A laser-toting drone hovers outside a third-floor window at a secure military facility.
Inside the office sits an open flatbed scanner – and a computer network already infected with malware.
The Pentagon's cybersecurity system had rendered the malware harmless.
But that's where the drone's laser – a simple one you or I could purchase online – comes in.
The laser infiltrates that scanner – and takes 3.2 seconds to transmit data that takes command of the Pentagon computer network.
What happens next – "shut down defense systems"… "launch missile" – I'll leave to your imagination.
This isn't a plot line from the latest Mission: Impossible series.
It's a recent "thought experiment" conducted by two researchers from the Cyber Security Research Center at Israel's Ben-Gurion University.
I share this scenario not to scare you but to highlight the resourcefulness of lasers.
While you may still think of lasers as "fantasy" weapons in Star Wars movies, they're used for optical communications, engraving, measuring, positioning, bar-code scanning, 3D printing, surgery, and machine vision. The Pentagon is testing them as a weapon. No semiconductor could be built without them.
And the tech, defense, medical, and industrial sectors find new uses for them every day.
Indeed, MarketsandMarkets says the laser market's value will rise by 44.4% from the 2015 base year to a value of $14.7 billion by 2022.
That's a trend… a growth curve… we want to be in on.
So today let's look at a company – a laser "pure play" – with one of this market's deepest product lineups.
I've identified five reasons why this is a tech stock you want to own – and I'll reveal all of those.
But here's the reason that matters most.
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