When A Tech Giant Hiccups

Most people prefer to be blissfully ignorant with the dangers of technology. On a larger scale it could include industrial pollution, nuclear radiation, toxic wastes, dam failures, transportation accidents, factory explosions, fires, and chemical spills.

But they keep singing paeans of how important it is to be tech savvy, always highlighting the bright side. And only when technological hazards go beyond the big scale and start to directly affect their personal lives, do they wake up from their beauty sleep and start to cry foul.

This year, since we were already in Seattle, we decided not to miss the opportunity of watching the famous Fourth of July celebration. We’d heard about its spectacular success last year where the star event was when the traditional Fourth of July fireworks was replaced with a light show made with drones.

Of late for health and environmental reasons, several cities across the United States have made this switch. However lame it may sound to some, for a lot of healthy reasons, this more sustainable option of opting out of the traditional pyrotechnics, sure makes sense!

The only disturbing factor throughout the spectacular show was the constant reminder of how these unmanned aerial vehicles are also being used for attack on innocents. What is ‘entertainment’ for us is actually a ‘devastation’ for many.

But all this faded into oblivion when the show began. With music and a pretty familiar soundtrack of fireworks, we watched a beautiful tribute being paid to America as the evening festivities kicked off lighting up the night sky.

The aerial exhibit was captivating as was the illuminated, synchronised show of a dazzling display of drones. It was indeed special. And for those perturbed with the highly damaging effects of fireworks on the environs and on animals, it was simply outstanding!

Initially I wasn’t as concerned, but after my pets Champagne and Nelson came into my home, I discovered that fireworks created less light and more noise. These erratic bursts of sounds triggered a panic and a startling response from both the cat and the dog.

Perhaps for them it was the equivalent of a thunderstorm, so I couldn’t even imagine how disturbing it was for the strays. Moreover, considering the damaging aftereffects of pollution and the risk of wildfires, if we really want to deal with this issue to promote a healthy environment, then we simply HAVE to try and find ways of producing more eco-friendly firecrackers. Or use drones.

Luckily we chose to drive to the city of Des Moines Marina and Beach Park and not to SeaTac, which was just a few minutes away. We later heard that what was supposed to be a spectacular replay of last year in Angle Lake, unfortunately turned into a costly disaster.

It seems shortly after the show began, 55 of the 200 drones started dropping into the lake. Even if no one was hurt with these harmless drones, there was a loss of approximately $143,000 in equipment. The investigation of a possible Jamming Attack is now going on.

As if this wasn’t enough, yesterday the entire world was suddenly greeted with the Blue Screen Of Death. Sounds like the title of a horrific blue movie right?

While the world was burning into the fire of blue in the massive worldwide tech crash that affected millions, it was Microsoft that took a disastrous fall. The reality however, was far from different.

This wasn’t just a cyber attack. It was a Single. Massive. Point. Of. Failure. A malfunction of servers that crashed due to the MS’s system related to its Falcon Sensor software.

The driver developers are entirely responsible for the code they write and since all security tools have kernel level access, they can easily break systems with faulty updates. If your windows system was not running Cloudstrike, you wouldn’t have been affected. Just like none of us were.

The entire fiasco was all due to a kernel hosted zero trust agent. So what exactly is Falcon? And what is Crowdstrike?

Falcon is a Crowdstrike product. Crowdstrike is a company that not only provides security software to industries but also investigates hacks and tracks hackers.

It describes itself as ‘a leader in protecting customers around the world with cyber threats’. Guess what? It also considers itself to be a ‘Stellar Company’. With friends like Crowdstrike, who needs enemies?

Windows’ popularity is because of its user-friendly approach and because it has always been more economical than its proprietary counterparts. In fact it was Intel and Microsoft that had sparked off the PC Revolution.

But yes, there will definitely be multiple questions both the companies have to answer: Why was there no back up plan in place? Why wasn’t it tested on a smaller level before going on such a large scale?

Sample this. If something goes wrong in your Samsung TV, do you blame Samsung or the system?

Or if you hire a security guard to guard your house and there’s a break in, who is responsible? The guard for not being more attentive, or you for not having a more dependable device to protect your home?

The answer is that both you and the guard are equally responsible. Just as both Crowdstrike and Microsoft are now accountable and should take full responsibility to fix the issue.

This is not the first time the BSOD has taken place. Personal computers have been affected earlier but because it was out of warranty they could not be rectified.

Moreover, who cares for individual problems? But when big companies are affected, it becomes a worldwide issue. So in a way it’s good that this snag happened because it is now highlighted on a global scale.

One thing is for sure. If a few days back we were all unaware of how important it is to safeguard our personal data or have a back up plan, now we will be extra cautious with our application downloads and depend more on hard copies.

Now we know the importance of data security and system protection. Now we also have an idea of what the machines are capable of doing in their inter-connected data centres. But what is more important is that now all the big companies also know THAT WE KNOW!

The drone fiasco took place because of our overdependence on technology. The Crowdstrike/Microsoft fiasco took place because of our over dependence on Machines.

As people become more and more technologically connected, the concern is that we are losing important aspects of the human experience. We have become so consumed with technology that we essentially block out the world and the beautiful sounds and smells around us.

People have become so dependent on technology that they forget how to do everyday tasks without it. And this causes us to miss out on all the important things in life.

Like concentrating on human interactions. Relishing the beauty of nature. And appreciating life overall. We have become machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.

To quote Elbert Hubbard- ‘One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man!’

Nargis Natarajan is a writer, author and novelist residing in Bhubaneswar. Views expressed are the writer’s own.