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While the terms might be more familiar to fans of old-fashioned cowboy films, white hat and black hat have found modern relevance in the world of computer hacking.

In the black-and-white cowboy films of yesteryear, the concept of the white hat vs. the black hat was originally developed to help audiences easily identify the hero and the villain. Today, these terms are now used to identify two types of hackers: white hat hackers and black hat hackers.

Much like their cowboy inspiration, white hat hackers are considered to be in the hero camp, as they perform a valuable public service by stress-testing technology and looking for security vulnerabilities so they can be fixed before theyre exploited by their black hat counterparts.

Black hat hackers, cybersecuritys villains, are out for money, power, and chaos, using their talents to enrich themselves at the expense of others well-being.

To learn more about how to become a white hat hacker, we sat down with Avast Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Jaya Baloo to get her inside perspective on what white hat hackers do, how to become a white hat hacker, and why their work is so crucial to cybersecurity at large.

Whether we notice it or not, cybersecurity is a huge part of each of our daily lives and its time to start paying attention if we want to be safe.

We live in a connected world that is poised to become even more connected in the future. Not only will we be more intrinsically connected to each other, but all of our devices will be interconnected as well.

If the future is going to be made up of smart devices, that means we need to get smarter, too.

Making sure the future of security is simple and accessible to everyone is one of Baloos main missions as a white hat hacker.

As new technology emerges, were seeing an increasing digital divide between the haves and have nots and not only when it comes to the elderly and younger generations, says Baloo. During my travels, Ive seen such stark challenges when it comes to tech adoption across the world, which is why its so important for me that security stays affordable and accessible to the most vulnerable populations.

Before joining our team in 2019, Baloo was CISO at KPN, the largest telecommunications carrier in the Netherlands, where she built and led KPNs security team for seven years, directing the team to defend not only KPN but most of the critical infrastructure in the Netherlands.

Before leading her team at KPN, Baloo worked as a Technical Security Specialist at France Telecom, following a number of years working at different telcos like Verizon. Outside of Avast, Baloo is also Vice-Chair of the EU Quantum Flagship, a billion-euro R&D program for quantum technologies, and a faculty member of Singularity University.

But despite her impressive history and list of credentials, Baloo calls her entire career in security an accident.

She was inspired to study computers after receiving one for Christmas at the age of nine. Although she didnt have access to the internet until she turned 12 (with a dial-up connection), Baloo was a quick fan. After maxing out the familys CompuServe bill, her parents canceled the service, leaving Baloo on her own to find different avenues to get back online.

She soon learned about local dial-up systems through online chat rooms and decided to try to find one by setting up a wardialing programa technique which involves automatically scanning lists of phone numbers in a local area code to search for modems, computers, bulletin board systems (i.e., computer servers), and fax machines. As Baloo recalls, I was that desperate to get back online!

Since then, Jaya has used her powers for good and works towards a safer and more secure digital world.

Baloos passion to be online was intense, but she didnt always have a big community to back her up or inspire her.

When I was really young, I was the only girl in my class who was really interested in computers and getting one and playing with them.

At the time, Baloo only thought of technology as a hobby, the ultimate consequence of, If you cant see it, you cant be it.

According to Baloo, I suppose that came from the fact that I was the only girl. I never considered it as a potential for a professional choice because there were no female examples.

Today, Baloo is leading by example to redefine the image of who can be a white hat hacker.

At the EU Quantum Flagship, for example, Baloo is one of few security people holding the position of Vice Chair; most of the other members are leading physicists. Together, the group provides insight into quantum computing developments and calls for action to continue the development of solutions to mitigate security concerns.

Baloos job is to make sure they stay ahead of the curve.

If we allow it to, quantum computing will revolutionize fundamental science. But if we lead from only a security threat standpoint, only worrying about security threats, it will not progress.

Baloo calls her position at EU Quantum Flagship the greatest achievement of her career a long way from the days when she felt being a girl who was interested in technology was a quirky, weird thing about [her.]

Today, she underscores the important role that white hat hackers play, not just in cybersecurity, but in the world at large. And she encourages young women and students to join her.

Admittedly, getting started on the good side of cybersecurity can feel a bit like being The Lone Ranger, at times. Especially in infosec, Baloo shares, there tends to be a lot of competition and pitting people against each others relevant experience or technical merit. This scares a lot of people off.

But Baloo rallies young women and students to not walk away from the challenge.

Hold onto your passion, and dont be afraid of being wrong. Its the only way to learn something new.

To stay informed in a constantly evolving field, Baloo recommends leaning into self-study and community outreach by reading frequently, observing discussions on social media, and listening to researchers at conferences.

The Wild West landscape may have changed, but the threat of black hat villains is not so different than it was years ago.

Instead of black hat cowboys with handlebar mustaches, black hat hackers are now the villainous outlaws, attacking everyone from government institutions to remote workers around the world.

Society needs white hat hackers to triumph over these threats. And today, everyone has the opportunity to become the hero.

