An Interview with David Brin on Resiliency
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viewpoints VDOI:10.1145/3325287 Peter J. Denning The Profession of IT An Interview with David Brin on Resiliency Many risks of catastrophic failures of critical infrastructures can be significantly reduced by relatively simple measures to increase resiliency. ANY PEOPLE TODAY are concerned about critical infrastructures such as the electrical network, wa- ter supplies, telephones, Mtransportation, and the Internet. These nerve and bloodlines for society depend on reliable computing, communications, and electrical supply. What would happen if a massive cyber attack or an electromag- netic pulse, or other failure mode took down the electric grid in a way that re- quires many months or even years for re- pair? What about a natural disaster such as hurricane, wildfire, or earthquake that disabled all cellphone communications for an extended period? David Brin, physicist and author, has been worrying about these issues for a long time and consults regularly with companies and federal agen- cies. He says there are many relatively straightforward measures that might greatly increase our resiliency—our ability to bounce back from disaster. I spoke with him about this. Q: What is the difference between resil- ience and anticipation? anticipation makes it hard for protec- Q: Let’s see what anticipation and re- BRIN: Our prefrontal lobes help us tors to appreciate how we cope when silience look like for a common threat, envision possible futures, anticipat- our best-laid plans fail, which they do, disruptive electrical outages. They can ing threats and opportunities. Plan- sooner or later. be caused by storms, birds, squirrels, ners and responders augment these Resilience is how we cope with un- power grid overload, or even preventive organs with predictive models, intel- expected contingencies. It enables reduction of wildfire risk. Without pow- gathering, and big data, all in search us to roll with any blow and come up er, we cannot use our computers or ac- of dangers to anticipate and counter fighting, keeping a surprise from be- cess our files stored in the Internet. Even in advance. Citizens know little about ing lethal. It’s what worked on 9/11, our best disaster planning cannot fix the how many bad things these protectors when all anticipatory protective mea- disruption if infrastructure damage is have averted. But this specialization in sures failed. severe. Yet, communication is essential BRIGHAM CHERYL BY PHOTO 28 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | JUNE 2019 | VOL. 62 | NO. 6 viewpoints viewpoints for recovery. What can we do to preserve Q: What about solar on the southward our ability to communicate? walls of buildings to power the build- On 9/11, passengers aboard flight Alas, our comm ings? Some cities are already doing this. UA93 demonstrated remarkable resil- systems are fragile Sure, south-facing walls are anoth- ience when they self-organized to stop er place for photovoltaics. But there’s the terrorist plot to use that plane as to failure in competition for that valuable real a weapon against their country. If we any natural or estate—urban agriculture. Technolo- want that kind of resilience to work on unnatural calamity. gies are cresting toward where future V a large scale, we need resilient commu- cities may require new buildings to nications. Alas, our comm systems are recycle their organic waste through fragile to failure in any natural or un- vertical farms that purify water while natural calamity. One step toward resil- generating either industrial algae or ience would be a backup peer-to-peer else much of the food needed by a me- (P2P) text-passing capability for when business solar system when the electri- tropolis. With so much of the world’s phones can’t link to a cellular tower. cal utility has blacked out. The purpose population going urban, no technol- Texts would get passed from phone to is to prevent spurious home-generat- ogy could make a bigger difference. phone via well-understood methods of ed voltages from endangering repair The pieces are coming together. packet switching until they encounter linemen. This is a lame excuse for an What’s lacking is a sense of urgency. a working node and get dropped into insane situation. Simply replace that Pilot programs and tax incentives the network. Qualcomm already has cutoff switch with one that would still should encourage new tall buildings this capability built into their chips! block backflow into the grid, but that to utilize their southward faces, nur- But cellular providers refuse to turn it feeds from the solar inverter to just two turing this stabilizing trend during on. That’s shortsighted, since it would or three outlets inside the home, run- the coming decade. be good business too, expanding text ning the fridge, some rechargers, and coverage