Get Ready for More Havoc
· The Atlantic
Call me Dumb Nostradamus.
Visit milkshakeslot.online for more information.
Two days ago, I was on my friend Pablo Torre’s podcast to discuss some of my recent reporting on artificial intelligence. A lot of accomplished cybersecurity people I’ve spoken with are convinced that the combination of rapidly advancing AI systems, the diffusion of those systems via open-source models, and the rickety state of the world’s software will lead to something like rolling waves of chaos. Paraphrasing those experts, I told Pablo, “There’s going to be stuff that doesn’t work that disrupts your daily lives—and that’s the best you can hope for.”
That I learned all domestic flights in the United States were being grounded minutes after my own flight this evening landed—safely, and with the country’s chillest passengers and Delta crew—just goes to show that predicting chaos and being prepared for it are two very different skills.
To be clear, I have no idea what caused this. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed a communications issue for interfering with air traffic control. It could be a classic software-upgrade face-palm; the extremely rare ground stop coincided with the FAA’s recent rollout of SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routes and Trajectories), an $875 million AI-enhanced air-traffic-management system. The system’s maker, Air Space Intelligence, denies that its technology was at fault. Of course, the stop also coincided with yesterday’s Microsoft Outlook outage. That’s a lot of cyber smoke in two days.
Even if today has a boring explanation, the experts I’ve been talking with are pretty sure that plenty of days like this are coming, for two main reasons.
[Ian Bogost: Airport chaos began long before the ground stop]
First, anyone can be a bad guy now. Switching off a country’s power grid has technically been possible for a long time. What stopped anyone was the logic that kept the Cold War cold. The only people capable of that kind of chaos were governments, and governments know that turning off another country’s lights is exactly the sort of thing that gets answered with missiles. Deterrence works on parties who have something to lose and an address where you can send a reply. The trouble with AI (um, one of the troubles) is that it may hand state-grade capability to people who have neither.
You can’t deter a vandal. You don’t know who he is, and he doesn’t care, and he may currently be eating cereal in a gaming chair. The kids who used to grab a bat and swing at mailboxes can now grab some compute and turn off a town’s refrigerators—not for money or a cause, but because why not? Historically, that’s been the motive behind a great deal of human mischief.
Second, our best defense against this kind of chaos is amputation. None of the security people I’ve talked with has predicted an apocalypse. But they’re pretty convinced that the next 18 months are going to be a hassle, with regular disruptions to services that we rely on. That’s because when cyber defenders find a hole they can’t patch fast enough, the rational move is to amputate: Switch the system off and wait. Big institutions already do this, more quietly and more often than you’d think. Whatever caused today’s ground stop, halting every departure in the country “for reasons of safety” until someone works out what’s going on isn’t a sign that the system is failing. More and more, it is the system. I’ve just watched it from 22C.
You can do some things to protect yourself, but they fall into the realm of flossing: Install the update when your phone nags you, use passkeys instead of text-message codes, keep a little cash and water around. There’s some safety in numbers. Gmail and your giant bank are obvious targets, but they also employ armies of very serious, very well-paid people whose whole job is looking for trouble. And if they go down, hey, we’ll all have problems big enough that the world reading your love letters and poring over your credit-card statement will be the least of them.
The disorientation will be harder to adjust to. Most of us have been privileged to live in a world of peace, prosperity, and, above all, stability. We’ve gone to bed without having to wonder whether the traffic lights will work tomorrow. Now, if my sources are correct, we should plan to wake up in Software Beirut, where nothing is broken all the time, but anything might break at any time, and the main skill you need is not being surprised.