Read the original:
Become a Cybersecurity Hero: An Interview with a White Hat Hacker - Security Boulevard

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist discusses free will, time travel, and the relationship between innovation and scientific discovery.

Todays scientific landscape teems with conversations and interactions between scientists and humanists. The cutting edge of new knowledge is the product of collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries; it emerges, I believe, from places where researchers from diverse backgrounds come together to solve concrete problems.

This is the premise that sparked the idea for my book Is the Universe a Hologram? Scientists Answer the Most Provocative Questions, which comprises a series of interconnected dialogues with leading scientists who are asked to reflect on key questions and concepts about the physical world, technology, and the mind. These thinkers offer both specific observations and broader comments about the intellectual traditions that inform these questions; in doing so, they reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas.

When the book went to press a few years ago, I hadnt yet had a chance to sit down with Frank Wilczek, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose work Ive long admired. Our conversation which took place in 2020 during his visit to the city of Valencia, Spain, as a member of the jury of the prestigious Rei Jaume I Awards made its way into the recently published Spanish edition of the book titled De neuronas a galaxias (From neurons to galaxies). Im so pleased to share our discussion, translated and edited for length, below.

Adolfo Plasencia: Professor Wilczek, lets jump right into a difficult but, I think, fascinating subject. In my dialogue with the physicist Ignacio Cirac, a pioneer in the field of quantum computing, he said that quantum physics in a way takes into account free will. Its a bold statement, and Ive been eager to get your take on it. Do you agree with Cirac?

Frank Wilczek: I think the question can be understood in two different ways. So let me answer each of them separately.

The first interpretation is to ask whether quantum mechanics explains the phenomenon of free will, or whether there is something else that must be taken into account in our description of the world which is not within the scope of quantum mechanics or which is not within physics as we understand it. And the answer is that we dont really know for sure. But there seems to be a very good hypothesis that I think scientists are in fact adopting, and it is that the phenomena of mental life, including free will, can be derived from the physical embodiment of mind in matter. So what we call emergent phenomena are qualitatively different behaviors that can be very difficult to see in the basic laws but can emerge in large systems with many components that have a rich structure. So, for example, when neurobiologists study the nervous system, when they study the brain, they adopt the working hypothesis that thought, memory all mental phenomena have a physical basis, have a physical correlate.

Another aspect is that you can ask yourself if, when we do physical experiments, we have to add something else that is mental. Do we have to make corrections for what people are thinking? Physicists now do very refined, precise, delicate experiments in which corrections have to be made for all sorts of things. You have to make corrections for trucks that pass by, you have to make corrections for electric and magnetic fields, you have to control the temperature very precisely, and so on, but something that people have never needed before is to make corrections related to what people are thinking. So I think there is very good circumstantial evidence that the world, the physical world, is not influenced by a separate mental world.

I believe that the barriers that physicists are encountering are not barriers of principle, but barriers of technique.

The second interpretation of the question is whether in the formulation of quantum mechanics one should involve the observer as a separate object that has free will, that decides what to observe. Quantum mechanics has an unusual mechanism since the theory has equations, and to interpret the equations one must make an observation. I believe that, eventually, in order to understand the phenomena of free will on a physical basis, and thus fully understand quantum mechanics, we will need to understand that we have that model of consciousness that corresponds to our experience of everyday life, which is fully based on quantum mechanics. At present, I dont think we have that. However, I believe that the barriers that physicists are encountering are not barriers of principle, but barriers of technique.

We are not advanced enough in quantum mechanics to make models where we can identify something wed begin to recognize as consciousness. Thats a big challenge for the future. But we have every reason to believe that this challenge can one day be met. So what we need is a model thats fully quantum mechanical and contains complicated objects that you can point to and say, thats behaving like a conscious mind and that thing is something I can recognize as a thinking entity. Part of the trouble, of course, is that the definition of consciousness is very slippery.

AP: Your response reminds me of something someone quipped to me after seeing the table of contents of my book and reading the discussion with Cirac: So physicists are now getting into philosophy too?

FW: Physicists have always been philosophers. In fact, historically, the beginnings of philosophy and of natural science, in ancient Greece, involved the same set of people. People like Pythagoras and Thales and Plato did not consider themselves philosophers or physicists, they were both. They developed the main issues of both disciplines, somehow, together, from the very beginning. Now, in recent years physics has become much more sophisticated and has become separated from academic philosophy, which is a discipline in itself, has its own techniques and body of academic literature, and so forth.

However, I dont think physicists should give up the enterprise of attempting to understand the world fully. They have made many advances in understanding the physical world, with precision, accuracy, and great depth, and I dont think this disqualifies them from addressing the classic questions of philosophy. On the contrary, I think that empowers them so that they can bring in new kinds of insights into what have become the traditional philosophical questions.

