Put More Black Tech to Work
A few weeks ago, the CIA announced it had successfully applied some of its high-powered image manipulation technology -- used by spy satellites in space to detect enemy tanks -- to spot nascent breast-cancer tumors. Now, courtesy of an inadvertent -- yeah, right -- congressional leak, we have a closer picture of the black budget. Enough, anyway, to whet our appetites to wonder what other technologies might be in there that could be spun out for the benefit of humanity and business.
few weeks ago, the CIA announced it had successfully applied some of its high-powered image manipulation technology -- used by spy satellites in space to detect enemy tanks -- to spot nascent breast-cancer tumors. Now, courtesy of an inadvertent -- yeah, right -- congressional leak, we have a closer picture of the black budget. Enough, anyway, to whet our appetites to wonder what other technologies might be in there that could be spun out for the benefit of humanity and business.
It's time to carefully recoup some of our investments over the years in the $28 billion intelligence budget. There are a lot of needs out there -- detecting buried toxic waste, tracking malignant tumors, making sense and use out of the coming flood of information over supernetworks -- we think some of the intelligence agency technology can fill. There are plenty of responsible, hungry companies in this area that could bring those technologies to market in responsible ways that won't impinge on national security.
Signal processing, data encryption, mass storage and database manipulation, supercomputers -- all technologies born of intelligence applications that have proven themselves commercially. It's time to open up the store doors a little wider.