The Galactica option

Now that we share the internet with tireless, capable synthetic hackers, I find myself won­dering if the project to rapidly harden cyberdefense should include “the Galac­tica option”, i.e., “just dis­con­nect it”?

This isn’t foolproof; the cen­trifuges at Fordo were isolated, all those years ago, and still, some­body car­ried a USB stick inside … BOOM! But a thick and sultry air­grap improves any system’s base­line secu­rity by about 1000X, and, the thing is, I just don’t believe most things need to be online in the first place. When I say that, I’m talking about both home refrig­er­a­tors and elec­tricity substations. And I’m def­i­nitely talking about my car!! I think a lot of things went online because they could go online, in the “smart” frenzy of the early century.

It’s not that con­nec­tivity is without ben­e­fits — just that the ben­e­fits are so clearly outweighed, in so many cases, by expo­sure to a non­stop adver­sarial haze that will soon become even more dangerous.