And I think many physicists have not wanted to do that, either because they are busy with physics or because they dont dare, but I think it is perfectly appropriate for physicists to also be philosophers. In fact, I think they should be, because many of the ideas weve learned about the physical world in physics are very surprising things that you wouldnt guess from everyday experience so I think we have things to teach philosophers. Especially since quantum mechanics is really a vast expansion of what we mean by reality, and it requires adjusting how you think. If you want to be a serious student of reality or of mind you really should know quantum mechanics. To me, a philosopher who doesnt know quantum mechanics is like a swimmer with his or her hands tied behind their back.

To me, a philosopher who doesnt know quantum mechanics is like a swimmer with his or her hands tied behind their back.

AP: Lets move into what Ill call the weird ideas questions stuff Ive been wondering about, as a non-scientist, coming from a position of great ignorance but with deep curiosity. If theres any known symbol or idea about quantum physics that for ordinary people clashes with everyday logic, thats the subject of Schrdingers cat. Dont you think its difficult to explain to people that, not knowing if the cat is dead or alive, when you try to find out, you come to the conclusion that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time? That is something rather strange, counterintuitive, even to university students who study the subject.

FW: There are many situations when you describe them by probability that you dont know before you observe what you will observe. That, almost by definition, is what probability means. You dont know what you can find when you look into it, when you make the observation, when you pick from a sample, or whatever, but the quantum mechanical situation is a little bit different. What makes it paradoxical is that there is a very real sense in which the cats alive state and dead state possibilities coexist in a way that is not true in classical situations. Now, this coexistence is not a practical situation for cats, but we can talk about a similar situation for atoms, and it does become practical for atoms. But, in the spirit of your question, let me go back to talking about cats.

In principle lets assume that after some time T, the probability of having a cat alive or the probability of having a cat dead, according to quantum mechanics, is predicted to be 50/50, so each of them is equally likely. We have that situation, and we can check it and experiment, so we have a lot of cats, and we can do the same experiment over and over again. But quantum mechanics tells you that if you do certain operations after that time T you can reverse the situation so that the cat will be certainly alive or that the cat will be certainly dead and both of those possibilities were present and you could restore them by doing different things to the initial situation, to the initial wave function.

So what is different about quantum mechanics, is that those two possibilities are not mutually exclusive, they both coexist in the situation and what happens when you observe is you find out whats called collapse of the wave function. You fix one possibility, but before you made the observation, before you intervened in the situation, both were present. And if you dont intervene, but let the systems stay close, dont observe it, manipulate it with some fields, never looking in to know if the cat is alive or dead, you can reverse the evolution and make it totally alive or you can make it totally dead. For real cats this is not practical at all, but it is for atoms If you are not talking about a live cat or a dead cat but about the spin of an atom, pointing up or down, you can literally do these things you can create a situation where there is a 50/50 percent chance that the spin is up or the spin is down, but then, by operating on that wave function, without observing, just operating on it, you can show that either possibility was really present.

AP: So you believe that quantum superposition is part of human logic

FW: Oh, yes! Well, some human beings do physics and quantum mechanics pretty successfully. You know, I do quantum mechanics sometimes and I make mistakes occasionally, but Ive always been able to correct them. There is no real doubt about how you apply quantum mechanics to physical situations; there are right and wrong answers. It can be hard to think about there are sometimes very counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics. You have to sort of take yourself outside the realm of common sense and think about some things differently, because if you did apply common sense you would get the wrong answer. Sometimes, it is only necessary to follow the equations. But you know, there are many people who practice quantum mechanics very successfully and use it in design of computers and all kinds of other strange gadgets, use it to do very many concrete things. It is certainly not beyond human comprehension.

You have to sort of take yourself outside the realm of common sense and think about some things differently, because if you did apply common sense you would get the wrong answer.

AP: All right, lets move on to the next issue: time travel. An article you published in Quanta magazine some time ago digs into the concept of the arrow of time, which was coined by Arthur Eddington almost 100 years ago but remains an unsolved problem of modern physics. This idea postulates the one-way direction or asymmetry of time. Let me just ask you directly: Why does time travel only work in science fiction, and therefore in the imagination, and not in our everyday reality?

FW: Well, this is a very complex question. Not only in content but also in formulation. So, let me try to boil your question down to essentials. One aspect is, what do physicists mean when they talk about a universal symmetry? Since you cant actually reverse [in the reality in which we live] the direction of time it sounds like metaphysics to say: Okay, if we reverse the direction of time, such and such and such will happen.

But, actually, it means something very concrete. It means if you have a physical situation where particles are moving with certain velocities, so at some initial moment you know where they are and what direction they are moving these are based on certain equations you can also discuss the situation where you struck with particles in the same space but moving in the opposite direction. So that if you change (in the equations) the direction of time, they would be moving in the opposite direction instead. You can see whether those two situations are governed by exactly the same equations.

Time reversal symmetry simply says that if you reverse the directions of rotation and the speeds of everything in your system, you will see that it is based on the same equations as if you did not. So that is what time reversal means very concretely for physicists. There are many details that are more complicated, that have to do with the spin and have to do with exotic kinds of particles. But thats the idea. And, we find in physics that that principle works very, very accurately. Not perfectly but very, very accurately. But in everyday life it doesnt seem that way. It doesnt seem that the direction of time forwards and backwards is experienced in the same way in our lives. Of course, it definitively isnt.

