
The Internet Might Kill Us All - revorad
http://steveblank.com/2011/06/22/the-internet-might-kill-us-all/
======
david927
It seems the threat is more subtle, though. China wouldn't bring down America
informational infrastucture because no one wants to exchange nukes. But what
if it's a kid from Peru? It's important to remember, within all the promise of
technology: The key to the gates of heaven, is also the key to the gates of
hell.

 _Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to
our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody,
clothe everybody, give every human on earth a chance. We know now what we
could never have known before – that we now have an option for all humanity to
“make it” successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it will be
Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final
moment._

\--Buckminster Fuller, 1980 _

~~~
cabalamat
> China wouldn't bring down America informational infrastucture because no one
> wants to exchange nukes.

What if (say) Iran did it, and made it look like China. They don't care if
both China and the USA are destroyed, in fact they might see it as getting two
enemies to destroy each other.

~~~
chopsueyar
Sounds like this...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_%28TV_series%29>

------
mironathetin
OFF TOPIC (slightly)!

"...partner Marc Andreessen (the founder of Netscape and author of the first
commercial web browser on the Internet)..."

Just to be correct: The founder of Netscape was Jim Clark. He hired Marc as
first (or one of the first) employees. Marc did not write Netscape himself. It
was the effort of a large team.

Don't distort reality!

Whoever did not read Jim Clarks book about Netscape (Netscape time): drop
whats in your hand, buy it and read. You will have a good time!

------
alttab
This seems like a crazy 180 degree turn in comparison to Steve's previous 2
posts - which talked about the reasons we are in a tech bubble.

This third article starts out by saying "tech companies are expensive again"
and then goes and talks in-depth about network and communication based
warfare.

Is it me or is this not addressing the topic at all? _Very_ interesting read,
but seemingly random when compared to the rest of the series.

~~~
loumf
Ben's challenge was to name the date of the collapse of the bubble, and
suggested that without that, there was no meaning to the phrase that we're in
a bubble. Steve gave a large range (5-10 years) and changed the subject.

Ben's point was that if the bubble burst is 10 years out, then right now, the
right thing to do was to invest -- that there was still a lot of real growth
coming before over-exuberance set in, and I think that Steve is implicitly
agreeing with him.

~~~
tatsuke95
Ben's argument is a bit odd, because you can't predict the end of the bubble.

If you say 10 years, people start pulling out 9.5 years in. But, knowing that,
smarter people will pull out 9 years in, hoping to beat out the people pulling
out 9.5 years in. Then...well, you get it. Game theory. And that's how bubbles
become unraveled.

~~~
loumf
I think his point is that saying we're in a bubble should mean that the right
thing to do now is divest, because you can't precisely pick the date that it
will end. It might not be immediate -- you might want to ride the bubble a
little -- but you should be basically assuming that at any point, the over-
valued companies are going to pop, and look to getting out of them.

If the right move now is to continue to invest -- then that means that the
valuations are not bubbly.

So, 10 years to a burst is way too far out to cause you to divest right now,
if we are going to have 10 years of growth before then. Even 5 doesn't mean
we're in a bubble now, so Steve saying 5-10 years is the same as saying,
"we're not in a bubble" (according to what I think Ben means). I think Steve
understands that too -- and that's why he changes the subject.

------
ZoFreX
> Logic bombs planted on those systems will delete all the backups once
> they’re brought on-line. All of it gone. Forever.

Almost had me convinced until this line.

------
aj700
Does any company rely on the internet to run a national power grid or other
non-internet utilities? If they do, they're idiots. Use packet based control
systems, but not the internet. There are some idiots, like life support
systems using Amazon cloud.

If facebook and twitter break, it won't bring down banks, governments or
corps, it'll just bring down facebook inc. and twitter inc. This is y2k level
hysteria.

------
bh42222
Even if everything Steve speculates actually happens (and that is HUGE if) it
will be very, very, very inconvenient, super inconvenient. But nope, nothing
nearly as bad as a real war.

Imagine all your electronic savings gone... that leaves you with all your
skills, health, your physical assets, what ever IOU you and everyone else can
agree on the day after all banks information is wiped.... all hugely stressful
and super inconvenient, but nothing like getting shot or bombed and killed.

~~~
lucasjung
I agree that it's a huge IF, but the repercussions are much worse than
"inconvenience." You have to follow the scenario a few steps further to figure
out the full magnitude of things. "Civilization" is, in a sense, a massive and
highly complex life-support system. You don't really need it to live in a
small town, but the populace of a city or even a large town can't survive
without it. There's a saying, "Any city is only three days away from a riot."
Without a massive and sophisticated logistical system constantly bringing new
supplies in and waste out, food and other critical supplies will run out very
quickly, and then things get ugly fast.

