Yesterday, there was a little bit of a global "event" as an update from a cybersecurity company caused windows systems throughout the world to crash into the dreaded bluescreen of death. This third-party installation caused chaos as all manner of companies had to shutdown their systems, with banks, airlines and hospitals, and just about every other type of industry unable to operate.
Many are saying that it is like a test-run of a global hack.
While this might be true, I tend to think that what it actually does is highlight the dangers of centralization, monopolization, and widespread reliance on single-source systems, like Microsoft, to cater to all of our needs. One of the problems with being too successful in business, is similar to the problems of inbreeding amongst humans, where the more homogenous the parental DNA is, the more risks, or more weaknesses in the offspring.
We might not think about this too much, but of course it should be pretty obvious that when a business is going to be profit driven, savings will be made through sharing assets. Not only this, because we are seeking increasing convenience and ease of use, these corporations are going to of course share code across their networks, and the larger ones will demand the smaller providers follow suit. This means that all of the pathways are linked and similar, which means that if the right kind of vector is found, it will affect all environments.
The other day, the friend we stayed with was saying how convenient it is that everyone in his family is on Apple products, because it means that everything syncs up easily. This means that the apps are generally better, because they are designed for a far narrower ecosystem of technology, so they are smoother, more stable and less buggy across devices, as the infrastructure they are built for is standardized to the Apple tech, meaning far less coding conflicts. This also makes it cheaper to design and test new software for the providers.
Looking at this from a risk point though, it also means that if there is one bug, it is likely that all devices in the household will be similarly affected, which could leave the entire household almost literally, in the dark. And, while not as acute, this is kind of what happens at the global level, as there is continual homogenization of tech to follow a narrowing line of code. Even a lot of the new AI companies are leveraging a small (but growing) group of AI models, which means that they are all prone to the deficiencies. All most are really doing is pointing the same tool at a different problem.
And the problem with decreasing the source we draw from, is that increases the risks of calamity and the impact it makes when it inevitably happens. As I was saying to my friends who visited last night in regards to the Crowdstrike outage, is that what it highlights is that there is no such thing as real security. Eventually, everything that is safe, becomes unsafe in some way. The most secure way to approach security is of course, to recognize that it doesn't exist, so it is all about risk mitigation. Centralization stores resources in the same spot, so a potential fire wipes it all out - decentralization stores it like a squirrel, where there might be a lot of wastage through lost nuts, but there are always nuts spread out in many locations to draw upon in need.
One of the friends brought up that we are due a large "Carrington Event" with the last being in 1859. It is a large geomagnetic storm and over a hundred and fifty years ago, it set telegraph stations alight. Obviously at that time in history, there wasn't a lot of electronics about, but if it were to happen again, what happens to all that we rely on when those transformers fry in the radiation? Supposedly, Finland is one of the most prepared for it in terms of the tech in the EU, as a lot of the transformers have extra shielding, but it matters little if most of the world burns.
This is one of the problems with globalization, because what it ends up doing is homogenizing pretty much everything we find important. Because information is now so available and shareable, news and trends sweep across the globe in moments with very low cost in distribution or uptake, and it affects our individual thinking and our localized and regional cultures, bringing them more in line with others. Social media doesn't connect people, it conditions us to be more alike to others in the groups of our choice, creating increasingly large buckets to target with advertising and messaging.
It is far more convenient and profitable for corporations that we think the same, because it allows them to reduce their offerings and slowly consolidate and squeeze out competition, which allows them to consolidate their own business more, creating increased risks of these kinds of events, and the impacts of hacks. For instance, there was a hack in Australia this year where 13 million people's personal data was exposed, which is half of the entire population of the country.
Centralization creates a big and valuable target to attack.
Whatever it is, at some point we are going to learn a very costly lesson in risk management as we will discover that large parts of our existence are very vulnerable. It might be a poorly executed update to a piece of software or a cyberattack. Or it could be a hack of some government agency. But, it could also be something like the corona virus, where out of fear, billions of people were given the same set of drugs without knowing the long-term affects of them. We have no idea if the next virus will leverage something in Pfizer, or Moderna or the handful of others and target those who were vaccinated specifically. And, we won't know any of this until it happens, whether that be next week or in a decade from now.
It is impossible to tell.
Diversity is the way mother nature copes with risk, by creating a large range of organisms with the goal to survive, without caring which ones survive, or for how long. Nothing can kill nature, because nature is eternally patient and absolutely resilient, because it has "unknowingly" accepted that change is the only thing guaranteed, so everything will change.
The more we homogenize, the more we identify with what we are and what we have created, and the more we will fight for it to stay the same, because it is convenient for us to do so.
It is also more profitable.
Until it isn't.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
