ARE WE PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S DARK SIDE?

ARE WE PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S DARK SIDE?



For centuries, the threat and selective use of brute force has steered the international balance of power. In the last couple decades, the system has increasingly accommodated economic power as a means of non-violent leverage between states. Now, says Singularity University’s Marc Goodman, we must add technology into the mix.

Technological power is not new, of course, but information technology’s exponential pace and declining cost is changing how the global game is played and who the players are. Control of technology is passing from the richest states and governments to smaller groups and individuals, and the results are both inspiring and terrifying.

As Goodman says, “The ability of one to affect many is scaling exponentially—and it’s scaling for good and it’s scaling for evil.”

Of course, Singularity Hub and Singularity University like to focus on the first half of Goodman’s equation; the potential good accelerating technology can and will do. Ordinary individuals and small groups can now build robots, code ingenious apps, send satellites into orbit, and disrupt entire industries in ways that used to take pooled resources of giant corporations or governments.

But technology is and always has been a double-edged sword. Destructive non-state actors—terrorists and criminals—and internationally weak authoritarian regimes can leverage the same tools for more nefarious purposes.

Goodman says, “Previously, there were only so many countries that could build a nuclear weapon—nuclear material was expensive, it was hard to obtain, and it was tightly controlled. So, from a weapons perspective, we did a fairly good job of containing who got access. But in terms of cyber warfare, anybody with a computer or a smart phone is capable of launching an attack.”

Indeed, James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, listed the threat of cyber attacks as the top concern in his recent Worldwide Threat Assessment Statement to Congress. Cyber attacks may be launched by other states, diffuse groups with a common agenda, or individuals acting alone. In the digital world, giant states and tiny non-state actors can be equally powerful—a David and Goliath phenomenon capable of upsetting the status quo in international relations.

Hackers can target information (the US Chamber of Commerce, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) or physical systems. The Stuxnet virus, for example, infected the control terminals of Iranian uranium-enriching centrifuges, thereby destroying them. In the near future, the Internet of Things will give everything from your car to your pacemaker an IP address and wireless internet access.

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http://singularityhub.com/2013/04/08/are-we-paying-enough-attention-to-information-technologys-dark-side/