Doomsday Computer Virus

[cigars]

The internet is more than just the web, it's the telegraph of today, that lets airlines determine when and where airplanes leave and land, it lets them move cargo and baggage between hubs. It lets your auto parts store determine which and where the replacement alternator for your car is, it lets gas stations order the gasoline and handle electronic transactions. It also lets your bank determine whether you get money out of an ATM or not.

Trust me, I'm as internet-skeptic as you are, however we're dealing with a complex system that has both taken over and replaced a lot of our other telecommunications systems, without the internet phones don't work, and there are no telegraph lines left to replace it. Even the power grid is at some level tied to and controlled by the internet.

To an extent, we are fools, putting all of our eggs in one basket, however that basket is a multi-protocol, multi-path routing system that was designed from the beginning to operate during and after a nuclear war. For the most part, I would argue we need to bolster the strength of the internet, making it more resilient and more secure from the bottom up. Most of the proposals out there now are top-down, and will only create more central points of failure. It's important that we avoid this.

Yet somehow we put men on the moon (or so they say...) with sliderules, cigarette filled ashtrays and heads covered in Bryll cream.