In Depth

Cyber Security, the Nuclear Threat and You: Cassandra's Guide to the 21st Century

Richard Power interviews Martin Hellman and mulls nuclear risk

By Richard Power

June 30, 2009 — CSO —

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." Albert Einstein

"The unleashed power of the Internet has changed everything, and presented us with an unparalleled opportunity." Martin Hellman

Recently, on a glorious afternoon, under an azure blue sky, I drove from my office at the Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley campus in NASA Research Park up to Stanford University to have a discussion about the great challenges of our time with Martin Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and co-author of the legendary Diffie-Hellman key exchange (which opened up the door to the world of public key cryptography).

Hellman had seized my attention during the annual Cryptographer's Panel at the 2009 RSA Conference earlier this year. In the midst of a discussion about "Cloud computing," with fellow luminaries, Whit Diffie, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Bruce Schneier, Hellman started talking about the dangers of a very different type of cloud, i.e., the mushroom cloud.

Here is my blog post from that panel session:

Hellman asks, "How risky is nuclear deterrence?" "Thousands of times riskier since my analysis shows it's on the order of 1,000 to 10,000 times riskier," he posits. He encourages the audience to do a Google search on "Hellman cryptography nuclear" to drill down into his current work, and also gave out the URL for his site, nuclearisk.org
He characterized the human race as possessing the physical powers of a god with the psyche of a 16 yr old boy. If we do not "grow up really fast and pay attention to risks before they become obvious," we face calamity beyond comprehension.
"Trial and error are not enough, we have to rely on forecasting ability." Hellman drew from the example of the current global financial crisis. There were repeated warnings about derivatives, he recounted; Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) in 1994, Brooksley Born of the CFTC in 1998, and Warren Buffet, who sounded the alarm about "financial weapons of mass destruction" in 2002.
Society, Hellman noted, never seems unable to recognize risks until it is too late, and he cited nuclear weapons proliferation, the economic crisis and data security as prime example.
"We risk being called Cassandras," he acknowledged, but exhorted the audience not to be dissuaded by this inevitability, because "Cassandra was always right." (CyLab CyBlog, 4-21-09)

On my way to the interview, I stopped by the Rodin Sculpture Garden at the university's Cantor Arts Center to stand before the great artist's Gates of Hell, and allow my mind to move above the writhing bodies which rise and fall like tumultuous waves within the masterpiece's imposing bronze frame.