4. 5G drones (under attack)
Stanford University announced in March that a team of its researchers is planning to demonstrate to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency officials that formations of computer-controlled drones can be managed even with continuous cyberattacks on the 5G network they’re operating on. The three-year, $30 million effort, called Project Pronto, will get help from Princeton University and Cornell University, funded largely by the nonprofit Open Networking Foundation, which promotes a goal of making 5G networks secure for public safety use.
“For the first time in history, there is not a single U.S. manufacturer of cellular telephone equipment. Meanwhile, the world is building 5G infrastructure on equipment where you have no idea what’s in the boxes,” Nick McKeown, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford, said in a press release in March. “This is DARPA’s worry. This is the government’s worry. And they should be worried.”
McKeown’s strategy, if successful, could help networks recover from cyberattacks in less than a second, according to the university.
