“There will be blood”

Jeffrey Carr concludes his 2012 cyber predictions by writing:

“The very worst part of this prediction is that its inevitable. CEOs typically refuse to act to protect their own companies if it cuts into profit. The U.S. government has refused to do what’s necessary to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure because it’s 90% privately owned, and our laws and system of government has enabled this massive malfeasance so that everyone responsible can claim absence of malice. In the words of Upton Sinclair and the movie based upon his book Oil! – “there will be blood”. It’s just a matter of time”.

What is missing is the State’s ability to run the show. Had the State the ability to run the show, it would not have been that much dependent on such a fragile operation mode for the critical infrastructure. But as it is a waste to maintain an idle workforce capable of “doing the job” while actually not doing it (the other option being running the show, which also means a totally different kind of economy), Government resorts to regulation which again is problematic, since there cannot exist a Good Regulator (the Good Regulator can run the show; how many regulatory authorities actually can?) again this is problematic. To counter the problem new rules are placed on top of older ones and thus the Regulatorium emerges.

Blood? The Critical Infrastructure interdependencies are no less complex than the global Economy (imagine the CIP of a nation being attacked because it exports energy to another which is the actual target) so it is going to be rivers of it.