On Monday, Google rolled out three new initiatives to ensure the openness of the Internet and access to the service -- even in the face of government crackdowns on the web.

One of those tools is a proxy plug-in -- creatively titled uProxy -- that uses a peer-to-peer system to create secure Internet connections. By linking a user in, say, China with her trusted friend in the United States, the browser plug-in allows the user in China to access her American friend's Internet via an encrypted connection that should, in theory, allow her to bypass the Great Firewall.

Another tool, Project Shield, promises to protect human rights organizations and NGOs from so-called DDoS attacks, which take down a website by directing a flood of traffic toward it and overwhelming it or rendering it unusable. DDoS attacks have become the preferred method for knocking out a pesky, unwanted site, and while big sites like Google are able to protect themselves from such attacks, independent groups, including media organizations and election monitors, frequently find themselves unable to fight back when targeted. "If you think about all of the organizations around the world that use a website as their modern-day office -- NGOs, businesses, governments -- it's not OK to have this many digital office raids shutting them down," Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, told Time in an interview.

Cool. But what can Churchill teach us about lasers, cyborgs, and drones?