Think about: China deploys lots of of hundreds of autonomous drones within the air, on the ocean, and beneath the water—all armed with explosive warheads or small missiles. These machines descend in a swarm towards army installations on Taiwan and close by US bases, and over the course of some hours, a single robotic blitzkrieg overwhelms the US Pacific drive earlier than it will probably even start to battle again.
The proliferation of low-cost drones means nearly any group with the wherewithal to assemble and launch a swarm might wreak havoc, no costly jets or huge missile installations required.
The US armed forces at the moment are attempting to find an answer—and so they need it quick. Each department of the service and a number of protection tech startups are testing out new weapons that promise to disable drones en masse.
And one in every of these is microwaves: high-powered digital gadgets that push out kilowatts of energy to zap the circuits of a drone as if it have been the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers once you heated them up. Learn the total story.
—Sam Dean
This text is a part of the Huge Story sequence: MIT Know-how Assessment’s most vital, formidable reporting that takes a deep have a look at the applied sciences which are coming subsequent and what they’ll imply for us and the world we stay in. Take a look at the remainder of them right here.
What is going to energy AI’s development?
Final week we revealed Energy Hungry, a sequence that takes a tough have a look at the anticipated power calls for of AI. Final week on this publication, I broke down its centerpiece, an evaluation I did with my colleague James O’Donnell.
However this week, I need to discuss one other story that I additionally wrote for that bundle, which targeted on nuclear power. As I found, constructing new nuclear vegetation isn’t so easy or so quick. And as my colleague David Rotman lays out in his story, the AI growth might wind up counting on one other power supply: fossil fuels. So what’s going to energy AI? Learn the total story.
—Casey Crownhart
