Dear Editor,
My jaw dropped three times reading “Security Flaws” page A17
in the Washington Post this weekend.
First, when I read the severity of the cyber security flaws
it highlighted (confirming what I’ve thought about “cyber security” being an
oxymoron). Second, when I noted this profound news was relegated to
page A17. Nearly every aspect of our health, freedom and lives (banking,
transportation, power, food, water, health care, emergency response, voting…)
is now extremely dependent on cyber technology and profoundly vulnerable.
Third, when I went to find the article on the Post web page to share with
others…I realized there is no ‘dropdown’ column for ‘science’, ‘technology’, or
‘engineering’.
I used to tour the country doing campus and civic group
presentations regarding a growing list of national security threats we face
(some inevitable, most preventable) and the increasingly urgent need for
government effectiveness to prepare for, prevent, or recover from
them. My first PowerPoint slide had three lines. The first
was a growth curve arching increasingly upward representing the exponential
growth in the power of dual-use technology (bio, cyber, nano, robotics, even
conventional) over time. The second was a linear straight line
rising diagonally upward representing our brains capacity to absorb information
and understand the world around us (our minds delusional capacity to ‘believe
anything’ was on the next PowerPoint slide). The third line represented
our Government’s capacity for change. It was essentially a flat line
–little to no change over time (I did add a blip to that line in presentations
done after Sept. 11, 2001). I stopped doing these presentations a few
years after my last professional job advocating for effective world government
to address these global threats (something that should be even more
self-evident given the growing global chaos since then). What is most
disturbing to me now is that since then that flat line has been heading
downward. If I were doing these presentations today I’d add a 4th
line showing a similar decline in public trust in the media, churches,
corporations and the government.
How the Post, with its new owner (and our new President,
both products of advances in cyber technology) does not have a prime website
‘drop down’ for this influential category of technology is a surprise.
If I ever do more presentations on national security threats
I’ll have to modify my initial PowerPoint slide by adding two more lines. The forth line would represent the fourth
estate (including the Post) regarding how we get our news. It will
slant gradually downward as technology transforms the quantity, quality, and
source of that news. The fifth line would
basically parallel the third and fourth lines.
Slanting down over time representing the public’s loss in trust that ‘we
the people’ have in both the news and our government’s ability to respond change.
Things change. Can
we? Can we do it fast enough and in the
right direction? Our founding fathers
gave us the basic rules for achieving a ‘more perfect union”. They offered ‘Self-Evident” “Truths” they
failed to follow themselves in writing our flawed Constitution. At what point will we make a change, a transformational
change/coarse correction, before Artificial Intelligence makes it for us, or we
destroy our own capacity for change via ignorance, apathy and exhaustion? What we need are people who swear an oath to
the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”. Not to a piece of paper (the Constitution) or
a single book (Bible, Tora, Quran…). If we fail to combine the power of technology
with the power of the human spirit to ensure “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness” as well as “justice for all” we may not deserve this profound gift
we have been given on this third planet from the Sun.
2018 promises to be worse than 2017. The hope we have that things will change for
the better without an unprecedented united effort if folly. Exactly 70 years ago after the horrors of
World War II the world was given a document as profound as our Declaration of
Independence. The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights was offered as a foundation for future peace, security and
freedom for all. Witnessing a new
weapon with the capacity to vaporize a hundred thousand people in a flash, an
attempted genocide, and catastrophic global war should have convinced those at
the time to offer more than just a list of ideal goals. They should have provided us with an ideal global
system of governing the threats we face. Threats that would only grow with time and
advances in new technologies.
Instead the key policy makers of the winners WWII gave ‘we
the people of the world’ a virtually powerless global structure called the UN. They ensured that the global paradigm of “national
sovereignty” created over 400 years ago as a “peace treaty” would become “international
law”. They didn’t seem to consider the fact that the
so called Treaty of Westphalia still allowed wars within and between states,
and still permitted (helped create) two World Wars in less than 40 years. It
should come as no surprise that “international law” in reality is no law at all
other than the law of the jungle.
Within nations, governments still do as they please. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation remind
us we can only condemn in words, resolutions, and unenforceable treaties.
Considering relations between governments, nations with
nuclear weapons can do as they please to other nations without them. Or dictate to other nations suspected of having
them or trying to acquire them. Occasionally, governments looking out for themselves
still have the freedom to use their nuclear weapons against another nation they
feel threaten by. Like a “Stand
your Ground” law that now exists in some US states. Yes. You might end up murdering some
individual you perceived as a threat to you, but that loss of their potentially
innocent life was acceptable to ensure your right to self-protection.
So international law isn’t much more than bunch of good
ideas and promises with zero enforcement capacity other than war itself, or sanctions
which can be more deadly than war or sometimes lead to war.
And, if those
nations had nuclear weapons, the leaders of those nations could damn near do
anything they wanted to other nations without ever being held personally accountable.
No comments:
Post a Comment