: create a gun that fires a hallow cylindrical laser field that has a 3-inch void in the center. Approximately 0.18 seconds after the laser is fired an electric discharge is fired in the middle of the laser cylinder. The laser creates an “invisible perimeter” for the electric discharge thereby ‘directing’ the discharge at the target.
Anti-Drone Tech: Imagine having a drone (small or large) enter an airspace only yo be rendered inoperative sending it crashing to the ground. This might be achievable if electro-static sensors were created (mostly sci-fi at this scale) throughout the terrain in the airspace. Once an electronic flight vehicle enters the airspace the sensors ask for verification. If the device fails to authenticate the sensors activate a vector specific electro-magnetic pulse at the device. The device falls from the sky with a thunderous thud. Requiring drones to perform sensitive air space authentication seems link an idea that is sure to attract some positive attention.
Laser Rifles: (Based on the “Phasers” post below, using slightly larger lasers and magnification it is reasonable to suppose the creation of laser rifles (that use a tubular mini-air-induction aluminum serpentine cooler) is within the realm of possibility. An alternate is to use a bank of of smaller lasers that are slightly displaced radially (perpendicular to the target) with a corresponding mirror that reflects and unifies the lasers’ out of the ‘barrel’. This design, (I imagine) would use a liquid cooling system with the ‘cooling component’ in the handle(s).
Space Espionage: The satellite parasite: It is possible to create a probe that detaches from a ‘friendly’ satellite and attaches (or ‘hovers’ in close proximity) to a ‘hostile’ satellite. The purpose of the satellite parasite is to intercept satellite traffic (currently almost always sent and received in plaintext) then forward the intercepted traffic to the parent ‘friendly’ satellite or any other ‘friendly receiver’ in the vicinity using cellular, a variant of wifi, or standard radio signals. The satellite parasite, just one reason to encrypt satellite traffic.
Hand-Held Phasers (Laser Pistols): We have laser cutters that are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and the knowledge of how to focus such a laser on a target yet we are still using powdered munitions. Ask yourself why, why would we be using gunpowder and bullets (which only have one setting, kill) when we have the technology to create laser sidearms. You might not be able to “set to stun” but having the choice to create a flesh burn is far better than only being able to create brain splatter. It’s time to upgrade from legacy sidearms to advanced capability devices that can be configured to only take a life as a last resort. The trick will be in ensuring adequate power and cooling of such a sidearm. For cooling we should turn to liquid cooling with knowledge there will be a time delay between high-power (lethal) shots due to heat exchange. For power, we should consider using a wireless charging battery with a charging transmitter located in strategic locations such as vehicles or designated buildings/areas.
Photon Torpedoes: Incidentally, the bellow “Space Music” would also be the technique used to build a laser cannon. Photon torpedoes to the ready . . .Banks of lasers layered/stacked inside a highly polished silver cone that permits each laser be rotated ~20 degrees up/down to focus the focal point of the laser bounce on a target object.
Space Music: how cool would it be to create a highly polished pyramidal silver disk that was used stream music in space? Like, take a few lasers, convert the music into hexadecimal or maybe base-64, use the lasers to reflect the music off the silver, then experience both the sounds and reflective-light of a song in digital format. (Just don’t point it at the moon.