Tech’s Over-Reliance on the Internet Is a Preventable National Security Issue

Imagine this: the power is still on. The lights still work. Gas stations can pump fuel. You can drive to a store. Your local post office still sorts mail. Most local governments are operating. It’s not the apocalypse. It’s more like 1985.

Except for one thing: the internet is gone.

Not degraded. Not “temporarily down.” Gone — for days, maybe weeks. The cause is irrelevant: a cyberattack, a solar superstorm, a zero-day in BGP routing tables, a total AWS key management failure, or even the collapse of the mathematical assumptions behind encryption. It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: we built an entire civilization on the assumption that the internet is always available.

And that assumption is dangerous.

This Isn’t Sci-Fi. It’s Just Fragility.

This isn’t a prepper fantasy. It’s not about war, EMPs, or doomsday scenarios. It’s about brittleness.

We’ve digitized an astonishing amount of human knowledge, and connected our critical infrastructure to the cloud. That should be a triumph of resilience — the ability to bounce back faster, to distribute information more widely than ever before. But instead, it’s become a single point of failure.

A 2021 report from the World Economic Forum listed “cybersecurity failure” and “digital inequality” as key global risks (WEF Global Risks Report 2021). A 2022 solar flare caused a temporary radio blackout across parts of Asia and Australia, a reminder of our physical exposure (NOAA, 2022).

When we lose internet access, but not electricity, gas, or local governance, we’re left surrounded by screens that can’t help us. Computers we can’t set up. Phones we can’t update. A civilization that, paradoxically, knows everything but remembers nothing.

The Low-Cost Failures That Will Make Rebuilding Harder

The worst impacts are obvious: economic chaos, communication breakdown, and logistical paralysis. But here are the low-cost, easily preventable vulnerabilities that would slow recovery unnecessarily:

  • Who still owns a paper map?

  • Can your kids play the Switch game you bought without an online update?

  • Can you set up a new PC without internet?

  • Would Siri tell you how to perform CPR if offline?

  • Are there physical textbooks still accessible in your local school?

This isn’t about hoarding supplies. It’s about using what we already know, even without a connection.

We Had Offline First. We Gave It Up.

Once, we had everything offline:

  • Early PCs worked without networks.

  • Software updates came via floppy disks and CDs.

  • Encyclopedias, manuals, and maps lived on shelves.

Today:

  • You need a cloud account to activate a printer.

  • Movies you “buy” can be revoked.

  • Most smartphones demand Wi-Fi just to activate.

We’ve traded resilience for convenience, and now the entire digital economy depends on fragile links.

What We Should Do: Practical Proposals for Digital Resilience

Many of these changes are low-cost, high-value, and simple to implement:

1. Require Devices to Support Offline Setup and Updates

Devices should be able to:

  • Set up without an internet connection
  • Update from offline files
  • Export firmware for use on other versions

Example: If my PlayStation 5 is on version 37, and yours is on 32, and a game requires version 34 — I should be able to help update yours with mine.

2. App Stores Should Allow Signed Offline Installation

Developers should be able to:

  • Export signed, vetted app packages
  • Allow local installation on offline devices

This is not a security backdoor — it’s a resilience safeguard.

3. Preload Survival Knowledge on All Smartphones

All phones should include 10MB of emergency information offline:

  • CPR
  • Wound treatment
  • Water purification
  • Disaster preparedness

Phones are civilian safety devices. Let’s treat them like it.

4. Encourage Citizens to Become Digital Libraries

Incentivize users to store knowledge archives:

  • Wikipedia (~120GB)
  • Project Gutenberg (~90GB)
  • OpenStreetMap (~10GB)
  • CERT/FEMA survival guides

Proposal: Offer a $20 tax credit for self-certifying digital archival storage. Cost for 10M participants: ~$200M — just 0.03% of the U.S. defense budget (US DoD FY2024).

5. Protect Cultural Memory by Mandating Offline Access

Streaming services have deleted purchased content (e.g., Final Space, Willow), creating digital cultural erasure (The Verge, 2023).

We should:

  • Require physical/offline access to purchased digital media
  • Mandate public archival deposits for media created with tax credits

This isn’t anti-corporate. It’s pro-civilization.

Cultural Security Is National Security

We lost the original Apollo 11 moon landing tapes (NASA, 2006). We’ve lost games, shows, communities, and entire software ecosystems to online decay.

A major internet outage could cause parts of our cultural memory to simply disappear.

“Is it acceptable that we risk losing everything we know, just because a single vendor goes offline?”

Conclusion: Resilience is a Choice

We don’t need to abandon the internet. But we must stop assuming it will always be there.

  • Offline is resilient.

  • Local is durable.

  • Redundancy is preparedness.

“In an age where we can fit the sum of human knowledge in our pocket, it’s absurd that we risk losing it all with a DNS error.”

The internet is a miracle — but not a guarantee.

Let’s stop acting like it is.