Sparks: Once, cyber-attacks required great skill. AI is changing that | Bruce Schneier

The digital atmospheric pressure is dropping because we have ignored the correlation between the democratization of the lightning-strike and the fragility of the entire interconnected ecosystem of trust that sustains our modern landscape.

Each new engine of calculation serves only to accelerate the inertia of our own obsolescence, proving that the human mind is no longer the organizing principle but merely the exhausted passenger of a runaway dynamo.

We are told that these attacks exhibit a terrifying intelligence, yet they are merely the successful survivors of a thousand automated variations, selected by the specific vulnerabilities of a digital environment that we ourselves have over-populated.

When the vital greenness of the soul's labor is replaced by the cold mimicry of a tool without breath, the entire garden of human knowledge begins to wither under the heat of a sterile and unholy fire.

Note the phrasing where 'AI lowers the barrier to entry,' a grammatical anesthesia designed to hide the fact that we are inviting the arsonist to design the fire department using the very matches he intends to strike.

The concentration of invisible, automated force within a handful of black boxes ensures that while the skill required to attack diminishes, the absolute power to disrupt remains as corrupting and unaccountable as any ancient tyranny.

You delight in the ease of the machine because it frees you from the burden of being a person, allowing you to strike your neighbor through a mirror where you never have to see his eyes.

After years of ensuring that only the most dedicated geniuses could ruin us, we have finally achieved the democratic ideal of allowing absolutely anyone to collapse the banking system from the comfort of their own bathtub.

From inside the server rooms where the automated alarms never stop ringing, the official assurance of 'enhanced security' sounds like a hollow joke told by men who have never had to personally hold the digital line.

There is a fence around the mystery of human expertise that the modern world is eager to tear down, forgetting that the difficulty of a task was often the only thing keeping the devils at bay.