So, how is that consistent with the experiment I mentioned? Well, first of all, we cannot, as a practical matter, in any complicated system, let alone a human body, change the direction that every particle is moving. So you cant really do it, in practice. You cant get the direct consequence of the underlying time-reversal symmetry. The past and the future are very different and there is a long story about why that is, even though the basic equations look the same forwards and backwards. And I dont think its appropriate to get into that whole story now, but let me say something. The essence of it is that, in the beginning, at the very early stage of the universe, the universe was much hotter and denser and was expanding. That was the Big Bang. And the Big Bang was in the past, not in the future. So that tells you that things were very different in the past and that we are heading toward a future that is very different from the origin (of the universe). And by a long series of arguments about the formation of structure and the universe cooling down and so on, you can sketch a history of the universe that makes sense and accords with our experience of time going in only one direction, although in the fundamental equations, we would have the same behavior if it moved in the opposite direction.

AP: Whew, all right. Sci-fi writers beware

FW: I mean, it is a very intriguing possibility in principle that of reversing the direction of the motion of particles and getting them to reverse their evolution in time so that they reconstitute their state at an earlier time. Maybe if we did that for some key molecules, to reverse aging, for example. But in practice, we dont know what, if any, key elements we need to reverse, and so, the time-reversal symmetry of the fundamental laws does not help us in anything that is very practical for us.

AP: Finally, I want to ask you about something important to me, but not explicitly related to physics. I write and publish a lot about innovation, which has been a buzzword for decades and seems to still be. Everyone these days, from entrepreneurs to politicians, has to innovate. How do you view this term, its notion, and its meaning today, from your point of view as a scientist, but also just as a citizen? What differences do you see between the concepts of discovery, invention, and innovation in the world we live in now?

FW: I think we live in a very special time now, because of the means of communication and the aids to thinking that we have electronics and microelectronics and computer technology and telecommunication. With all these things, people can exchange ideas much more efficiently. People can get together and think. And on the other hand, there is more to think about because the technology is very powerful and we understand matter very, very well. So we can design things based on imagination and planning and be sure that they work or at least be pretty confident that they will work. So thats innovation kind of exploding our knowledge of the world in order to make improvements here and there. And, to me, as a physicist, I am very proud that so much innovation has emerged from a profound understanding of the physical world and reality, that was provided originally by people who were just curious about how the physical world works, and in particular, the quantum world that we were talking about.

All microelectronics, transistors, semiconductors, etc. wouldnt exist without a profound understanding of matter that physics produced during the 20th century. And this isnt over yet. We understand, but we have not exhausted the potential thats been opened up by this profound understanding of the world. In fact, the theory itself tells us that there is much more room for improvement. Richard Feynman, one of my heroes, gave a famous talk in 1959 called Theres plenty of room in the bottom, which anticipated the richness of the micro-world: There are many, many, many atoms in even small things. And if you can work skillfully with them, you can do little machines, you can do useful things, in medicine, and in computing, of course. In principle, he foresaw this would open up various possibilities in many directions; of course he couldnt predict the details but he pointed in that direction. And now we see them embodied in microelectronics, nanotechnology, and modern telecommunications. All these things come from understanding this microcosmic world really well, in great detail and depth. A recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for building molecules that function as motors and understanding how to do that. So, in many ways, this fundamental science is opening up new possibilities for innovation.

Now, you asked me about the relationship between innovation and scientific discovery. I think they kind of shade into each other. But basically science, curiosity-driven basic science is more long-term. It doesnt focus on goals that you know how to reach, and you just want to reach them quickly or efficiently. It takes us into unknown territory, where we dont know what were doing or why were doing it. But that kind of thing provides new possibilities for innovation later. So I would say that scientific research is continuous with innovation, it is a long-term curiosity-driven enterprise. While short-term innovation harvests the fruit of discovery.

Adolfo Plasencia is a writer and columnist who covers science and technology, and the author of Is the Universe a Hologram? Scientists Answer the Most Provocative Questions.

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'Physicists Have Always Been Philosophers': In Conversation With Frank Wilczek - The MIT Press Reader

Classiq, the leader in quantum computing software, today announced theClassiq Coding Competition, rewarding those that create highly-efficient quantum circuits to solve important real-world problems. The Classiq Coding Competition is the first competition focused on quantum efficiency. Quantum computers have limited resources, so building compact, optimized solutions that can make maximum use of those resources is critical.

Creating efficient quantum algorithms is part engineering, part art. The Classiq Coding Competition is a call to the worlds quantum software community to showcase their talents and demonstrate how quantum computing can take humans to new heights, said Classiq CEO Nir Minerbi. Efficient circuits enhance the ability of any quantum computer to solve important problems.

