Silent Software

In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. DDT was a Nobel-winning miracle chemical, sprayed everywhere. Carson showed it climbed the food chain, thinning eggshells of birds that never went near a field. Her title is the harm: a spring with no birdsong. The US banned it for agriculture ten years later.

Systemic harm was being designed into everyday products. Insecure software is no different: a defect travels the supply chain to people who never bought it, booked as a breach at the buyer, not a defect in the product.

Harm nobody counts looks like no harm at all.

Discussion prompts

• What systemic harms from insecure software are going undetected or unmeasured today?
• Who is paying the price for software insecurity?
• What would it take to make the hidden costs of insecure software as visible as DDT's effects became?