Cyber Hackers Will Return Us To The Flower Power Era

Space. It’s the final frontier. It’s that big black thing up above the clouds. It’s where we keep all the stuff that makes our mobile phones and computers and GPS systems work. It is also the next place that bad people will try to do bad things in. What does it all mean?

Our overwhelming reliance on space technology makes us acutely vulnerable were it to ever break down or be deliberately sabotaged. For those gathered at the conference on national security and space at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) yesterday it was an issue they felt needed to be confronted more openly.

“It is a real issue and a real vulnerability,” explained Mark Roberts, a former space and cyber expert at the Ministry of Defence who has recently moved to the private sector. “What we are doing is making ourselves more vulnerable to attack than we had been formerly. My personal view is that a day without space is not going — as some people say — to send us back to the dark ages. It’s more likely to put us back into the 1960s.”

The 60s, eh? Bring it on! I am gonna burn my bra, go on a groovy acid trip, listen to some hippies bang drums, and then spend the next 50 years endlessly nattering on about how I was part of the most important generation in the world while generally fucking things up for everyone younger than me so that I can continue my journey of self-discovery with a bunch of BMWs and Viking Range stoves in a series of houses that continue to gain in monetary value even though those prices are completely unsustainable and stuff. Screw modern technology, this all sounds pretty good! Let’s kick things off the only way you are now allowed to introduce anything about The 60s.

Far out, man! If you need me I will be tie-dyeing a shirt and engaging in an orgy of self-celebration. Who’s with me?

Photo by Jimmi, via Shutterstock