The Classiq Coding Competition will consist of four problems and will award 17 cash prizes. The top entry for each of the four problems will receive $3,000, while $1,500 and $500 will be awarded for the second and third places in each problem. Classiq will also award several $1,000 prizes to creators of the best innovative solutions as well as to the most promising youth participants under the age of 18. In addition, first-place winners will be profiled inThe Quantum Insider.

A panel of esteemed judges will determine the winners. The judges are:

For some problems, the winning entries will be those that create a working circuit with the fewest two-qubit gates, while others will seek to minimize the circuit depth. Classiq will reveal the Classiq Coding Competition winners in mid-June.

You would be surprised how much can be achieved with compact, efficient circuits, said Minerbi. The onboard computer used in the Apollo 11 space mission got a man to the moon using just 72 kilobytes of ROM. Quantum computing is taking off, and the need to create elegant and efficient quantum algorithms will exist for years to come. Organizations that manage to fit larger problems into available computers will reap their quantum benefits sooner than others. The Classiq Coding Competition will encourage the creativity and ingenuity required to make this happen and highlight the art of the possible in compact, efficient circuits.

The Classiq Coding Competition is open to all parties worldwide, except Classiq employees and their families. Clickhereto learn about and register for the Classiq Coding Competition.

About Classiq

Classiq is the leader in quantum computing software, provides a development platform built for organizations that want to jumpstart and accelerate their quantum computing programs. Classiqs patented CAD for quantum software engine automatically converts high-level functional models into optimized, hardware-aware circuits. Customers use the Classiq platform to build sophisticated algorithms that could not otherwise be created, bypassing the need to work at the quantum assembly level. Backed by powerful investors such as HPE, HSBC, Samsung NEXT, NTT and others, Classiq has raised more than $50 million since its 2020 inception, built a world-class team of scientists and engineers, and distilled decades of their quantum expertise into its groundbreaking platform. With Classiq, customers can push the envelope of whats possible in quantum software, build valuable IP blocks, explore quantum solutions for real-life problems, and prepare to take full advantage of the coming quantum computing revolution.To learn more, follow Classiq onLinkedIn,TwitterorYouTubeor visitwww.classiq.io.

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Classiq Announces the Classiq Coding Competition a $25K Challenge to Encourage Innovation and Build the World's Best Quantum Circuits - StartupHub.ai

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Behind every storyteller, there's a story maybe more than one. Maybe many.

In the case of best-selling novelist and former Navy SEAL Jack Carr, a deep love of family, love of country and love of reading and writing plus respect for America's military and veterans are the opening pages in a fascinating, multi-layered career.

"I knew from a very early age that those were the two things I wanted to do in life serve my country in uniform, and then write thrillers," the author, based in Park City, Utah, told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.

Carr has just released his latest thriller featuring popular series character James Reece who, not surprisingly, is a former Navy SEAL.

SEXTON AND CARR: HOW AMERICA CAN HELP UKRAINE CRIPPLE THE WAR MACHINE

The novel, "In the Blood" (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster), came out May 17, 2022.

Here are highlights from a conversation with Jack Carr just as he was about to go on tour for the new novel.

Best-selling novelist Jack Carr served the U.S. as a Navy SEAL and his grandfather served in World War II as a military aviator. Carr, to this day, has his granddad's medals, wings and silk maps. (Megan Rudloff)

Given his dedication to the military and all who have served our country including his own grandfather, a military aviator who died in the waning days of World War II it seems no accident the book is out just ahead of Memorial Day this year.

Fox News Digital: How do you write so many books? You've written "The Terminal List," "True Believer," "Savage Son," "The Devil's Hand" now your newest, "In the Blood." How do you do it?

Jack Carr: It's exhausting! Oh my gosh! It's crazy. (laughs) But when you have a series character, that's what people want now.

"Today, people really want a recurring series character, so that's what you gotta deliver."

Carr (cont'd): This all really started with Clive Cussler in the late '70s and then Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, David Morrell and so many others People want so much more information now. And as a novelist today, it's so easy to give it to them.

Today, people really want a recurring series character, so that's what you gotta deliver.

"In the Blood" is the fifth book in "The Terminal List" series for Utah-based novelist Jack Carr, a former Navy SEAL. (David Brown/Atria Books)

Fox News Digital: In your cover photo on your book jackets, you look so serious and intimidating. Is that really you?

Carr: I know! People who know me are always telling me, "You're always smiling. So what is the deal with that book photo?" And I answer, "I don't know, it just seems like I should be serious for that." That's just how it goes.

Now I've got a new author photo I've upgraded a little with my beard. But I'm still pretty serious in the new photo. Still not really smiling, but moving in that direction.

Jack Carr is shown during a recent appearance on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, discussing events in Afghanistan. ("Tucker Carlson Tonight"/Fox News)

Fox News Digital: What do you want people to know most about your latest novel?

Carr: The easy part is that it's a sniper-centric novel of violent resolution. That's really what was in my head. That's my background. I was a SEAL sniper.