After the financial system is zeroized, how do you get paid? The company you
work for has no money with which to pay you. They have no way to make money,
because none of their customers have money to pay them with. If you're not
getting paid, what's your incentive to show up to work? _Everybody_ would be
in that conundrum, so commerce would grind to a halt and cities would start to
starve. The government would order law enforcement and the military to keep
working even without pay, and they could probably force workers in key
industries like power companies to keep going to work, but they couldn't do
that for everyone. Even if you had cash to buy groceries with, the grocery
store probably wouldn't have groceries to sell to you because they would have
no money with which to buy them.

The government could magically set account balances, putting money into
everyone's pocket based on some sort of guesstimate, but that wouldn't really
work, either. Fiat money is based on trust: the assumption that if you accept
a dollar in exchange for goods, you will be able to turn around and exchange
that dollar for a comparable quantity of other goods. If the financial system
is zeroized, that trust is broken. People would rather have tangible assets
instead of money of dubious origin that has demonstrated the capacity to
literally vanish overnight. Hoarding and hyper-inflation would ensue.

The punchline of all of this is that millions of people would starve to death
in the cities within a matter of weeks. Millions more would pour out into the
countryside, looting and pillaging. Law and order would break down completely
in all but the most remote places. Remote places would probably degrade much
more gracefully to lower levels of technology, and bounce back quickly as well
after the dust settled, but the cities and suburbs would literally be wiped
out. An event like this would probably result in a death toll comparable to a
widespread nuclear strike, and would equally destroy the nation as a
functioning political and social entity.

~~~
nitrogen
_Millions more would pour out into the countryside, looting and pillaging._

While we're on the subject of apocalyptic scenarios, it's important to
remember that there is an abundance of guns in the countryside, so any of us
"city folk" hoping to loot some tasty country cooking are in for a different
sort of treat.

 _An event like this would probably result in a death toll comparable to a
widespread nuclear strike, and would equally destroy the nation as a
functioning political and social entity._

I'd like to think that a new system of logistics would evolve very quickly
after a total financial disaster, so long as the food supplies didn't get so
low that peoples' low blood sugar diminishes their ability to control their
anger.

~~~
lucasjung
> _While we're on the subject of apocalyptic scenarios, it's important to
> remember that there is an abundance of guns in the countryside, so any of us
> "city folk" hoping to loot some tasty country cooking are in for a different
> sort of treat._

While the ratio of guns/people is much higher in the countryside, the absolute
number of guns in a big city is orders of magnitude higher than the absolute
number of guns in any rural county. Even if there were no guns in the city, a
mob of desparate people _will_ charge a smaller number of better-armed people
if starvation is the only other alternative. Also, rural populations are, by
definition, spread out, making it easy for large mobs of looters to pick them
off one homestead at a time. Those well-armed country folk aren't going to
fare so well unless they are _really_ far from the nearest big city.

> _I'd like to think that a new system of logistics would evolve very quickly
> after a total financial disaster, so long as the food supplies didn't get so
> low that peoples' low blood sugar diminishes their ability to control their
> anger._

I'd like to think so, too. In areas with lower population density, it will
probably work out that way, in large measure because it is possible in a small
enough community to know almost everyone, making trust and barter a lot
easier. In cities, where trade relies on cash because there are too many
strangers, and where the logistical system is much more complex, I don't think
it's likely for a viable alternative to evolve quickly enough to prevent mass
starvation and the accompanying violence.

------
JakeSc
[My comment on the blog post follows.]

Great post.

Dug is absolutely right in saying that our present difficulties in computer
security lie not with brute-force flooding of pipes (i.e., DDoS), but rather
with targeted, strategic attacks on smaller subsets of systems (think Stux).

However, I would disagree with the statement “users are the new target”.
Indeed, it is far easier to gain access to resources by attacking the users
who control those resources. But I think it is far more damaging (and
therefore lucrative to the adversaries) to attack infrastructure systems on a
wide-scale. People may be the initial entry point of the attack, but I still
think the greater target is technology behind our infrastructure. Steve, you
have addressed the very important point that much of our infrastructure
(economic, transportation, military, …) is based on on solid systems operating
securely and reliably. Let us call these critical systems. These are the ones
that are vulnerable to crippling cyberattacks.

I posit that our infrastructure should not be based on these systems at all.

Any critical system should have no connection to the Internet. In fact, it
should have no _concept_ of the Internet. One might go so far as to say that
any critical system should have no I/O with the rest of the world. (Recall
that Stuxnet was thought to be propagated initially by USB.) This would help
ensure that infrastructure-crippling cyberattacks do not propagate. Though
preventing a system from communicating with the outside world will drastically
reduce its value in controlling our infrastructure. This is the unfortunate
nature of the security-versus-usability problem.

How do we secure ourselves? Let us hope that we will simply enjoy a “new
spring”.

------
breck
> In the 21st century, authoritarian governments still fear their own people
> talking to each other and asking questions.

I loved this quote. Would "irony" define this construct or is there a more
specific term that would apply here?

~~~
grannyg00se
The word 'irony' is very much overused. No, it would not apply here. Nor would
tragedy, although I'd like to use that one here.

I'd suggest the word pathetic. Although a bit extreme, I do find our progress
to be pathetic at times. We are still barbarians.

------
tobylane
It's an argument for internet-offline utilities. Didn't Stuxnet prove that's
not good enough? Windows outside, linux controlling computer, and custom
(Siemens, etc) utility machine controllers, all unable to talk to each other,
including USBs - then we might be safe.

------
euroclydon
The Internet is used to control the military's: "logistics to command and
control systems, weapons systems and targeting systems"

I know Steve read all the top secret manuals when he worked for a military
contractor, but is this true? Specifically the part about weapons systems?
Doesn't the military have a proprietary satellite communication system for
that stuff?

~~~
wladimir
Probably. I think part of his point is that these days it's very hard to have
networks completely isolated from the internet. If there is only one host
connected to both the internet (or a network that connects to it) and that
proprietary network, it can act as gateway when compromised and unleash
mayhem.

------
localhost3000
Didn't they make a movie about this starring Bruce Willis?

~~~
pilom
The difference is that in the movie, it is a single bad guy (well, a small
team of bad guys anyway). The story is different when it is a country
orchestrating the attacks. Do we launch nukes in retaliation? Do they follow
up their cyper attack with a nuclear attack? Or even just a coup? I'm a lot
less worried about loosing all my money to some crook than I am to the US
being overthrown (even if the government is just full of crooks)

~~~
nitrogen
_I'm a lot less worried about loosing all my money to some crook than I am to
the US being overthrown_

I'm a lot more worried about the US overreacting to a cyber attack, or
reacting to a forged country of origin. That seems much more likely than
overthrow of the government. The day the US government said that cyberattacks
could be considered an act of war, I'm sure there were numerous smaller
countries and non-state actors scheming ways to make it look like Russia
and/or China wiped out the US financial, government, military, and SCADA
computer systems, triggering a physical war. It's kind of like the supposed
automated USSR doomsday retaliation scenario, except anyone can pull the
trigger.

------
CulturalNgineer
RE "The Internet Might Kill Us All"

Good read, good points, reasonable possibilities... but a bit hyperbolic.

Looking on the bright side...

Scenarios depicted could end in massive death and destruction...

But wouldn't kill us all.

Not much consolation, but at least leaves some hope for a later and better
iteration...

Though it might take another few thousand years to get back to facing the
problem again.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The killing comes from the disruption of the food supply that occurs when
Internet logistics fail.

However, I'm more worried about an EMP attack than a devastating Internet
attack. A couple of well-placed EMPs could take the US back to the Victorian
period very quickly. _One Second After_ is a great read on the subject.

~~~
bh42222
_The killing comes from the disruption of the food supply that occurs when
Internet logistics fail._

Really? You can't imagine that people would fall back on their word and paper?
And that after a huge shock we would shake it off and get back to work?

Imagine a trucker. All the "logistics" went poof on Monday, it's Wednesday.
Imagine the trucker decided to drive anyway, stops at a gas station he
frequents a lot, him and the manager agree on a handshake and he fills up, and
truck on. Makes his delivery, the local store clerks are still working despite
now knowing how or if they'd get paid and for how many hours. Imagine that
despite the huge confusion and uncertainty and everything taking 100 times
longer, life still goes on. Can you imagine that?

Or alternatively, OMG the internet's down, everybody starve to death!

