Who Will Fix a Broken Internet Landscape Before It’s Too Late?

“Despite the enormous improvements that technology has contributed to the human condition, if we do not choose to fix the way the Internet works, there remains the potential for a digital Pearl Harbor-type event.”

A blizzard of cyberattacks over the last several years has given ordinary people reason to be concerned about the online safety of their data, identity, and money. All the while, we have witnessed the Internet become an effective network for the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drugs, weapons, and stolen data, while also enabling human trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism. Despite the enormous improvements that technology has contributed to the human condition, if we do not choose to fix the way the Internet works, there remains the potential for a digital Pearl Harbor-type event. The only question is which critical infrastructures, from defense to energy to health care, will be targeted.

The complex web of computers, servers, pipelines, clouds, networks, and gateways that we refer to collectively as the Internet was built originally in 1969 to share data in a semi-closed loop among a handful of universities. It was never intended to be a safe deposit box for the world’s most important data or to support its most critical infrastructure. And yet, somehow, here we are. Today, nearly everything of importance takes place on the Internet, where anyone or anything on the planet can go online and be anonymous without adhering to any standardized rules, governance, or security protocols. We would never allow those conditions to exist in our analog lives: After all, we put locks on physical doors, enact laws, and hire police to enforce said laws.

Having worked in regulating the nation’s financial institutions and also helped companies around the world to build out their online presence, I have come to realize that when people are not readily identifiable and no one is in charge, they will say and do things they never would in their analog lives. And, worse still, hostile nations, criminal cartels, or other entities with bad intentions are always eager to abuse the freedom and accessibility of the Internet to steal data, circulate ransomware, and disable networks for fun and profit.