And I always wanted to write that sniper-centric novel but not fall into the trap of having two snipers on opposite sides, on two buildings across the street, looking for each other, looking, looking and at the last section they both see each other at the same time, and they shoot, and one bullet goes through the scope of the other guy.

"I went deep down the rabbit hole in terms of researching artificial intelligence, quantum computing, surveillance of U.S. citizens I had no touchpoints."

Carr (cont'd): I mean, I love that, it's great. But it's been done a few times in movies and in literature!

So I had to figure out: How do I write a sniper novel without that? And that was the fun part to figure out I went deep down the rabbit hole in terms of researching artificial intelligence, quantum computing, surveillance of U.S. citizens I had no touchpoints.

Jack Carr, in an author photo that appears on the cover of several of his New York Times best-selling novels. Carr said he "had a very solid foundation" with the "sniper" material in his books. But for "In the Blood" and quantum computing "I had no background. I had to start essentially from zero." (Clay Goswick)

Carr (cont'd): For the sniper stuff, I had a very solid foundation. I still check it, because I've been out of that world for a while. But with quantum computing, I had no background.

So I had to start essentially from zero, which included looking up what a quantum computer actually looks like. I thought it was just a large computer and that is not what it is!

Type it into your search bar and look. It's this golden Medusa-looking thing with wires suspended in a vacuum. It is a crazy-looking thing.

An artist's rendition of the Sycamore processor mounted in the cryostat is shown here in the style of what Jack Carr described to Fox News Digital as he discussed his new novel, "In the Blood." (Forest Stearns, Google AI Quantum Artist in Residence)

Carr (cont'd): So I wanted to know: What are our capabilities? What are the Chinese capabilities? What are the Russian capabilities?

And what about the private sector? IBM has one of the top ones in the country. But even if you read something on quantum computing and artificial intelligence, it's essentially dated by the time you finish reading it.

"I wanted to uncover things that people are reluctant to give up."

Carr (cont'd): So books, journals, magazine articles and this sort of thing they just provide the foundation. And I then went and talked to a lot of people but everybody leaves something out. I wanted to uncover things that people are reluctant to give up.

Still, I got a clear picture of what it is. And I think that what's in the book I don't think I'm far off. And if I am, it's only that I don't describe how far ahead we actually are, just to keep this out of the science fiction realm rather than the political thriller genre. It was scarier than the bioweapons research I did for the last book.

Fox News Digital: Tell us how you made the transition from military man to thriller writer.

Carr: I just knew from a very early age that those were the two things I wanted to do in life serve my country in uniform, then write thrillers.

Jack Carr during his days with U.S. special forces. "When I was seven years old, I found out what SEALs were," he told Fox News Digital in an interview. (Megan Rudloff)

Carr (cont'd): My grandfather served in WWII and he was killed in WWII he was a Marine aviator. He was killed in May of 1945 near the end of the war, but I have pictures of him. I had his medals. I had his wings.

I had the silk maps that they gave aviators back then, because if they hit the water with a paper map, it would disintegrate, but the silk map just got wet and they could still use it. I had all that stuff, I still have all that it was a natural draw for me.

Plus, "Black Sheep Squadron" was on TV, with Robert Conrad playing legendary Marine aviator Pappy Boyington. I watched that with my dad and it was the power of popular culture. It was his connection to his dad my grandfather so I was headed in that direction.

"My takeaways were that SEALs were some of the best military in the world and had some of the toughest training ever devised by our military, so I thought I'm in."

Carr (cont'd): And since my mom was a librarian, I was always reading. I grew up with a love of books and a love of reading.

When I was seven years old, I found out what SEALs were my mom and I did research into SEALs. And then on weekends, there was an old black-and-white movie called "The Frogmen" on TV, and I used to watch that, with guys climbing up over the beach, and I thought, These are my people right here.

I asked my dad about them. I said, "What is a frogman?" and he said, "Ask your mother." So my mom and I went down to the library and did a bunch of research, and my takeaways were that SEALs were some of the best military in the world and had some of the toughest training ever devised by our military, so I thought I'm in.

Retired Navy SEAL Jack Carr is pictured during an episode of Fox Nation's "Tucker Carlson Today." (Fox News)

Carr (cont'd): Back then, you could research almost everything actually written. And so I did. Eventually I began reading "The Hunt for Red October" and all those books, all the Tom Clancy novels, the books by David Morrell, Nelson DeMille, Stephen Hunter and more.

All these guys had protagonists that I wanted to be one day. A Marine sniper in Vietnam Army special forces in Vietnam I had such a good time reading those books and I continue to read them to this day.

"I gave myself an education in the art of storytelling from a very early age and I just knew that's what I was going to do."

And I knew that one day after the military, I'd write those kinds of books. So I gave myself an education in the art of storytelling from a very early age and I just knew that's what I was going to do. All of that stuff came together as I was getting out of the military.

All of the reading I'd done, all of the research I'd done on warfare and terrorism and counterterrorism and my experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and in special operations on the SEAL teams all of that came together. It allowed me to take the feelings and emotions that I had and tie them into a fictional narrative.

