"Curran's argument is that as we become more and more connected, we increase our collective vulnerability to mass-scale breakdowns and manipulation. While he certainly isn't the first to point out that our increasingly digital lives come at a cost, the scholar warn s that it will take a "systemic digital crisis" before anything changes. As Curran puts it: "there are good reasons to believe that little will be done about these risks until a massive society-wide crisis emerges.""
"How exactly the digital apocalypse plays out is difficult to say. It could look like a "widespread breakdown of basic infrastructure, such as electricity or telecommunications due to a cyberattack, to an attack that modifies existing infrastructure to make it dangerous," Curran writes. We've already seen glimmers of this, like in the massive CrowdStrike failure last year which affected tens of thousands of systems throughout the world, or the WannaCry ransomware attacks of 2017 which targeted healthcare systems in 99 countries."
Increasing digital interconnectedness heightens collective vulnerability to large-scale breakdowns, manipulation, and cascading failures. Substantial mitigation is unlikely to occur until a major, systemic digital crisis forces wide recognition and policy change. Potential manifestations include widespread failures of electricity or telecommunications, cyberattacks that make infrastructure dangerous, and economic collapse driven by interconnected automated systems. Recent incidents such as large-scale cybersecurity breaches and ransomware targeting healthcare illustrate structural fragility. Constant hacks, ransomware and data leakages function as warning signs of deep systemic weakness. The current AI-driven economic expansion increases visible risk by intensifying interdependence and potential for rapid, widespread disruption.
Read at Futurism
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