Allies, Enemies, or Ignorance?
Trust is slippery. I wish it weren’t so. But that’s just a wish.
Yesterday, I theorized about the top 10 things that the US needs to keep secure, to keep resilient. These are the things we want to trust in the government, the private sector, local firefighters, police officers, air-traffic controllers, and all… that they can be trusted, especially for these things that are vital.
Yesterday, priority number 3 on the list, was to keep electricity flowing.
Today, a headline that we can’t trust the suppliers of equipment for the power grid. The headline:
“Ghost in the machine? Rogue communication devices found in Chinese inverters”
This past weekend, I asked a high schooler, whether they had any concerns about their data being misused by TikTok. “No. They can have all my data.” I asked whether he was concerned that with that information the insurance companies could charge him more money for car insurance. He wasn’t sure what to say, he didn’t have to pay for car insurance yet.
Finger pointing? Or problem solving?
As for the power inverters, someone at some company bought this equipment, and installed it into the power grid. Are we saying that we don’t trust them?
Are we saying that we know something they don’t, and they missed something that could cripple the power supply?
Or perhaps we are concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding business decisions, when there is a trade-off between current product performance, current profit, and future risk… perhaps long after the person has retired, or no longer responsible for paying for insurance? Or is someone punting, deferring risk to tomorrow, to the next generation?
One role of media, is to find and explore “the edge” and to bring visibility to ambiguity.
Like in sports, we prefer to see for ourselves when the coach decides to punt, so that we can decide whether we agree with their decision or not. We may not have all of the information, but we have most of it, because the playing field is wide open. Right?
Just like in baseball, or boxing, when we trust that coaches, and the players on the field, in the ring, are competing in an open market, and don’t have side bets on the outcome. I remember as a kid realizing that the money in boxing wasn’t inside the ring.
A colleague once told me “if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.” He laughed. I scowled. So then rules are for the rest of us?
When are we sucked into someone else’s ecosystem, enticed to trust them to our own detriment? Enticed to watch the endless loop of videos, the original boob tube… while we slowly lose ourselves. Reminded of the 2008 Pixar film WALL-E, with blob-like humans.
Stand up. Do something that builds trust.
Do something that builds resilience.
Link to today’s Reuters article: