SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — “Move fast and break things,” a high-tech mantra popularized 20 years ago by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, should be a rallying cry for game-changing innovation. Now it seems more like an elegy for a society resting on a digital foundation too fragile to withstand a flawed software program that was supposed to help protect computers — not crash them.
The fusion of world technology caused by a faulty update installed earlier this month on computers running on Microsoft’s dominant Windows software from Cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike it was so serious that some businesses were affected such as Delta Air Lines they were still recovered by him days later.
It’s a revealing moment — one that illustrates the digital pitfalls in a culture that takes the magic of technology for granted until it implodes into a horror show that exposes our ignorance and vulnerability.
“We’re totally dependent on systems that we don’t even know exist until they break,” said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley preacher and historian. “We’ve become a bit like Blanche DuBois in that scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” where she says, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” “
“Gum and shoelaces” and the dangers of a connected world
Dependence—and extreme vulnerability—begins with the interconnections that link our computers, phones, and other devices. It usually makes life easier and more convenient, but it also means that outages can have wider ripple effects, whether caused by a mistake like the one made by CrowdStrike or by the malicious intent of a hacker.
“It might be time to look at how the internet works and then ask why the internet works that way. Because there’s a lot of gum and shoelaces that hold things together,” said Gregory Falco, an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University. .
The risks are amplified by the tighter control of a corporate coterie popularly known as “Big Tech”: Microsoft, whose software runs most of the world’s computers; Apple and Google, whose software powers nearly every smartphone in the world; Amazon, which oversees. data centers responsible for keeping websites running (another key service also provided by Microsoft and Google, in addition to their e-commerce bazaar and Meta Platforms, the social network center that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) ;
It’s a highly concentrated empire with a few corridors open to a network of smaller companies like CrowdStrike — a company with $3 billion in annual revenue, a fraction of the nearly $250 billion in annual sales that Microsoft churns out. they tend to place a higher priority on the pursuit of profit than a commitment to quality, said Isak Nti Asar, co-director of the cybersecurity and global policy program at Indiana University.
“We’ve built a culture of innovation, a system that says, ‘Get the technology into people’s hands as quickly as possible and then fix it when you find out you have a problem,'” said Nti Asar. “We have to go slower and demanding better technology instead of giving ourselves over to these feudal lords.”
How the hell did we get here?
But is Big Tech to blame for this situation? Or is it 21st century society that has allowed us to get to this point – consumers eagerly buying their next shiny gadgets while happily posting photos online, and seemingly out-of-touch lawmakers elected to impose safeguards?
“Everybody wants to point the blame somewhere else,” said Saffo, “but I want to say it’s better to start looking in the mirror.”
If our digital evolution seems to be headed in the wrong direction, should we change course? Or it is even possible at a point where some credit card companies charge their customers a fee if they prefer to have their monthly billing systems sent to them through a US Postal Service that has become known as “snail mail” why does it move so slowly?
Staying in a different era worked well for Southwest Airlines during the CrowdStrike snafu because its system still runs on Windows software from the 1990s. It’s such an old technology that Southwest doesn’t rely on CrowdStrike for security . This sword has another, less attractive edge, however: behaving like a Luddite in the Southwest. during the 2022 holiday travel season when thousands of its flights were canceled because its technology was unable to correctly adjust crew schedules.
But it is becoming increasingly unsustainable to return to the early analog and digital era of 30 or 40 years ago, when more tasks were done manually and more records were processed on pen and paper. However, the technology seems destined to become even more pervasive now that artificial intelligence appears poised to automate more tasks, including potentially writing code for software updates that will be checked by a computer — which will be overseen by a other computer to make sure it is not. malfunction.
That doesn’t mean individual households can’t fall back on some of their old tricks as a backup for when technology falters, said Matt Mittelsteadt, a researcher for the Mercatus Center, a research institution at the University George Mason. “There’s this creeping awareness that some of the things we once scoffed at, like putting a password on a Post-It note, isn’t necessarily the worst idea.”
At this point, experts believe that the government and the private sector need to spend more time mapping the digital ecosystem to better understand the weaknesses in the system. Otherwise, society as a whole can find itself wandering through a minefield of digital lands – while blindfolded. Says Mittelsteadt: “We have no intelligence about the environment in which we operate now, except that there is a mass of time bombs.
