As we put autonomous cars on the road, connect Alexas to our lights and our thermostats, put ill-protected Internet-connected video cameras on our houses, and conduct our financial lives over our cell phones, our vulnerabilities expand exponentially.
Interpretation
The increasing reliance on technology in daily life amplifies our vulnerabilities to security threats.
David E. Sanger's quote highlights the growing dependence on technology and the potential dangers that come with it. As we integrate more smart devices into our homes and make our lives increasingly digital, we simultaneously expose ourselves to greater risks, such as hacking and privacy breaches. The ease and convenience afforded by these technologies may come at a significant cost to our personal security.
In practice
During a tech conference discussing cybersecurity, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of secure practices.
Because our government has been so incompetent at protecting its highly sophisticated cyberweapons, those weapons have been stolen out of the electronic vaults of the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. and shot right back at us.
We have spent so much time worrying about a 'cyber Pearl Harbor,'' the attack that takes out the power grid, that we have focused far too little on the subtle manipulation of data that can mean that no election, medical record, or self-driving car can be truly trusted.
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.
I think a lot of the time there isn't such a black-and-white difference between what's a platform and what's an app. It's really just like the most important apps become platforms.
We're all vulnerable to social approval. The need to belong, to be approved or appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations. But now our social approval is in the hands of tech companies.
I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.
An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network.
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.
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