Geeks vs global policy

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Over the past few years, technology and global affairs have increasingly intersected. Think about when Twitter delayed site maintenance in order to continue to carry tweets during Iran's green revolution. Or about apps like "Red Alert," created this summer to warn Israelis of incoming rocket attacks.

Well, last month, geeks collided with global policy once more. Hack North Korea, organized by the Human Rights Foundation, brought 100 engineers, coders, activists, investors, and designers together in San Francisco to answer one burning question: How can we get information into and possibly out of North Korea?

The attendees divided into eight groups judged by a panel that included North Korean defectors, refugees, and even a computer scientist who once trained the regime's cyber warfare unite. The winner – tiny portable satellite receivers so small and flat they could be hidden on the exteriors of North Korean homes. They would be smuggled in using balloons or across the Chinese border. And they would pull in English and Korean language stations from a South Korean broadcaster.

Think of it as air dropping a different kind of weapon – knowledge.