The NSA Is Funding Summer Camps to Teach Kids to Be Cyber Pros

On the second day of summer camp, Ashley Wilsondebriano made a kill switch. The 17-year-old high school student maneuvered a virtual blue button labeled “emergency stop” from a menu bar to nestle inside a gray tab in the middle of her screen. A tap on her laptop’s space bar, and her drone would drop from the air.

When she wasn’t sending the drone plummeting to the ground, Wilsondebriano and a partner were making it “dance” to a hit electronica track from music producer Skrillex. “When the beat dropped, we coded the drone to flash lights and move in a circle,” says Wilsondebriano. “I wanted a robot at a rave.” Her team’s laptop screen froze during the drone freestyle competition, interrupting its moves, but the judges awarded them victory anyway, for their stylish coding and creative vision.