FallenKingdomReads’ list of 10 Science Fiction Books That Predicted the Future with Eerie Accuracy.

Science fiction has always been a genre that imagines what the future might hold, but sometimes it goes beyond mere speculation and eerily predicts what actually happens. Here are ten science fiction books that predicted the future with accuracy that is almost too close for comfort.

This dystopian novel predicted a world in which government surveillance and control were all-encompassing, and the public was constantly monitored and manipulated. Many of the themes in the book have become all too familiar in today’s world of mass surveillance and government control.

Regeneration, Resuscitation & Biothreat Countermeasures — Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D., Program Manager, Biological Technology Office, DARPA

Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D. (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/cdr-jean-paul-chretien) is a Program Manager in the Biological Technology Office at DARPA, where his research interests include disease and injury prevention, operational medicine, and biothreat countermeasures. He is also responsible for running the DARPA Triage Challenge (https://triagechallenge.darpa.mil/).

Prior to coming to DARPA, CDR Dr. Chretien led the Pandemic Warning Team at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Center for Medical Intelligence, and as a naval medical officer, his previous assignments include senior policy advisor for biodefense in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; team lead for Innovation & Evaluation at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch; and director of force health protection for U.S. and NATO forces in southwestern Afghanistan.

A proud mentor to nine graduate students and Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellows, CDR Dr. Chretien received the Rising Star Award from the American College of Preventive Medicine, Best Publication of the Year Award from the International Society for Disease Surveillance, and Skelton Award for Public Service from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and 10 book chapters.

CDR Dr. Chretien earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from the United States Naval Academy, Master of Health Science in biostatistics and Doctor of Philosophy in genetic epidemiology degrees from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his residency in general preventive medicine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and fellowship in health sciences informatics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Pierce, an artist whose work critically engages with weaponized emerging technologies, recently unveiled their latest ingenious project—an everyday hoodie retrofitted to include an array of infrared (IR) LEDs that, when activated, blinds any nearby night vision security cameras. Using mostly off-the-shelf components like LumiLED lights, an Adafruit microcontroller, and silicone wire, as well as we software Pierce that made open-source for interested DIYers, the privacy-boosting “Camera Shy Hoodie” is designed to enable citizens to safely engage in civic protests and demonstrations. Or, wearers can just simply opt-out of being tracked by unknown third-parties while walking down the street.

A DIY hack for hoodies emits infrared LEDs to obscure wearers’ faces from invasive surveillance camera tracking.

Devices now being tested in the sky could gather ultra-precise data.

WASHINGTON — When the Pentagon revealed last week that a high-flying, Chinese balloon was spotted over the United States, officials said they didn’t expect the airship would add much value to the intelligence China is already gathering through its network of spy satellites.

“Our best assessment at the moment is that whatever the surveillance payload is on this balloon, it does not create significant value added over and above what the [People’s Republic of China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low Earth orbit,” a senior defense official told reporters Feb. 2.

While it’s unclear what information the uncrewed airship gathered before the Pentagon shot it down Feb. 4, experts say balloons loitering at high altitudes can offer some advantages over satellites and drones — or could at least augment their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

China has urged “cool-headed” handling of a dispute over a giant Chinese balloon heading for the eastern US.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier called off a visit to Beijing, saying the “surveillance” balloon’s presence was “an irresponsible act”.

Later the US reported a second Chinese balloon floating over Latin America.

China expressed regret over the balloon over the US, saying it was a weather airship that had been blown astray. It was last spotted over Missouri.

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Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder turned philanthropist, has called for a global response team to be set up to carry out surveillance for pathogens that can potentially ring in the next pandemic, Financial Times reported.

Long before COVID-19 struck, Gates warned the world of an imminent pandemic and the need to prepare ourselves to face it. Gates has been vocal about the long delays involved in the vaccine development process and the lack of equity in vaccine distribution in the world. So far, he has also been right about how the COVID-19 pandemic will play out and has pandemic avoiding strategies in his new book.

One afternoon in the fall of 2019, in a grand old office building near the Arc de Triomphe, I was buzzed through an unmarked door into a showroom for the future of surveillance. The space on the other side was dark and sleek, with a look somewhere between an Apple Store and a doomsday bunker. Along one wall, a grid of electronic devices glinted in the moody downlighting—automated license plate readers, Wi-Fi-enabled locks, boxy data processing units. I was here to meet Giovanni Gaccione, who runs the public safety division of a security technology company called Genetec. Headquartered in Montreal, the firm operates four of these “Experience Centers” around the world, where it peddles intelligence products to government officials. Genetec’s main sell here was software, and Gaccione had agreed to show me how it worked.

He led me first to a large monitor running a demo version of Citigraf, his division’s flagship product. The screen displayed a map of the East Side of Chicago. Around the edges were thumbnail-size video streams from neighborhood CCTV cameras. In one feed, a woman appeared to be unloading luggage from a car to the sidewalk. An alert popped up above her head: “ILLEGAL PARKING.” The map itself was scattered with color-coded icons—a house on fire, a gun, a pair of wrestling stick figures—each of which, Gaccione explained, corresponded to an unfolding emergency. He selected the stick figures, which denoted an assault, and a readout appeared onscreen with a few scant details drawn from the 911 dispatch center. At the bottom was a button marked “INVESTIGATE,” just begging to be clicked.

Face recognition tools are computational models that can identify specific people in images, as well as CCTV or video footage. These tools are already being used in a wide range of real-world settings, for instance aiding law enforcement and border control agents in their criminal investigations and surveillance efforts, and for authentication and biometric applications. While most existing models perform remarkably well, there may still be much room for improvement.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have recently created a new and promising architecture for face recognition. This architecture, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, is based on a strategy to extract facial features from images that differs from most of those proposed so far.

“Holistic methods using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and margin-based losses have dominated research on face recognition,” Zhonglin Sun and Georgios Tzimiropoulos, the two researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore.

SpaceX revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies. “While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads,” the company said on its website.

This is a big deal as SpaceX is currently burning through $2 billion/year as it works to develop Starlink and Starship. So SpaceX wouldn’t mind some extra cash!

WASHINGTON — SpaceX on Dec. 2 revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies.

This sector of SpaceX intends to leverage the Starlink internet constellation in low Earth orbit to develop products and services — including secure communications, remote sensing and space surveillance payloads — that are in growing demand by U.S. defense and intelligence organizations.

“While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads,” the company said on its website.