Kamikaze Autonomous Cars in Bitcoin Ice Age- Digital Worst-Case Scenarios
Hacked self-driving cars running amok, cryptocurrency miners triggering an ice age, particle accelerators creating an accidental black hole that swallows earth, super-intelligent machines taking everyone’s job, CRISPR gene modification producing designer babies and making previous borns inferiors…Doomsday scenarios are fascinating to us and the emerging technology always fuels our minds for speculation. Evolution wired us to watch for dangers and therefore potential dangers always interest us. Possibly as a result of this innate behavior, we also tend to give more credibility to pessimistic theories than optimistic ones. Let’s brainstorm on some worst-case scenarios that are not so far-fetched.
Kamikaze self-driving cars wreaking havoc
Hardened and resilient cybersecurity is not easy to achieve. Gone are the lone wolf, garage hackers. Nowadays cybercriminals work for illegal but proper companies and get paid salaries. They collaborate, innovate, go through performance reviews and all. That is partly why we hear about the largest corporations being hacked almost monthly nowadays. It would be naive to assume that self-driving car software would be unhackable. The question is, when the autonomous car’s software is compromised, what the hacker's objective would be? Rob…
