Modern cybersecurity architecture begins with a curious assumption: trust is dangerous. Security frameworks associated with John Kindervag operate from a simple premise—no user, device, or system should be trusted merely because it appears familiar. Every request must be verified and every interaction authenticated. Anyone who has spent time working in cybersecurity eventually notices how easily trust assumptions … Continue reading The Ecology of Trust: What the Internet Teaches Us About Trust and Civilization
Three Paths Through the Same Question
For the past year this site has explored a number of overlapping themes—technology, trust, history, genealogy, and the strange ways information moves through human systems. As the archive grows, a clearer structure has started to emerge. Going forward, posts will generally follow a simple weekly rhythm. Technology and Trust Systems Sunday evenings will focus on … Continue reading Three Paths Through the Same Question
Information as a Weapon
Every semester in one of my cybersecurity courses, I assign my students a short article from 1997 titled Information as a Weapon1. After they finish reading it, I ask them a simple question: Is this article still relevant today? The reaction is usually predictable. The paper was written before social media, before ransomware gangs, before … Continue reading Information as a Weapon
Credentialed and Unprepared: Systems, Persistence, and the Slow Education of a Practitioner
Thomas Sowell once wrote: “There have always been ignorant people, but they haven't always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.1” I do not quote that comfortably. I teach at a … Continue reading Credentialed and Unprepared: Systems, Persistence, and the Slow Education of a Practitioner
Boundaries, Belonging, and the Meaning of Citizenship
The recent announcement that the Department of War will condition its support for Scouting America on the rollback of certain diversity initiatives has been framed as another chapter in the culture wars. Perhaps it is. But as I have watched the debate unfold, I have found myself less interested in the political skirmish and more … Continue reading Boundaries, Belonging, and the Meaning of Citizenship
What We Rename and What Remains
Names fascinate me because they promise clarity while quietly concealing continuity. A new label suggests a new reality, yet the older structure often remains intact beneath the paint. Watching institutions rename themselves feels a bit like standing on a riverbank; the surface moves quickly, but the current below keeps its direction. The renewed use of … Continue reading What We Rename and What Remains
When Xenos Becomes Polemios
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all1. This essay began, as many reflections do, not with an argument but with a voice. While listening to the audiobook of Heroes, narrated by Sir Stephen Fry himself, I was struck by how insistently Greek myth returns to the theme of hospitality—its obligations, its violations, … Continue reading When Xenos Becomes Polemios
