Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor

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I recently read a great book, Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez, about the next step in UAVs using artificial intelligence to become completely autonomous making their own decisions by communicating with each other as a collective intelligence.  The drones use a weaver ant algorithm and communicate via a chemical agent like the real ants.  Weaver ants are used because they are a highly aggressive and organized species.  I was having a Terminator moment after reading the book as we seem to be getting closer to this situation all the time.  But I love the technology that enables these capabilities since much of it is based on advances in wireless technology (along with some software, of course).

Swami Hindle makes his 2013 microwave industry predictions and reviews some trends from last year.  Read his predictions and let us know if you have any of your own.

The MILCOM management and sponsors made a wise decision to cancel the event this year as most of the east coast was pretty much closed down from hurricane Sandy.  Everyone I know in New England down to the Mid-Atlantic found out over the weekend that their flights were cancelled.  It was a good move and addressed any safety concerns of people trying to get there.  MILCOM even analyzed their attendee list and determined that approximately 40% of them would be affected by the storm so decided to cancel.  I applaud them for taking this action and promoting it quickly to the attendees.  Even though the show was cancelled, there was still a lot of company news and products that I received for the event so here is a summary of the show that did not happen from an RF/microwave perspective.

I just returned from another trip to China visiting several universities and companies in Beijing and Chengdu to talk about EDI CON and Microwave Journal/Microwave Journal China. The highlight of my visit was to the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in Chengdu where we had the honor and privilege of attending the celebration of the establishment of the Lin Weigan Fund of UESTC which coincided with Lin Weigan’s 93^rd birthday.