Cybersecurity

When I have designed wargames around a NATO-Russia conflict, I often left out cyberattacks for a simple reason: it was just too complicated. Too many unknowns make an accurate simulation impossible. The number of targets, scale of the attack, damage done, how the attack could be carried out and its ramifications were beyond calculation for a mere simulation on the scale I was running using just consumer-based computer technology. Honestly, nuclear war seemed easier to think about, and that says a lot. But that should give us pause. Our world is basically a giant computer now, with cloud-based networks controlling virtually every aspect of our lives, from sewage and water treatment plants, to our electrical grid, to our smart homes, and on and on we go.

We learned about journalists this past weekend. Specifically, we learned about tech journalists who aren’t particularly interested reporting or analyzing tech as much as they are committed to harvesting click revenue from a young audience engaged with tech and social media platforms. They proved, in other words, that their industry is broken beyond repair.You probably heard that President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was looking at banning the social media video app TikTok on Friday. TikTok has come under scrutiny in the past months over security concerns and its parent company ByteDance’s connections to China. It’s understood to be hacking and using data collected from its users’ phones.