Lifeboat Foundation

Thousands of Australians appear to believe lasers and exploding smart meters are being used to start our bushfires to make way for a new train network.

A Storyful investigation with news.com.au has found the conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media — with “directed-energy weapons” (DEWs) posts being shared tens of thousands of times in the past few weeks.

Those who believe the theory say the bushfires in this unprecedented season are being started using weapons which harness the focused power of technology such as lasers or microwaves.

As warfare continues to enter the digital realm, the Army plans to transform its cyber operations branch into a full-scale information warfare command, according to a top U.S. general.

The service will convert Cyber Command into the Army Information Warfare Command, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said at a panel on Tuesday. It’s one of the several modernization efforts the Army is taking on to counter “great power” opponents like Russia and China.

“We’re recognizing the importance of information operations, so our Cyber Command is going to become an information warfare command,” McConville said.

Uranium contaminated groundwater that is unsafe to drink could be cleaned up using the new remediation technique.

An electrochemical technique could prevent the spread of uranium in contaminated groundwater and provide a new way to source material for use in nuclear fuel.

Residents of El Talento, a small town in Colombia adjacent to the city of Cúcuta, have been introduced to the GEN-M, Watergen’s medium-scale atmospheric generator that produces water out of air, October 2019. Photo: Courtesy.

JNS.org – An Israeli-made machine that creates fresh drinking water from air was named the “Energy Efficiency Product of the Year” in the 2020 Smart Home Mark of Excellence Awards at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Presented annually during CES by the Consumer Technology Association, the Mark of Excellence Awards recognize the technology industry’s top smart-home innovations. The water-from-air appliance, named “GENNY,” was manufactured by the Rishon Letzion-based company Watergen.

Cybersecurity company warns that hackers are investigating industrial control systems associated with power infrastructure.

When Solar Foods is producing its novel protein Solein at full-scale production, and using the cheapest source of renewable energy to do so, the start-up believes it ‘could match soy’, CEO Pasi Vainikka tells FoodNavigator.

The microgrid would make the power grid more resilient to storms — and squirrels.

MEDUSA appears to be a popular name for directed energy weapons. There’s the MEDUSA I wrote about yesterday, a high-energy beam weapon one company hopes could destroy tanks and planes. And then there’s another MEDUSA, a nonlethal microwave weapon that was briefly funded by the Navy that uses “silent audio” (the auditory effect from microwaves). In other words, it makes you hear things in your head:

The main goal of the Phase I project wad to design and build a breadboard prototype of a temporary personnel incapacitation system called MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio). This non-lethal weapon is based on the well established microwave auditory effect (MAE). MAE results in a strong sound sensation in the human head when it is irradiated with specifically selected microwave pulses of low energy. Through the combination of pulse parameters and pulse power, it is possible to raise the auditory sensation to the “discomfort” level, deterring personnel from entering a protected perimeter or, if necessary, temporarily incapacitating particular individuals. *

The idea of the “Voice of God” weapon (a weapon that makes you hear voices in your head) has been around for a while, and this small business contract was but one one modest, and likely unrelated, offshoot of other microwave-auditory effect research. The company stated at the end of “phase one” of this research: “An operating frequency was chosen — Hardware requirements were established (commercial magnetron, high-voltage pulse former) — Hardware was designed and built — Power measurements were taken and the required pulse parameters confirmed — Experimental evidence of MAE was observed.”

BAE Systems is working on a form of atmospheric shield to protect against directed energy weapons.

Jack Browne