Pay attention to choke points before crisis hits

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4275256.htm

By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist
Oct. 13, 2002

What do major seaports, gas pipelines, the Windows operating system
and your local phone company have in common? They are just a few of
the choke points of the modern world.

Choke points are risky, to society and the economy. They'd be less of
a threat if we worked harder at preventing their formation in the
first place, and if we spent more time planning for their inevitable
disruption.

Some choke points are natural, or at least difficult to avoid in the
normal course of affairs. Others are manufactured. All are dangerous
when we ignore their existence and risks until things go wrong.

The West Coast dock lockout, suspended under political pressure from
Washington, was the latest warning. In an increasingly global economy,
it showed the potential for chaos if one of the few major shipping
corridors were closed.

This is a just-in-time world. The container ships carrying an endless
flow in and out of our ports each year are part of a massive, moving
warehouse for manufacturers, supermarkets, toy stores and just about
every physical good. Close the doors of the warehouse, and the economy
shudders, as we saw when the lockout led New United Motor
Manufacturing Inc., the Toyota-General Motors joint venture, to shut
down auto and truck production at its Fremont manufacturing plant.

The world's oil moves in supertankers, and there aren't that many of
these mega-ships. Suspicions are growing that last Sunday's explosion
on a French oil tanker, which crippled the vessel, was sabotage or
terrorism. The oil markets were already nervous about the potential
for a Middle Eastern war that could shut down some of the world's most
important oil fields. A crippled oil-transport industry would, at
least temporarily, make the dock lockout look like a picnic.

California learned the hard way about energy choke points in late 2000
and early 2001. Among the abuses of a poorly designed system of
semi-regulation, which invited unethical businesses to game a flawed
marketplace, was a natural-gas company's move to use its control of
vital natural-gas pipelines to starve supplies in order to hike
prices. The state is trying to undo the damage, but too many of the
conditions that led to the trouble remain in place.

The more virtual world of computing and communications is becoming
more burdened by choke points all the time. Everyone is aware of
Microsoft's monopoly in operating systems and, increasingly, other top
software for desktop computers. Most people aren't aware of the risk
we run by using a standard that has again and again been shown to be
insecure and controlled by a company that views ethics in the context
of tactics, not basic behavior.

Virus writers cause damage to the monocultural Windows ecosystem when
they send their anti-social code into the ether. Microsoft uses its
control to prevent innovation.

The regional phone companies, too, have been among the more
anti-competitive entities in recent years. These government-granted
monopolies have had a lock on local phone service for decades, and
then took advantage of flawed deregulation (sound familiar?) to stifle
budding competition for data services. Barring some changes in policy,
they and another major local monopoly -- cable-TV systems -- will be
pretty much the only game in town for high-speed data.

Why do governments, which should know better, tend to allow choke
points to emerge rather than do everything possible to eliminate them
or at least encourage bypasses? Incompetence is too simplistic an
explanation, though all organizations have their share of fools.  
Governments actually like choke points, at least until they really
squeeze the economy, because they're easier to keep tabs on and
control if necessary.

Government doesn't always do the wrong thing, of course. On Thursday,
the Federal Communications Commission, which has largely been a lapdog
recently for the companies it regulates, turned down the
ill-considered merger of the two dominant satellite-television
services, Echostar's Dish Network and Hughes' DirecTV. We could use
more actions of this sort.

In a world where rationality prevailed, we'd launch a new kind of
Manhattan Project to remove the energy and communications choke
points. We'd actively discourage a software monoculture that leaves us
so open to cyber-vandalism and corporate power hunger. We'd work
harder to establish more competition for telecommunications, not let
the industry consolidate to a tiny number of players.

We don't live in such a world.

Sometimes there's value in learning the hard way. Humans respond to
crisis, though the higher the risks, the more danger in assuming we'll
muddle our way through our higher-stakes woes. And we emphatically
don't want a centrally planned economy.

But why do we allow ourselves to indulge in short-term indifference,
poor planning and lack of action when an obvious problem is taking
shape?

When we do, we invite trouble, and we inevitably get it.



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