Overshadowed by the news coverage of the Republican Convention this past week, if you weren’t traveling, chances are you might not have noticed. We went through a digital pandemic. It took only a few days, but in digital time, that’s an eternity.

CrowdStrike is a cyber security company with customers in all reaches of the industry, in all countries of the world, over 29,000 of them. Microsoft is one of their customers. Some hapless programmer made a mistake in their Windows kernel software which caused Microsoft servers to come up with the famous “blue screen of death” that most users of Windows computers have experienced from time to time, particularly when our computers were getting “sick.”

Critical systems of all types went down and didn’t come up again when they rebooted. It affected airlines (hence my travel comment), emergency call centers, 911-systems, emergency services, hospitals, banks, and any other system that relies on Microsoft servers. It happened all over the world. Once they figured out the problem, it was solved quickly, the patch was updated and propagated, but it took a couple of days before the ripple effects were ironed out. Airplanes can’t just take off instantly and delayed passengers spending nights marooned in strange cities need to be sent on their way before things can get back to normal.

Ok, you might say, what’s the big deal. Another computer glitch, right?

I started my career as a firmware engineer writing kernel level code in assembly language, so I know a thing or two about machine control and operating system software. While I am not privy to the details of this particular bug, I have to tell you that it gave me pause. I am very concerned.

We just demonstrated to the hackers of the world where we’re most vulnerable. I can guarantee you that hacking shops in China, Russia and Iran, and who knows what other countries, have also learned from this event, and they are busy working on the next digital pandemic. The digital arms race just went up a notch. We know how high the stakes are, and we also know how vulnerable our entire way of life is.

I was on a trip in New York when this happened. I had less than $100 of cash in my pocket. I was dependent on airlines flying to get back home. If the phone systems are down, credit cards don’t work. If the credit card processing networks are down, credit cards don’t work. All my money is in banks. If the banking systems don’t come up, I have no access to my money and I will be insolvent within the first day a bill comes due. If the banking system does not work, the ATMs don’t work, and I can get no more cash. There isn’t enough cash in circulation anymore for anyone to shop for groceries. Within days we are reduced to bartering, but only if we have something of value to give, something to eat. Who has that?

If a rogue state figures out a way to wipe out the kernels of our computers and networks for more than a few days, society could collapse very quickly.
It is not that time yet but give it another five or ten years. Let’s say we have an artificial intelligence that went rogue. If it decided to take control of the operating systems of our machines, there would be no way for us to get ahead of them. For all the reasons I just listed above, our entire way of life has become dependent on global networks that need to work, and thousands of systems must interact for us to – put simply – eat. That means we can’t just turn the machines off. We need to keep them running to eat. And the artificial intelligence has us by the proverbial balls.

While this is going on, the leaders of our nation are preoccupied with banning books, promoting religion, restricting reproductive rights, and demonizing immigrants. Nero is fiddling while Rome burns.

Trust me, this little global digital pandemic that many of you might not even have noticed, has me frightened.

I don’t know what the solution is.