Jay's Expose

Blockchain is the new wave of recording information in a way that is unchangeable and permanent. A popular use for blockchain recently has been to exchange things of value online in a decentralized manner using cryptocurrency. The issues that have arisen so far with this system is the fact that since it is open sourced, people who aren’t the most knowledgeable about coding these complex systems have access to changing the code and it isn’t as secure as it could be if there had been a few people that orchestrated the whole thing. Additionally, by having a few people responsible for the creation of the system, there is a sense of accountability that isn’t inherent when there are many people who had a role in the creation. If you take a closer look at the way the blockchain system is designed to stay decentralized, it lies upon the idea that at least 51% of people are well intentioned and paying attention to make sure things aren’t going wrong. It was this way of thinking and running things that allowed for the robbery of millions of dollars of ether, a virtual currency, in 2016. Since there were so many people involved with writing the code, there was ease in which a bug was found and exploited. By the time someone noticed that there was money at risk due to this bug, ironically on line 666, it was too late. The money was stolen in plain sight and there was nothing that anyone could do except feel sad that they hadn’t caught the bug in time. While blockchain seems promising, there are some fundamental issues that could be the crack in the foundation that causes the whole building to crumble over time.

As time goes on, the generations are getting shorter and shorter. The kids that are in middle school now seem like they’re living in a whole different world from those of us who were in their shoes less than a decade ago. A big factor in this is social media. When my peers and I were in middle school and at such an impressionable time in our lives, we didn’t have the constant influence of social media. Most of my friends, and myself included didn’t even have smart phones until we got to high school. Nowadays, kids get smart phones much sooner in life, and it’s usually justified in the name of safety. The issue is how the uber connectedness of everyone is affecting the mental health of people. It’s becoming harder to distinguish whether or not social media is helping or hindering people as a whole. With complete connectivity with the help of social media, there is never an opportunity to unplug or truly step away from knowing about everything going on all the time. This has created a whole new set of problems. When we fixed the problems of not being able to contact people, we created a new one. The ability to know what is going on with people you know, or don’t, fosters a culture of jealousy and the feelings that we’re potentially missing out. The prevalence of this feeling was so pertinent that a phrase was coined, “FOMO”, which stands for “Fear Of Missing Out.” The psychological effects of seeing the perfectly curated lives of everyone around you also leads to a sense of loneliness. This even extends into interactions we have with each other in person. As we become more and more dependant on our phones to provide us with something to do, at any horizon of discomfort or potential social awkwardness in any situation, people will pull out their phones. People end up being physically together in the same place, but worlds apart. In a Ted Talk by Sherry Turkle, she discussed the idea that we see loneliness as a problem to be solved. However, maybe the problem doesn’t lie in the times when we are alone, possibly rather in how being pseudo connected through social media leads to the feelings of loneliness.

Around 7th grade, I realized I couldn’t go any longer without a laptop. My mom told me if I wanted one I could buy one, so I looked online for the best deal and found a package deal that included a decent laptop, a mouse, a case and free spyware protection. Little did I know that the spyware was one of the spies. A young and more naive version of myself had no idea that Kaspersky was a Russian multinational cyber security company that was known for doing more than simply protecting computers. As of now, they are just allegations, but it’s hard to trust a company with the task of ensuring your privacy with even the seed of doubt in their integrity. These days we all have to worry about cyber mischief. There was a game that was extremely popular a few years ago called Plague that involved trying to spread a disease as far as you could without being detected in order to wipe out the whole world. Cyber attacks work in a similar manner. The name of the game is to spread a virus without being detected so that when you activate it, its effects are harder to stop. A lot of people have the misconception that the US government doesn’t really know what goes on online, but they likely know more than they let on; after all, you can’t win a game by showing the opponent your cards.

The biggest difference between espionage, crime and war is whether or not we want the adversary to know who is attacking them. When you’re trying to spy and commit cyber crimes, anonymity is key. In the most recent US presidential election, Russia didn’t try to be covert in their involvement in creating conflict. They didn’t care that we knew what they were up to or about having decent tradecraft because it still had its destructive effect. In an overt intelligence operation, you are doing the opposite of being secretive or covert. In order to have quality cyber command, it is just important to defend the military works and to figure out how to effectively exploit the resources of the adversary.

Looking at the role of governance when talking about the Internet is an interesting question looking into the future. The Internet started off in the hands of the government, but became a public commodity. But the question is, what would it look like if certain up and coming technology that uses the Internet to function had the government running their agenda? Our guest speaker and Harvard professor, Jonathan Zittrain, gave us an idea of what this could look like. One example he used had to do with automatic cars. Zittrain urged us to think about what it would look like if the cars could drive you quickly to the hospital in an emergency, like an ambulance would. Or if the police were after you and the doors locked and drove you automatically to the closest police station. These are a few ideas that show the crossroads between the Internet and how the jurisdiction and governance of it is important in forming the limitations of the government and what it can and can’t do.

Some other implications to consider when thinking about the jurisdiction and governance of the Internet is the fact that there is so much going on all the time that it would be nearly impossible to realistically govern certain things online. Also, with the ever changing nature of the internet and how fast people figure out ways around barriers, it’d be a constant tug of war between the government trying to take control and people trying to figure out ways out of it. As we move towards more control out of the hands of the people, it will be interesting to see how far the government jurisdiction will go.