The only real solution to avoid internet disasters is for individual countries to simply create the best possible infrastructure that allows them to prepare as well as they can for the upcoming internet hurricanes that are going to increase in ferocity and size – as is the case with the real ones, fuelled by climate change.
By having the most robust infrastructure possible countries will be better equipped to avoid the ‘too big to fail’ situation. Only when countries have such infrastructure in place will they be able to better protect themselves and manage issues such as security, privacy, reliability, redundancy, early detection and prevention, and so on.
Perhaps we have not yet reached this level of internet dependency, but all western countries around the world are now, for example, implementing e-health and smart grid systems. Again, all of these developments depend on what can be broadly called internet-based technologies. Now, imagine an ICT failure of the system. It is not too difficult to envisage what the result of disconnection would mean in such a situation. Some might argue that the internet is not the most critical infrastructure – what about electricity, and what about people dying because of a healthcare disaster? Nevertheless all future infrastructure will, in one way or another, depend upon the best possible underlying digital infrastructure.
The complexity of today’s society, and the economy associated with it, is such that we cannot do without the internet – and certainly not if we look a few years ahead.
That being so, shouldn’t the highest priority be placed on deploying the best possible infrastructure that allows us to minimise as much as possible the ‘too big to fail’ issue? The result of a ‘too big to fail’ event will, according to economists, lead to rapid government intervention, even a total takeover. Would it not be better to act now to prevent this from happening? There is no excuse not to do so as there are plenty of signs that the internet will eventually become a ‘too big to fail’ issue.
Those countries that are currently developing national fibre-to-the-home (FttH) infrastructure in combination with demand policies in relation to smart grids, healthcare, etc and IT infrastructure such as M2M, cloud computing, data analytics (big data) and data centres, will be best prepared to prevent the ‘too big to fail’ scenario.
All countries that fail to have a comprehensive (demand and supply) national digital infrastructure plan in place and choose to depend on technologies that have been adequate over the past 60 years (copper, coax, wireless) will have a significantly higher national risk factor and a much higher probability of ending up with a ‘too big to fail’ disaster.