Looming Threats Require Our Full Attention

I joined the other patients in the clinic waiting room who were half-listening for their names to be called while staring at their smartphones.

A nurse could be heard complaining that she was rebooting her computer because she couldn’t log in to their main program. If you’ve ever worked in IT, you take note of such things.

When my appointment time had arrived and passed, I started to get concerned. Usually, a nurse brings you to a room at your appointed time where you then wait for the doctor. Sort of like airlines getting better on-time stats by loading everyone on the plane quickly where you then sit and wait.

When I did get called, the nurse confirmed that their system was down. Staff are supposed to be able to view patient data from the computer even if they can’t update it. But that didn’t work either. She couldn’t do much more than take my blood pressure.

My doctor couldn’t do much either. He had to ask me for my list of meds. I had a list with me since I’ve learned to come prepared for doctor visits. But I never thought I’d need it because the system was down.

We then got into a discussion of the weak links to the important data we rely on. Today, there is often no local data. It is all magically stored somewhere where we don’t have to worry about it. Until we can’t get to it.

Take a Memo

There wasn’t even a pad of paper to write on. He wrote notes to himself on the back of his business card. On another card he wrote orders for me to take to the lab where they told me they can’t do anything without an order. I handed over the business card and they said they’d figure something out. And just as they did, the system came back up. I sensed a great sigh of relief in the whole building.

That same day the AT&T cellular network had a major outage. In a separate incident, a service used to verify insurance eligibility for prescriptions was hacked. That might be why a new med of mine was delayed for two days.

So, what is going on? Is everything being hacked? There are so many bad actors out there now, it’s easy to assume it’s always them. How much is just propaganda?

According to Stanford University, there are many categories of human-driven catastrophic risks that could cause the collapse of human civilization. The main ones are nuclear war, bioterrorism and pandemics, misuse of artificial intelligence, and climate change.

Sometimes it’s just a simple interruption like a power outage. Well, we have them often enough. But what if large power grids were suddenly shut down and power was not restored? That could certainly send your day sideways. Power runs everything, including the internet and basically all communications.

Russian is supposedly designing space weapons, North Korea has launched a spy satellite, and China and Russia are developing hypersonic (super fast) weapons. Add this to the tensions surrounding the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Data Terrorism

Then these and other countries constantly try various forms of terrorism, hacking into computer systems to copy data they can sell such as banking and identification records, military and business plans. Hackers often lock up data until a ransom is paid. Your new car may know more about you than you do and is sharing that data. Is it any wonder we get nervous when an unidentified balloon flies over the country?

Remember, too, that this is America where there are more guns than people. You could get shot just going about your business. The chances of getting killed by gunfire is much higher here than in any other high-income country.

Nuclear war was the big scare when I was a kid. It still is. My folks didn’t talk about it much mainly because they didn’t want to scare us and they couldn’t do much about it other than pray and vote. We kids were more terrified by sonic booms and UFOs. Eventually, concerns about anything nuclear switched to the storage casks at our nearby nuclear power plant.

If that’s not enough to worry about, note what the universe itself can do to us. Solar flares can mess up our satellites and the power grid. We could get hit by an asteroid or gamma rays, each of which could lead to annihilation. There’s also climate change which is already affecting our weather. Hopefully we can do something about it before it’s too late.

My doctor said he’s concerned about his retirement funds disappearing. I replied that I’m spending mine before that happens. Maybe that’s why our economy is doing so well, with everyone buying things while they can.

There are a lot of reasons to worry about the dangers around us, especially in a chaotic election year. The fast development of new technology seems to be a common driver of our consternation. It evolves much faster than we can keep up with it. And the bad actors know this.

Humans are wired to worry and we shouldn’t want it any other way because it forces us to pay attention. That’s what makes life interesting and keeps us focused. We’ll muddle our way through somehow. We always have.

Endeavor to persevere.