Future Imperfect #40: The Digital Fog of War

Welcome to Future Imperfect! This week I’ve been reading about rising cyberattacks, information overload as demagogue enabler, the case for privatizing our highways, and rising water levels threatening New York City.

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The Digital Fog of War

In Lawfare this week, a look at how an unknown actor is preparing for an attack against critical internet infrastructure.

Recently, some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they’re used to seeing. They last longer. They’re more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure…

There’s more. One company told me about a variety of probing attacks in addition to the DDoS attacks: testing the ability to manipulate Internet addresses and routes, seeing how long it takes the defenders to respond, and so on. Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical Internet services…

What can we do about this? Nothing, really. We don’t know where the attacks come from. The data I see suggests China, an assessment shared by the people I spoke with. On the other hand, it’s possible to disguise the country of origin for these sorts of attacks. The NSA, which has more surveillance in the Internet backbone than everyone else combined, probably has a better idea, but unless the U.S. decides to make an international incident over this, we won’t see any attribution.

Why does this matter? If a company of Chinese soldiers landed in Hawaii and assaulted a power station, it would be an act of war. But if a company of Chinese hackers assaults the digital infrastructure of major independent tech companies, it’s not? I’m not saying we go to war over this, but taking no action only makes this an acceptable norm for countries that have these cyberattack capabilities.

The Perils of Information Overload

Information overload isn’t just an issue of burnout, it has consequences in how we engage with the world around us. Oh, and it empowers demagogues.

Recent research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, describes studies where when participants were confronted with facts that went against their views, they were likely to reframe their views as matter of opinion and personal morality (to which they had every right). On the other hand, once the presented facts were in line with their own thinking, they stated that their opinions were fact-based and didn’t invoke morality quite as much.

The researchers concluded that people’s belief systems include an aspect of “unfalsifiability” which they employ for defensive and offensive purposes. The defensive function serves to support their world views and a sense of identity, while anyone who ventured into the comments section of most Facebook posts could figure out what the offensive purpose is all about…

Still, no matter how many psychology studies say this or that, none of it matters if you are disinclined to believe them. With too many facts and studies, it’s easier to stay in the mental fog. And that’s the space where demagogues operate. From the Ancient Greek warmongering leader Cleon to Hitler to Joseph McCarthy, a rabble rouser prays on the people who value beliefs more than facts. To produce desired actions from the crowd, they invoke the age-old tactic of invoking fear. Scare enough people that everything is wrong and you are the only one who can protect them, and you might find yourself in a leadership position.

Why does this matter? Who would have thought twenty years ago that there would be such a global reversion to authoritarianism? And the worrying thing that this article unearths, is that our digital innovations are enabling this reversion.

Footing the Infrastructure Bill

In City Journal, the case for the privatization of our roads, highways, and other types of transportation infrastructure.

Many tasks of government have nothing in common with private enterprise. Neither our military nor our courts should be in the business of extracting revenues from, respectively, foreign powers or litigants. Aid to the poor and to the elderly is meant to be money-losing. But infrastructure is different and has much more in common with ordinary businesses. After all, infrastructure provides valuable services, the use of which by one individual typically crowds out the use by someone else. E-ZPass technology has made it simple to charge for transportation. Why not, then, establish a business model for transportation infrastructure?

The upsides would be substantial. When businesses running, say, a public road need to recoup their costs over years and decades, they have a strong incentive to maintain the infrastructure properly. A transportation business model also avoids the messy redistribution of the current system, where some states subsidize others and non-travelers subsidize the mobile. In some cases, the business model for transportation might be completely private…When we can’t go private, another plausible option is an independent, but public, entity. In some cases, independent public entities have worked well, putting the focus on service rather than on politics.

A shift to an expanded role for the private sector in infrastructure construction and maintenance thus seems like a good bet. And America is not short on private-sector transportation innovators. Our cars are more technologically impressive than ever. American freight rail is a wonder of the world. Cheap bus services ride up and down I-95. Uber and Zipcar have upgraded urban mobility for the Internet age.…A wise approach means…a much diminished federal role and a lot more transportation initiatives that look like private industry, with users paying for the services they receive.

Why does this matter? The article makes a good case that much of America’s infrastructure spending is inefficient and ill-advised—check out the stats on how highway spending during the Great Recession had little to no economic benefit in many communities. In many cases, instead of spending money on smart maintenance, it’s spent on expensive white elephants. I’m open to seeing what a new framework might look like.

Water Levels Are Still Rising

Just a friendly reminder that our coasts are increasingly imperiled as a result of continued inaction at the state, federal, and global level. Here’s a deep dive (ha) on New York City’s risks of flooding in an era of climate change. There’s one interesting point I want to call out—the role of architecture.

For the next few decades, the time period Zarrilli is talking about, the problem should remain merely expensive. It’s during the second half of the century that it will start to become unmanageable. And after 2100, the numbers get really ugly. The New York City Panel on Climate Change has not yet extended its sea-level modeling into the next century, but a similar commission in Boston recently projected a 20-to-30-foot increase by 2200 if emissions continue at a high rate. That is why Jacob says it was “almost irresponsible” for Zarrilli to describe him as alarmist. “We should go into it with open eyes and look at the possible realities,” he says. “Anything less than that is pretty scary.”…

In March, Jacob gave a speech to the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, seeking to warn the audience about the danger of poor development decisions. He displayed renderings of a proposed Red Hook project and showed how it could be accessible only by ferry in 2100, and ridiculed the World Trade Center redevelopment. “You can ask yourself all sorts of questions, whether or not that will make it,” he said, and displayed a diagram of how a hundred-year storm would flow into Santiago Calatrava’s new $4 billion transit hub. “If you look at this, where is the water going? It’s not nice.” He said that the protective park Ingels has designed might be effective for the rest of the century. “The problem I foresee,” he warned, “is that we might start to feel very happily safe behind that.” Jacob told his audience that the city should instead be planning to accommodate the water. “Make Water Street a water street,” he said, “and Canal Street a canal street.”

Many architects are thinking along similar lines, as they try to envision how structures built today might be designed to accommodate rising sea levels over their lifetimes. In his talk, Jacob singled out SHoP’s plan for the Domino Sugar Refinery project on the Brooklyn waterfront, which he said would survive even if the East River goes 30 feet higher. Other architects are designing floating neighborhoods, or apartment buildings that are suspended from bridge structures, rather than supported by foundations. There’s a lot of excitement around the idea of leaving the ground level empty, as a floodable public space. (So long to storefront retail, and those quaint nostrums about “street life.”) Some of these approaches are already being tested out in European cities like Hamburg and Amsterdam.

Why does this matter? This article, any many others, detail just how useless Congress is on this issue, led by idiots like Congressman Ken Buck (R) who say that military proposals to hedge against rising sea levels are part of a “radical green energy agenda.” Given government intransigence, is it more responsible for local leaders to plan for accommodation rather than assume mitigation will succeed?

If you’re not you, then who are you?

Today’s sci-fi short: Mouse-X.

Mouse-X is a mystery/sci-fi story about Anderson, a man who wakes in a building with no idea where he is or how he got there, before slowly discovering that in each of the rooms around him are a thousand clones of himself, all of whom woke into the same mysterious scenario. To escape he needs to outwit his ‘selves’ whilst overcoming the realization that he is not the only Anderson…

GIF of the Week: When a smile just doesn’t do enough

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