~~~
unoti
Or perhaps the trucker, the gas station attendant, or both get nabbed by
crazed mobs of people wanting to loot the contents of the truck and the gas
station. Watch some videos of, say, the LA Riots. Here's a video of truck
driver Reginald Denny getting beat by a mob.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc_SgpyJWRY> During the LA Riots there was a
lot less reason for people to loot and go crazy than there would be in a food
and money disruption situation. I admire your confidence in believing in the
best in people, but personally I'm skeptical about that.

~~~
chopsueyar
You do know the LA riots were not caused by lack of internet service, right?

Rodney King was beaten by LAPD officers and it was videotaped and the officers
were acquitted.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King>

If anything, riots would be caused by people reading and understanding this
article:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-
housewive...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-
of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411)

------
grimatongueworm
Let the cloning of Mark Russinovich begin in earnest!

------
sliverstorm
You know, we have every indication a lot of companies and individuals are
vulnerable, but the NSA seems to be pretty on top of things, and the closest
thing to a sensitive gov't organization being compromised that I remember
recently is the defacing of the CIA website- and heavens, that's just a plain
old website.

------
kahawe
> _Logic bombs planted on those systems will delete all the backups once
> they’re brought on-line. All of it gone. Forever._

I am wondering how this is going to work, considering most financial
institutions have cold-standby back up systems, often off-site or in another
country and you cannot just overwrite backups like that.

This sounds way too much like SciFi FUD bla-bla and anyone using "logic bomb"
as an argument is automatically suspicious. One of the beauties of the digital
world is that given sufficient precautions, you can wipe all financial data as
often as you like, you can always get it back from backups and those messages
don't just exist at one point-of-failure but at a lot of nodes, very likely
around the world. Data that took a whole department years to gather can be
erased, transferred and made available again in a matter of seconds.

Banks have existed LONG before the interwebs and have only started to use
network infrastructure during the last maybe 20 or so years - and though very
limited, they would still be able to function without it by simply switching
back to pen and paper like they did 40 years ago.

Contrast this to blowing up major infrastructure nodes like bridges, airports
etc. which literally took years to build.

> _At the same time, all cloud-based assets, all companies applications and
> customer data will be attacked and deleted. All of it gone. Forever._

It will be a grievous day... without petabytes of porn readily accessible at
the click of my mouse, without news on LuLzSec and without the ground-noise of
twitter and facebook updates about pets, lunch or bowl movements but I daresay
I will survive that, thank you very much.

And companies storing that kind of critical information only in "the cloud"?
They deserve to be gone. Forever.

~~~
loumf
Imagine applying STUXNET style cracking to this -- they would not explode
"logic bombs" immediately. Instead you might have months or years of
penetration into the live systems, the backups, the recovery systems, etc.

Maybe they figure out a way to affect the paper systems too -- FAX machine
infiltration, etc.

He's positing professional warfare and extreme secrecy of results -- not the
lulz style hacks.

~~~
kahawe
One more thing about this... you can use about the same kind of explosives on
buildings and bridges just varying amounts and methods of application.

Whereas screwing over the whole banking system of north USA like that requires
the kind of cracking you described but against maybe a few hundred different
targets, likely all running different systems and posing different challenges
- not un-do-able - but ultimately to not that great avail. So you have a lot
of effort actually pulling the attack off to even make a dent and then it is
probably going to be not much more than a scary headline in the newspaper.

Banks and governments are not the internet or in the internet. They are
offering their services ALSO over the internet but not exclusively. And the
really important backups need to be kept for years and years, off site. I
doubt it is as easy and efficient to launch "cyber war" on the USA and then
just "cyber nuke them back to the stone age" which is something this article
subtly suggests.

Also, how many power plants, reactors, flood gates and traffic systems are
controllable over the internet like that? At least here in Europe I have
honestly no idea but strongly doubt they work like that.

~~~
groby_b
Of course, you could equally well just sow doubt with a few precise surgical
strikes. If random customers lose all their money often enough, the rest of
the customers will withdraw theirs to have it in physical assets.

Which is enough to cause tremendous damage. And a way more likely scenario.

~~~
kahawe
My point was: you cannot simply just like that loose money without any trace
of what happened... it's not like you can just "DELETE FROM accounts" and it
is totally un-tracably gone.

I would trust more in the people who design our SWIFT and other transaction
systems.

~~~
groby_b
I wouldn't. After seeing such tremendous security accumen from CitiGroup, I
wonder how you can blindly trust.

But the larger point is, even if you can mostly undo the damage, you have a
much harder time restoring trust. The money doesn't need to be lost. If you
create enough of a panic to trigger a run on banks, you've achieved your goal,
too.

------
swileran
Steve Blank is the ultimate tech orator, telling the story from all angles no
matter the topic. If you read the book Super Sad True Love Story it does not
discuss a hacker war, but it does discuss a world where nothing is
accomplished offline. I don't see any country building a security
infrastructure that can protect it's citizens from such attacks.

