user: Input: Cisco's John Chambers Invested And Took A Board Seat Of Airware
Cisco executive chairman John Chambers believes there’s money to be made in drones.

The networking giant’s former CEO has invested in and taken a board seat with fast-rising drone software startup Airware,

This is Chambers’ first investment and board seat since he resigned as Cisco CEO CSCO last summer as well as his first board seat position since he joined Walmart’s WMT over 15 years ago, Chambers said in an interview with Fortune.

Airware creates drone software for businesses to help the flying robots navigate to their destinations and collect and transmit information like aerial photographs to servers on the ground, where the data can be analyzed.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

The drone startup said on Thursday that it added Chambers to its board as part of the close of a $30 million funding round led by Next World Capital. Besides Chambers, venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also participated in the investment.

Airware now has $70 million in total funding.

For Chambers, drones represent an important element in the so-called Internet of things, in which devices like factory machinery and automobiles can be connected to web so the data they collect can be more easily analyzed. Both Chambers and his CEO successor Chuck Robbins have been vocal about the idea of connected devices and how the influx of data gleaned from these devices can be used to make better business decisions and improve operations.

For example, General Electric ge , one of Airware’s clients, is experimenting with drones to speed up inspection of power lines and reduce the risk of injury for its workers.

Additionally, Airware CEO Jonathan Downey said that insurance giant State Farm is now a customer. State Farm will conduct “hundreds of test flights” across the U.S. over the next several months to inspect rooftops while Airware’s drone software helps collect data for fulfilling insurance claims, said Downey.

Chambers said he’s hopeful that Airware can sell its software and drone services (the company also does consulting) to telecommunications companies along with the oil and gas businesses as it tries to expand its clientele.

Airware is not alone in trying to convince businesses that drones are more than just devices for hobbyists. The startup Skycatch, for example, sells a combination of software and drone hardware tailored for the construction industry. China-based drone maker DJI is also branching out from the consumer market to partner with a camera company on thermal imaging technology that firefighters or farmers could potentially use to take pictures that log variations in temperature.

The competition doesn’t seem to bother Chambers, however, who said that Airware’s technology can be tailored to work across different industries “as opposed to small pieces of the pie.”

For more about Cisco, watch:

But he recognizes the fact that Airware faces a competitive market and is still a young company that needs to be ready to change as the market does.

“I don’t underestimate the challenges and they will make mistakes,” Chambers said. “That’s part of the fun about being an adviser where you got to help them navigate through that.”
What was this article about?
++++++++++
It's about: And he's taking a board seat too, his first since stepping down as Cisco CEO.


Problem: This 80-year-old Agave is About to Bloom

There’s a giant agave plant in Michigan. Its stalk is fully 25 feet tall (where most agave plants fall between 15’ and 30’), it’s 80 years old, and it’s on the cusp of blooming.

As you might imagine, hardcore horticulturists are ecstatic—blooming, you might say.

“We’ve experienced a more than 50% increase in our visitors compared to the same time frame last year,” said Joe Mooney, spokesman for the University of Michigan’s Nichols Arboretum, told USA Today. “We’ll run another report when the agave is finished and my guess is that it will be even better than a 50% increase.”

Unfortunately, the plant will die after it flowers, although it will leave behind many clones of itself, and potentially thousands of seeds (some of which visitors will be able to buy).

Write a one or two sentence summary.

Summary: It blooms once in its lifetime, and it's happening now.


Q: Close Guantánamo prison, says first US commander on 12th anniversary

On the 12th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, the first commanding general of the base has said that it should be closed.

In a statement released by the advocacy organisation Human Rights First, Major General Michael Lehnert – who has spoken out on the issue before – said: “While there were compelling operational reasons to stand up Guantánamo prison early in the war [in Iraq and Afghanistan], we squandered international goodwill and lost opportunities by failing to adhere to the Geneva Conventions and to our own rule of law. Those decisions turned Guantánamo into a liability.”

Last May, in a major speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama detailed his continuing determination to close Guantánamo. Nonetheless, the base still holds 155 prisoners, of whom 76 have been cleared for release.

Lehnert continued: “The objective of terrorists is to change our behaviour and make us live in fear. By those standards our adversaries have been successful. We must reclaim our moral position.”

Guantánamo, which has been the subject of international protest since it opened, is sited on land controversially leased by the US from Cuba under a 1934 treaty.

“The Constitution does not stop at the waters’ edge,” Lehnert said. “We can defeat terrorism only if we do so in a manner that is consistent with American values. Guantánamo does not serve America’s interests. As long as it remains open, it will undermine America’s security and status as a land where human rights and the rule of law matter.”

Administrative attempts to reform Guantánamo continue. On Thursday, a government review panel that was established by an executive order from Obama cleared for release Mahmud Mujahid, a Yemeni prisoner who has been held January 2002. Mujahid, who had been accused but not charged of being a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, is now deemed not to pose any danger to the US.

In December, after Congress passed a defence bill that cleared up transfer restrictions at the base, three Uighur detainees who had been held without charge for 12 years – and had been determined to pose no threat to the US – were transferred to Slovakia. The men could not be sent back to China, as their minority is persecuted there.

Such concerns are said to affect a number of prisoners remaining in Guantánamo, although December also saw two Saudi prisoners returned to their own country. One British resident, the Saudi citizen Shaker Aamer, remains in custody at Guantánamo.

In a statement accompanying Lehnert's comments, Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First said: “The United States has a legal obligation to find lawful dispositions for all law of war detainees when the war in Afghanistan ends this year.

“The administration must vastly accelerate the administrative review boards and obtain appropriate security assurances from host nations so that those detainees cleared for release can be sent home or resettled. The clock is ticking.”

A:

assistant: Major General Michael Lehnert says detention facility has become a liability in struggle against terrorists