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AI Quantum and BGP

So there is going to be a day – (it may have already arrived) when AI is given a quantum computer to play with. Lets call this “day one”…. Once that happens it’s probable that all standard security on existing networks will be compromised.

There is also the matter of a network protocol called BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). The problem with that protocol is that unless your monitoring it continually and applying a degree of secure network management, huge amounts of data can be siphoned off on it’s way to it’s legitimate destination.

There are a number of examples and instances where large amounts of data have been hijacked. Now currently that data may not be able to be deciphered. But if you record and store it then throw a Quantum AI at the task, all of that historic data may be accessible.

So think about the implications of this, all banking transactions become vulnerable, all military and government communications. We are talking a very deep rabbit hole.

But let’s also open this up for further speculation – during world war two after the Allies had cracked the German Enigma machine, the fact that they had access to all communications was kept top secret.

While the Germans never found out the Allies could solve their codes, they suspected it as their ability to sink Allied shipping slipped dramatically in 1942.

So if and when this “day one” happens we probably won’t know about it.

For me the recent Crowdstrike adventure was a wake up call on a personal level. It made me aware that cash (even just an emergency fifty or a hundred bucks) is probably a good idea. I’m not heading for the woods quite yet. But a digitally insecure world? It is something to contemplate!

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Whisky ginger tango, more thoughts on AI

From what I can work out, and put very simply, AI has 2 major parts an application and a brain.

The application is the interface we use – typically it’s text based, this can and will vary but I’ll keep things simple for the sake of clarity.

That application has access to a “Brain” which is a huge collection of compressed words associations, weighting etc, and the by product of this is that you get something similar to human knowledge as the output. This brain can and is updated, and can be changed, manipulated, moderated and “Grown” if you like, and it can also learn, or be “trained”.

One issue that is of concern, is how that brain is trained! Recently I read of FB wanting to use “users”i data to train their AI. I have problems with this and it’s the age old issue of “garbage in, garbage out”.

Not to mention the cultural bias, the intentional inclusion of hateful and derogatorily information and the general right wing bias that most social media produces. Are you serious about training an AI on this data?

The other issue is how tight does one keep things locked down?

I had the following interaction with Google’s Gemini AI project when I asked it to …
“Create images of a Ginger cat with long hair drinking a glass of whiskey!”

The response was as follows!

“I cannot generate an image of a ginger cat drinking whiskey.

Alcohol is harmful to cats and can cause serious health problems. It’s important to protect animals from harm.

Would you like me to try generating an image of something else? Perhaps a cat playing with a toy or napping in a sunny spot?”

This made me laugh and if you look at a the graphic above, the dreaded wunderkind, Mr Stinky’s (ok Musk’s) AI not only allowed me to create an admiral visual of a ginger cat drinking whisky – it made sure the glass was rather full! This would probably kill the cat! If we are really unlucky someone might eat it!

I worry a lot some days, I also drink whisky.

i“Users” typically a term used by drug pushers to define their clients

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Should we be afraid of the next Carrington event?

The last big Carrington event happened in 1859. In a nut shell the Carrington event was a large solar storm. Simply put this caused a massive amount of energy to enter the earths lower atmosphere. Things like power lines, and telegraph lines, acted like conductors and absorbed lots of this electrical energy.

Much doom and gloom has been discussed about what this might mean in today’s highly electronic world. Replacing a power station transformer that has exploded is an expensive and time consuming process, in some situations it could take years.

Large Carrington events occur about every 150 years and we are due for a big one soon! Appart from all the doom and gloom there are some positives.

Humanity is staring to develop techniques to manage these storms. Lloyds of London the insurance company publicly published this paper back in 2013 it’s an interesting read (The executive summary is food for thought!) and it brings up the issue of money, insurance and culpability of large power companies.

Power companies are aware of the need to harden and prepare their networks for these potentially dangerous situations and we have some recent examples of responsible management.

This article from May 2024 makes interesting reading. In effect a small New Zealand company working with a university to manage solar storms.

But many power companies and grid managers don’t like to talk about this sort of thing – because it could involve criticism, cost, culpability. Not to mention share price value!

Another positive is that we also have “The space weather prediction centre” which utilises various satellites and ground based stations to monitor the sun and it’s predicted output.

Solar storms not only effect us on the ground – up in space things can get tricky and satellites often have to power down and maneuver them selves to avoid the worst of the storm. But this is tricky to get right. As recently as February 2022, Elon Musk’s Starlink company lost 38 satellites due to a geomagnetic storm.

One need also consider the effect on GPS systems with some flight, farming and radio systems being effected. This is a very sobering thought – and you might ask can modern jets fly and navigate without GPS (Makes mental note to check swpc site next time I fly)!

So you might ask how might SMB companies prepare for such an event?

Well the short answer is to back up! A Faraday cage for an off site version of that back up would be a very good investment, as well as knowing how long it would take you to re build your server from scratch.

Also if you depend on the cloud to host your data – do you know where that data is physically located? It might be a good idea to have at least a backup located on the other side of the planet – if not a data mirror, or fail over option – again on the other side of the planet.

The internet was designed to survive even if we have a nuclear war, so connectivity may be available but don’t count on it.

In a worst case scenario you would probably lose some data but not all – and you would be able to re-establish systems once the storm had cleared.

Although expensive – another option is traditional insurance, but that may be a very deep and litigious rabbit hole!

It’s at moment s like this that I like to quote my favourite character from the Incredibles  movie, Edna Mode “Luck favours the prepared darling!” Also it may be a good idea if your running something that’s very important…  to keep an eye on the SWPC site!

Related links in full.
https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf

Space weather prediction center
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Transpower Link
https://www.transpower.co.nz/news/transpower-restores-electricity-transmission-circuits-after-solar-storm-subsides