As the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) continues exploring emerging technologies for the Department of Defense, it's considering the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle electric grid cybersecurity and get ahead of 5G deployment. "In the area of cyber operations, we have a program RADICS [Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems], which is designed to help recover critical portions of the power grid in the event of a full blackout caused by malware," Scherlis explained. The program partners with power companies, the National Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy to enable a "black start" recovery, a restart to the electric grid without external power, in the event of a cyberattack. Scherlis mentioned the program in context of AI, but the program is generally building new tech to accelerate recovery through improved situational awareness, network isolation, and the ability to adapt to changing cyber situations. "The idea of this program is how can we understand what is the state of affairs in the grid and incrementally restore service, purge the malware, and bring service back to the most critical assets and then stage that out beyond. They've done a number of field trials," Scherlis added.

In the spring of 1991, a 21-year-old Finnish student named Linus Torvalds sat down to write code that would ultimately revolutionize the world of software development. In a Usenet newsgroup post late that summer, he told the world about his work: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones," he wrote. "This has been brewing since April and is starting to get ready. I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them:-)."