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Bad dreams

Ian Pearson, Sep 2001

My paper ‘What’s Next?’ discusses many nightmare scenarios that could devastate large parts of the world as we know it. At lower levels, there are many events that can happen that would be major problems for us, but don’t fall into the ‘nightmare’ category. Perhaps they should be called ‘bad dream’ scenarios.

Socially based problems

Anti-science, anti-tech backlash caused by resentment at the speed of change that people are forced to accept to stay in business

Male backlash, as many traditionally male jobs are automated while female jobs grow.

Network and IT based problems

Complexity based failures – networked systems may simply become too complex to manage effectively or to restore after collapse

Information waves, outages of the network due to rapid build up of machine-generated traffic after key events. Pulse growth time can be less than sampling intervals in traffic monitors. Outage can be repetitive.

Correlated traffic failures, where sudden large traffic loads appear at given points as a result of correlated events, such as software interactions.

Resonance problems, where physical distances in the network correspond to key time intervals in protocols, or to traffic packetisation frequency. This type of problem can greatly reduce network capacity for a time

AI crime, which can be deliberately or accidentally created by means of evolutionary techniques on a distributed processing environment. Could render many systems useless or destroy trust and confidence.

New viruses that intercept data on machines prior to encryption or modify banking transactions unobserved, could destroy confidence in e-commerce and electronic banking

Terrorist attacks, listing from Time, 24/9/01

Chemical and biological weapons, such as nerve gases, including Sarin, Anthrax, Smallpox, Foot and Mouth,

Cyberterrorism, using viruses, denial of service, data theft, hardware back-doors

Nuclear devices, owned by states such as Pakistan, many British targets, and IT is very vulnerable to EM pulse.

Use of private planes in building strikes – there are many more private planes than public, and they fly from small airports where there is little or no security

Missile attacks using black market to obtain missiles

Ecoterrorism

Antiglobalisation attacks, aimed at disrupting international networks

Plane crash onto Sellafield high level waste store