zones and opening new rev- possibly satellite coms. Just changing Q: You’ve also spoken about apps sys- enue streams. Even in the worst na- over to that switch would generate ar- tems that turn your smartphone into tional disaster, we’d have a 1940s-level chipelagos of autonomous, resilient an intelligent sensor. Can you say how telegraphy system all across the nation, civilization spread across every neigh- this supports resiliency? and pretty much around the world. borhood in America, even in the very Cellphones already have powerful All it would take to fix this is a small worst case. A new rule requiring such cameras, many with infrared capabil- change of regulation. Five sentences switches, and fostering retrofitting, ity. Soon will come spectrum-analysis requiring the cell-cos to turn this on would fit on less than a page. apps, letting citizens do local spot whenever a phone doesn’t sense a Across the next decade, more solar checks on chemical spills or environ- tower. (And charge a small fee for P2P systems will come with battery storage. mental problems, and feeding the texts.) Doing so might let us restore But this reform would help us bridge results to governments or NGOs for communications within an hour rather the next 10 years. modeling in real time. The Tricorder X than months. Prize showed how just a few add-on de- Many efforts have been made to Q: What about protection against elec- vices can turn a phone into a medical empower folks with ad hoc mesh net- tromagnetic pulse disruption? appraisal device, like Dr. McCoy had in works, via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi webs, and Much has been written about danger “Star Trek.” Almost anyone could use so on. None of these enticed more than from EMP—either attacks by hostile such apparatus in the field with little a tiny user base—nothing like what’s powers or else the sort of natural disas- training. Take a few measurements, needed for national resilience. ter we might experience if the Sun ever and a distant system advises you on struck us head-on with a coronal mass corrective actions. Q: It appears that solar power for ejection, commonly called a solar flare. Infrared sensors, accelerometers, and homes and offices is at a tipping point These CMEs happen often, peaking chemical sensors could provide a full as more people find it cheaper than every 11 years. We’ve been lucky as the array of environmental awareness sys- the power grid. Localized solar power worst ones have missed Earth. But some tems by turning citizen cellphones into should also bring new benefits such as space probes have been taken out by di- nodes of an instant awareness network. ability to maintain minimum electrical rect hits and a bulls-eye is inevitable. (I describe this in my novel Existence.) function at home during a blackout. Is The EMP threat was recognized over Such a mesh is already of interest to independence from the electrical grid 30 years ago. We could have incentiv- national authorities. But the empha- good for resilience? ized gradual development of shielded sis has been hierarchical—authori- It would be. One can envision a mil- and breakered chipsets, including ties send public reports down to citi- lion solar-roofed homes and business- those in civilian electronics. Adoption zens after gathering and interpreting es serving as islands of light for their could have been stimulated with a tax data flowing upward. The hierarchical neighborhoods, in any emergency. But of a penny per non-compliant device, mind-set comes naturally when you there’s a catch. Under current regula- with foreseen ramp-up. By now we’d are an authority with protective duties. tions, almost all U.S. solar roofs have be EMP resilient, instead of fragile hos- But this can blind even sincere public a switch that shuts down the home or tages either to enemies or to fate. servants to one of our great strengths— JUNE 2019 | VOL. 62 | NO. 6 | COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM 29 viewpoints the ability of average citizens to self-or- 5,000 amateurs’ backyards, spread hoods in SUVs stealing stuff and espe- ganize laterally. around the world. As Earth rotates, cially food, with no police to stop them. Use your imagination. The great- these backyard stations would sweep I well-understand this worry! I’ve est long-term advantage of our kind of the sky in overlapping swathes, sift- written collapse-of-civilization tales. society is that lateral citizen networks, ing for anomalous signals, but also (One of them, The Postman, was filmed while occasionally inconvenient to detecting almost anything interesting by Kevin Costner.) Hollywood pres- public servants, aren’t any kind of mac- that happens up there. Argus failed ents so many apocalyptic scenarios, ro-threat, but will make civilization earlier because of the complexity we tend to assume we live on a fragile perform better.