And to this day, I get to continue researching things that I don't know about.

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Fox News Digital: Writing is often a very solitary affair. It can be lonely. How do you keep yourself motivated how do you push through that?

Carr: I love that part! It's like, Are you kidding? No one's bothering me for hours on end? This is fantastic! (laughs) You know, I have my wife, three kids ages 16, 14, and 11 and the dog. It's constant chaos in our house. So I have to find a place where it's very quiet and where I won't be interrupted when I'm writing these.

Novelist Jack Carr (standing, center) is shown accompanying an American veteran to a World War II commemorative event. Carr regularly gives back to vets who did so much for our country through their service. (Best Defense Foundation)

Carr (cont'd): I usually start with a one-page executive summary, a theme, a title and then I start turning that into an outline and get as far as I can with that outline until it starts to maybe slow me down.

And then I need to go and be by myself and just write.

For this last one, I rented Airbnbs around our town and I found a great one, an old log cabin. Everything was tiny, it was tiny, with a big old stack of wood outside, so I could chop wood and throw it into the woodburning stove inside. I had a little couch, a little table, a small bedroom, a little deck and I could see my house from it.

"When I'm writing, I turn everything else off I'm not connected to the internet. My computer is just for writing."

So I could flip a switch at night and call the kids and say, "Hey, I'm saying goodnight." And they could see me turning the lights off and on.

And I could just be by myself and write this book. When I'm writing, I turn everything else off I'm not connected to the internet. My computer is just for writing.

For my first few books, I was going to the library to write, and I'd rent a study room there, put my name down on the list for the room but then in the afternoons, I was getting kicked out for high school kids who wanted to work on a history project or something.

Carr (cont'd): Then COVID hit and I needed to work at home. But when you work at home, at least for me, as soon as I close the doors to my office, that's like a magnet for the dog to scratch and bark, for the kids to come and talk to me they finally want to talk to me once the door's closed!

You know, all of the things that any parent had to contend with during the lockdown. But hey, that makes life interesting.

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Fox News Digital: Do you enjoy interacting with your fans and readers?

Carr: I do. I do. It's the reason I do what I do, which is the writing. At least 20 years ago, maybe 30, the only time you got to say "thank you" to your readers was at book signings or book fairs. Maybe you had one televised interview maybe two.

But today, I can say "thank you" every day to people who reach out on social media to tell me that they bought my book or told a friend about it.

Carr (cont'd): It means so much to me that people would spend their time time they're never going to get back in the pages of one of my books, or by listening to the audiobook, or just following me on Instagram or something.

That's why I take it very seriously, because I know they're never going to get that time back and they get to choose how they're going to spend it.

So it's a big responsibility and I take it seriously.

DR. MARK SHRIME, A MERCY SHIPS VOLUNTEER, URGES A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF PURPOSE IN LIFE AS NEW BOOK COMES OUT

Fox News Digital: Tell us about being based in Park City, Utah.

Carr: I finished up my time with SEAL teams in Coronado [in California], and I wanted to make a physical and psychological break with the military as I turned that page.

It was a wonderful 20 years, and I feel honored to have done it for as long as I did. But it was time to go to Park City, Utah, and raise the kids in a ski town and move away from all those things that had anchored us to San Diego for a while.

"My daughter and I will be going to Normandy for the D-Day events and commemorations there."

Fox News Digital: Anything else you wanted to share as your new book comes out?

Carr: I'll be zigzagging around the country for a while on my book tour, and then I'll be back home.

And then my daughter and I will be going to Normandy for the D-Day events and commemorations there [on June 6].

Jack Carr is shown with an American veteran who served in World War II. (Best Defense Foundation)

Carr (cont'd): We're volunteering out there to take veterans to visit that part of the world where they served their nation.

We did it this last December, too, for the 80th commemoration of Pearl Harbor my daughter is the youngest person who ever did it. It's with a group called the Best Defense Foundation.

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We took 64 veterans over age 96 all the way up to age 104 all of them in wheelchairs. We helped get them around, get to the dinners, to their rooms.

The families would say to us, "Wow, this is the first time I've ever heard my grandfather tell that story."

I think this has changed the course of my 16-year-old daughter's life. She's been so impacted by this and by these individuals.

Sometimes they open up to us about their service, about what they've experienced sometimes it's easier to open up to people they don't know than to their own families. It was amazing for her to sit down and hear some of their stories.

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And the families would say to us, "Wow, this is the first time I've ever heard my grandfather tell that story."

It was really impactful for both my daughter and for me.

In addition to the new novel, "In the Blood," just out, Carr has a new show based on his series coming to Amazon Prime Video on July 1, 2022. "The Terminal List" stars Chris Pratt as Navy SEAL Sniper James Reece.

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Ahead of Memorial Day, best-selling novelist Jack Carr reveals the military inspiration behind his work - Fox News

3 Tech Trends That Are Poised to Transform Business in the Next Decade

By Mike Bechtel and Scott Buchholz

Covid-19, while profoundly disruptive, didnt create new enterprise technology trends so much as catalyze those already underway.

