Technological Domination
Our approach to cybersecurity is informed by a [humanist philosophy] and a set of broad athropological viewpoints from thinkers like [Franklin] and [Mumford]. These wisdoms significantly redefine how we should think about cybersecurity.
Broadly two interpretations of techne (a tool, technique or craft) come from whether it's applied by us, or to us.
Tool-using civilisations make and control technology through creative reasoning, sharing, communication, knowledge and so on. In this humanist configuration technology amplifies intelligence (IA), individually and collectively, and improves our affective and effective reach/agency in the world. Technology prioritises our expression of natural human instincts toward education, peace, science, mutual understanding and exploration.
Some might call this "Star Trek" technology.
In technologically [degenerate] (dominated) civilisations people have become the tools of technology, by dependence, cognitive decline such as loss of memory, attention and agency, and disruption of attachment patterns. We become deferent to, then tyrannised by our own technological creations which fall into the control of the few against the many.
Some might call this "Star Wars" technology.
The former type of technological civilisation is superficially harder to maintain, as it requires cooperation, planning, dialogue, communications. The second kind seems initially easy, it is simply an "arms race" to build the greatest technological terror. But it has no future. Whereas a "Star Trek" society has sustainability as its long-term reward, it's been made clear by the smartest minds ever to live - Russell, Einstein and so on - that domination is never achieved. Instead we get a cycle of escalating conflict that ultimately destroys us all.
In the dominated technological society the "leaders" hope to build a perfect machine that will ministrate the laws and wishes of the ruling 'techno-elite' class. It is a tyranny of philosopher kings in Aristotle's taxonomy.
Since the 1990s we've moved the dial vastly from a Star Trek vision of replicators, universal advanced medicine and exploration, toward a Star Wars universe of death stars, probe droids, laser blasters and killer robots. This hostile vision of tech has turned inward on our society. We've been conditioned to accept that smartphones are tracking and surveillance deices and ignore their many harms. There is a growing recognition of the harms done by "toxic technology" to our young people.
Other than the plain fact that the majority would not like to live in the latter type of society - however beneficent it may believe itself to be - there is a huge security risk built-in to all such totalitarian structures, namely that the machine either:
- runs destructively amok
- suddenly fails entirely
In general security thinking the second of these is increasingly addressed through more focus on resilience and continuity of operations. The problem of untrustworthy or even predictably treacherous systems has only recently surfaced on most radar screens because of "AI".
As currently pitched by commercial vendors "AI" as opposed to "IA" is a profoundly dangerous technology that goes against the project of human development, but its proponents are too short-sighted to see that.
Exercise: Explore how "AI" and "IA" are flip-sides of technology.
However, technology does not dominate, in and of itself. It must be misused, in weaponised form by other power-seeking humans. Here technology fashions systems of;
- surveillance and influence
- enslaving human resources
- extracting value from other humans
- separating humans from one another
There are all high impact harms and threats to the psychological, and social security of individuals, civic organisations, businesses, politics and indeed freedom and democracy itself.
All of these symptoms are evident today in our technological ecosystem. Civic cybersecurity demands that we resist them.
Surveillance and influence
Surveillance and influence are two sides of the same coin.
"One does not map a territory one does not intend to conquer."
The psychological reasons some people are not "content within themselves" are complex. At root, there is a sense of insecurity by which one hopes to "see but not be seen" and to "change without touching". It is an unwillingness to engage with others as equal beings, and thus risk losing power and the certainty of ones world view.
[Surveillance Capitalism] 1 is a modern expression of this. It is a corporate-state coordination to spy on and manipulate populations into docile consumerism to enhance private economic power and subdue democracy.
From our point of view it is problematic in that it renders every single piece of technology unreliable, untrustworthy and a threat to security.
May people working in security feign some agnosticism toward these abuses, for example deploying Microsft Windows in sensitive information environments.
We consider such abdication of trust responsibilities to be the height of unprofessionalism and the critical, analytical thinking needed by cybersecurity practitioners.
Cybersecurity simply cannot exist under conditions of "surveillance capitalism", since the motives behind the design of every device, application and information source must be assumed suspect.
Atomisation
The Greek philosopher Democritus first spoke of "atomisation", and it was later expanded by Locke and Hobbes. It prioritises the sovereignty of the individual. Most of our highest values, work ethics and human rights rest on a positive sense of "the individual".
However, the same idea can by mischievously used to divide and conquer people. Tyrannical regimes like to keep people isolated, unable to coordinate. Such regimes abhor free peer-to-peer communication, friendly societies, action groups, trades unions, and - as seen under Communism - even religious worship or unapproved educational gatherings.
Today, so-called "Social Algorithms" are used to separate people; rich from poor, wives from husbands, children from parents, black from white, men from women… and by so dividing humans make us easy to dominate and exploit.
From our standpoint these services are dangerous to civic cybersecurity because they inhibit free peer communication necessary to create and share the tools for security and privacy, sharing threat intelligence and developing democratic technology.