At its heart, Google is a powerful search engine that organizes and provides access to vast information on the internet. But behind that simple description lies a complex and often invisible machinery that makes the experience feel smooth, personal, and fast. The human side of that machinery is the cookie. A cookie is just a tiny text file that a website asks your browser to store on your device. It doesn’t crawl out of your screen and spy on you; rather, it sits quietly in your browser, acting like a Post-it note, a key card, and a memory aid all…

On a bright Hawaiian morning in May 2020, a small drone buzzed over the Pacific, likely unaware it was about to become a tiny piece of history. Off the coast near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the USS Portland—a U.S. Navy amphibious ship—shot that drone out of the sky. But it did so without a single conventional round, without a missile, without loud gunfire. Instead, an invisible beam of concentrated light did the job. That beam came from the Solid State Laser – Technology Maturation Laser Weapons System Demonstrator, a mouthful of a name that the Navy shortens to the LWSD…