2021 February

Elon Musk, the futurist billionaire behind SpaceX and Tesla, outlined his plans to connect humans’ brains directly to computers describing a campaign to create “symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” He said the first prototype could be implanted in a person by the end of next year. Arriving at that goal “will take a long time,” Musk said in a presentation at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, noting that securing federal approval for implanted neural devices is difficult. But testing on animals is already underway, and “a monkey has been able to control the computer with his brain. Musk founded Neuralink Corp. in July 2016 to create “ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.” The company said in 2017 that its initial goal was to devise brain interfaces to alleviate the symptoms of chronic medical conditions. It’s widely presumed, however, that Musk is characteristically after something much larger.

Some cybersecurity experts agree with a report by Cybersecurity Ventures and expect financial damages from cybercrime to reach $6 trillion by the end of this year. Industry studies show that cyberattacks are among the fastest-growing crimes in the United States. Cyberattacks are absolutely on the rise. Based on everything we know and every single analyst we have spoken with, there is no doubt that attacks are increasing, senior vice president, risk solutions at Neustar. “Cybersecurity experts predict that in 2021 there will be a cyberattack incident every 11 seconds. This is nearly twice what it was in 2019 (every 19 seconds), and four times the rate five years ago (every 40 seconds in 2016),” The rapidly growing increase in cyberattacks worldwide comes at a hefty cost for businesses in order to better protect their computer networks from intrusions. Cyberattacks not only are increasing in frequency, but they are costing victims larger financial