Lately my desire to write is waning. Why? Who knows? I just don’t get inspired anymore. For many years I was inspired by politics, but since the last election I have cooled to the political arena. I just don’t understand what all these new groups want, nor do I understand who they are. Just what is “woke”? Why is there a need for Black Lives Matter? Who is it that panders to all the weird minds that believe they are a new gender other than male or female? Open Borders? We have open borders between every state, but the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if some jack ass of a state will close its borders to anyone coming in. Spend money you don’t have, print some to make up the difference. I like that one for my own personal finances. If Uncle Sam can get away with it why can’t we? Think about that one, if you don’t have money to buy a house or a car, buy it anyway and print money to pay for them. Except, why would anyone work if they could push a button and print the cash they need? Without people working there would not be anything to buy, and then we would all get very hungry very quickly.
I often imagine what the world would be like if there was no gasoline to power our cars. Most times these thoughts come to me as I’m driving along on a crowded tollroad with thousands of cars burning gas like crazy, except the Tesla’s of course, they are burning electrons from their batteries. -Right now I’m a few pages into a book titled “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends.” The topic is cyber weapons. I’m not sure I can complete the remaining 400 pages if the horror coming toward us via computers continues for that many words. The author describes how the Country of Ukraine mysteriously and suddenly went black. No one knows why it happened, but the Russians are very suspect. It happened because some hacker got into the electrical grid and shut all things electrical down. Think about that one too. No lights, no TV, no iPhones, no internet, no computers, no refrigerator, no water, no toilets, no stores, no gas to pump, the list goes on and on. Imagine your life without electrical power. Life will get interesting but sure. It would make the COVID-19 lockdown seem easy.
There is a complete underground economy developing in the area of cyber security. All of it is secret, in order to keep it from causing us to panic. Remember the name Snowden. He was the young man who walked out of the NSA with a pocket full of thumb drives filled with our best kept cyber secrets. At the time Obama made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, but all the talk lately about Russian hackers taking over our elections is leaking from the Snowden defection. I don’t think he will ever be allowed to return to the USA again. I hope he likes Russia, cold weather, and vodka.
At my age, I keep telling myself to become more involved, but at the same time my body says, slow down. My mind says enjoy life and forget about the terrible things that can happen to the USA. You won’t be around to see or experience it. Or will I? The cyber criminals can inflict big damage very suddenly over a huge area. Maybe the answer is to swallow a bullet when that happens.
I will finish reading this book and no doubt have nightmares along the way, but maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to help the world solve the problems caused by too many systems that are too lightly protected by easily hacked passwords.
Filed under: Aging, Book Review, Education, family | Tagged: cyber security, Cyber warfare, Hackers, Passwords |
What do these new groups want ? Complete chaos and total destruction of the current world order. They are so stupid. They have nothing with which to replace it nor the knowledge to establish this new world order.
Interesting how worries change. A few years back, OK maybe a couple of decades, we used to worry about the stockpile of nuclear weapons the world has piled up to destroy ourselves many times over. Those weapons are still there. North Korea and Taliban are still on the loose. But we now have a more potent threat from the digital era we are now in which was part of the human growth and development story. As was nuclear energy at some point.
The world is afraid of nuclear annihilation but doesn’t fear cyber war yet because we haven’t experienced it first hand.