Organizations fast-tracked multi-year technology roadmaps for major investments like artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and cloud, completing them in months or even weeks. The result? Many organizations have arrived at their desired futures ahead of schedule.

But the future is still coming. Todays innovations will be our successors legacy. So executives must be mindful of meaningful advances and capabilities forecast for the decade aheadto ride tailwinds, dodge headwinds, and forestall, or at least minimize, the interest payments due on their eventual technical debt.

But the signal-to-noise ratio in most projections of future tech is abysmal, introducing an anxiety-inducing blizzard of buzzwords every year. Thats why our futures research gets right down to identifying the subset of emerging technology innovations that can create better customer experiences, modernize operations, and drive competitive advantage.

Three classes of emerging tech are poised to transform every aspect of business in the next decade: quantum technologies, exponential intelligence, and ambient computing. These field notes from the future can give business leaders a strategic view of the decade ahead to help them engineer a technology-forward future.

Quantum Technologies

I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once said.

To eschew the physics lesson: quantum-powered solutions exploit the quirky properties of subatomic particles to allow us to solve seemingly intractable problems using physics instead of mathematics. Quantum represents as big a leap over digital as digital was over analog.

As quantum R&D turns the corner from R to D, the race among technology giants, governments, and early-stage startups will quickly find commercial applications.

Three areas to watch:

Quantums appeal to techies is clear, but business leaders must consider its potential to deliver specific competitive advantages against discrete business needs. Its spoils will first accrue to those who figure out in advance which problems they need quantum to solve.

Exponential Intelligence

Traditionally, the most widely adopted business intelligence solutions were descriptive: discovering and surfacing hidden correlations in data sets. The last 15 years saw the rise of predictive analytics: algorithms that could further extrapolate whats likely to happen next.

Most recently, AI-fueled organizations have used machine intelligence to make decisions that augment or automate human thinking.

This escalation of next-generation intelligencefrom analyst to predictor to actorwill increasingly access human behavioral data at scale, so that it better understands and emulates human emotion and intent. Enter the age of affective or emotional AI.

To a machine, a smile, a thoughtful pause, or a choice of words is all data that can, in aggregate, help an organization develop a more holistic understanding of customers, employees, citizens, and students. Its data organizations can further use it to develop classes of automated systems that better connect the dots among their financial, social, and ethical objectives.

For customer service representatives, caregivers, sales agents, and even stage actors, the business cases for these creative machines are compelling. But its imperative that leaders recognize the importance of committing to trustworthy AI practices to reduce any risk of bias, both tacit and explicit, in the training data, models, and resulting systems. As the authors of Technology Futures, a recent report from Deloitte and the World Economic Forum, put it: We must teach our digital children well, training them to do as we say, not necessarily as weve done.

Ambient Experience

The past 20 years of human-computer interaction might be summed up as an ever-bigger number of ever-smaller screens. With powerful mobile devices and advanced networks now ubiquitous in our workplaces and homes, were literally surrounded by digital information.

Ambient experience envisions a future beyond the glass when our interaction with the digital world takes place less through screens than through intuitive, out-of-the-way affordances that more naturally cater to our needs.

Recent advances in digital assistants and smart speakers light the way. These language interfaces generally speak only when spoken to and dutifully respond. Increasingly, devices will anticipate our intentions and offer help based on their understanding of content and context.

The other side of the coin: an unlimited reality. Virtual reality (VR) is not new, but enterprises increasingly turn to VR as a tool instead of a toy to support functions as varied as training, team building, and remote operations truck driving.

These ambient experiences could drive simplicity, reducing friction in the user experience. As technology develops, a voice, gesture, or glance could signal intent and initiate an exchange of business-critical information. Tomorrows digital concierges could handle increasingly complex routines in smart homes and citieswithout any logins or other traditional steps for activation.

Foresight is 80/20

These three field notes from the future are not an admonition to drop todays plans in favor of whats next. Rather, they are an encouragement to keep going.

Todays investments in cloud, data, and digital experiences lay the groundwork for opportunities in quantum technologies, exponential intelligence, and ambient experience.

Research indicates that leading organizations put 80 percent of their technology budgets toward existing investments and 20 percent toward emerging tech.1 By keeping their eyes on the future and their feet in the present, organizations can start creating tech-forward strategies todayso they can compete, lead, and advance their businesses tomorrow.

Read Field Notes from the Future in the Deloitte Tech Trends 2022 report and contact our subject matter experts for further discussion.

Mike Bechtel, Chief Futurist, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Scott Buchholz, Emerging Technology Research Director and Government & Public Services Chief Technology Officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP

1Mike Bechtel, Nishita Henry and Khalid Kark, Innovation Study 2021: Beyond the buzzword, September 30, 2021

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3 Tech Trends That Are Poised to Transform Business in the Next Decade - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DELOITTE - HBR.org Daily