The End of Digitalization.
More than 100 countries on the globe were reportedly attacked by a ransomware, which is closely related to the US National Security Agency. In UK, the NHS suffered from the attack and totally paralyzed. As for my country, HITACHI, one of the leading company from Japan, was heavily affected by this affair in terms of its factory located in UK. In short, the internet abruptly turned out to be a digitalized WMD.
Facing the globalized disaster, some experts may urge us to accelerate the development of a new technology called “blockchain”. However, this can be never an ultimate “solution” for the current digital disaster in the age of “IoT” and “Industrie 4.0”, since even “blockchain” basically needs the same network as the conventional one the internet has been utilizing.
Even though the ransomware seems to be quite hazardous, this is only the very beginning of the whole story: The digital network our globalized society totally depends on is essentially supported by just four “servers”, while one of them is located in the Shonan Fujisawa Campus of Keio University in Kanagawa prefecture. If someone intentionally switches off all these four servers in the same time, the internet as such is blacked out. No one can will make use of the internet anymore, and the whole human society and economy will be also blacked out.
Again, experts of the internet will argue such an incident will never take place. Well, guys, how about the above-shown ransomware? It clearly shows us that there is nothing impossible in the age of the total digitalization. How should we exclude the possibility “terrorists” equipped with highly developed digital weapons will target the four key servers?
Again, this is just the very beginning of the whole story we’ll face step by step until 2020. Only those who have been carefully following what Julian Assange (Wikileaks) and Edward Snowden allegedly have leaked to the public, are able to understand how vulnerable the world has become due to the accelerated digitalization. I suppose the newly released media “Wikitribune” will tell us much more, while its editors team sent me the following message on May 12, just before the incident:
“Hello,
Thank you so much for your interest in supporting Wikitribune.
We are so excited about this project and will be in touch over the following weeks with ways in which you can be involved.
Many thanks
Wikitribune Team”
To wrap up, I would say, “Be prepared in advance for the total shut down of the digitalized network. Don’t forget to buy a shortwave radio, which is almost forgotten but can deliver essential information on global affairs even without being digitally “get connected””. Stay tuned.
