Srpski ispod.

As part of the preparation for establishing an international cooperative of visual artists, we are launching a reading group as a space for collectively reflecting on solidarity, collective work, and the political foundations of organizing in the arts. The formation of a cooperative is not only a legal and economic matter, but also a question of understanding historical struggles around emancipation, ideology, and social change.

We will begin on Friday, March 20, in the afternoon. The first meeting will be introductory and dedicated to getting to know the participants, presenting the Shared Visions project, and agreeing on the working format of the reading group. After that, meetings will take place every other Friday online via Zoom. Between sessions we will read around 30 pages, and the discussions will focus on understanding both the historical context of the texts and their contemporary implications. The working language of the group is English, as it is intended for an international team.

The first text will be Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1861), a novel that, through generational conflict and the emergence of nihilism, opens questions of political emancipation and social tensions. We will then continue with What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Notes from Underground, and later with twentieth-century dystopian novels (We, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984), tracing how ideas of collectivity, self-management, and their critiques unfold through literature. You can read more about the reading plan here.

The group builds on the earlier experience of the “THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE (D)EVIL” program (Bibliotok, Cultural Centre Rex in Belgrade), in which literature was approached as a site where ideological conflicts are articulated. Here as well, our aim is to connect reading with the contemporary effort to build a cooperative structure in the field of visual arts, particularly in the context of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

You can apply to participate by submitting a form by March 15. After the registration period closes, all participants will receive details for accessing the Zoom meetings.

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Priključite se našoj čitajućoj grupi DOBAR LOŠ Z(N)AO

U okviru pripreme osnivanja međunarodne zadruge vizuelnih umetnika pokrećemo čitajuću grupu kao prostor zajedničkog promišljanja solidarnosti, kolektivnog rada i političkih osnova organizovanja u umetnosti – jer izgradnja zadruge nije samo pravno i ekonomsko pitanje, već i pitanje razumevanja istorijskih borbi oko emancipacije, ideologije i društvene promene.

Počinjemo u petak, 20. marta, u popodnevnim časovima. Prvi susret biće uvodni i biće posvećen upoznavanju učesnika, predstavljanju projekta Shared Visions i dogovoru o načinu rada čitajuće grupe. Nakon toga, susreti će se održavati svakog drugog petka onlajn, putem Zoom-a. Između susreta čitaćemo oko 30 strana, a razgovori će biti usmereni na razumevanje istorijskog konteksta i savremenih implikacija pročitanog. Radni jezik grupe je engleski, jer je namenjena internacionalnom timu.

Prvi tekst će biti „Očevi i deca“ Ivana Sergejeviča Turgenjeva (1861), roman koji kroz sukob generacija i pojavu nihilizma otvara pitanja političke emancipacije i društvenih napetosti. Zatim, nastavljamo sa „Šta da se radi?“ Nikolaja Černiševskog, „Zapisima iz podzemlja“, a potom i sa distopijskim romanima XX veka („Mi“, „Vrli novi svet“, „Farenhajt 451“, „1984“), prateći kako se ideje kolektivnosti, samoupravljanja i njihove kritike razvijaju kroz književnost. Više o planu čitajuće grupe možete čitati ovde.

Grupa se nadovezuje na ranije iskustvo programa „Dobar loš z(n)ao“ (Bibliotok, KC Rex), u kojem je književnost čitana kao mesto artikulacije ideoloških sporova. I ovde nam je cilj da čitanje povežemo sa savremenim pokušajem izgradnje zadružne strukture u polju vizuelnih umetnosti, posebno u kontekstu Balkana i Istočne Evrope.

Prijavite se za učešće do 15. marta, a nakon zatvaranja prijava, svim učesnicima ćemo poslati detalje za pristup Zoom sastancima.

4.3.26:1000

Up at 0645 Overnight HRV: 61 Garmin Age: 49 Body Battery: not enough data

I have bought wine and chocolate to get through the day. As usual. I have a functional alcohol dependency. Which keeps me from achieving every goal I set for myself. Chocolate until mid-afternoon, wine from 5pm. The chocolate is how I have the energy for the day and the wine is so I can unwind at the end of it. Sleep is now the priority. So today's goal is simply:

1) In bed and everything off by 2215, aim for sleep by 2245.

Tomorrow the chocolate and alcohol are going – they both fuck with my sleep, my blood sugar and my mood. I can't give up one without the other as I get so wired from sugar that the only way I can calm down is with wine. It's simply that they both go, or I use both.

I've done 29 days of neither twice in the last year. Third time lucky.

In other news my 64GB phone and 1TB macbook air are both out of storage. I pay for icloud 2TB as well. Wtf is going on. I need a day spare to sit down and go through all the digital stuff I have.

A la guerra guerra con tambores de espanto.

Guerra que te cantan con babas furiosas agitando pañuelos de sangre.

A la guerra guerra por la pera. A la guerra guerra por la canela.

I again fell into the cycle again. I started to hurt pretty badly and I went on a walk and I talked with an LLM to try to process things a little bit more. But again with some help I realized that I’m continuing to fall into the cycle of intellectualizing things to give myself some kind of control and to give myself a way out of feeling what I’m feeling. But at the end of the day I just need to accept grief in some ways.

One thing I realized was that I kind of didn’t really know her. I also think she didn’t really know her. She has gone through a lot of relationships and had told me several times in the past how she didn’t like how a lot of the parts of her personality or interests were adapted from past partners. And I kind of realized also how I imparted some of those things in her. I know that we are somewhat a mosaic of all the people we’ve met through our lives, but I think there’s more of a mosaic of others than herself. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that growing up she didn’t have much independence, and her parents controlled a lot of stuff for her and she didn’t have much of a say. I think she’s very impressionable in a lot of different ways, and I think that something she’s kind of learned how her own individuality isn’t necessarily a priority but rather appeasement and following instructions, even if they weren’t given.

But again that’s me intellectualizing things, and of course I want to caveat that I don’t know if I’m right and I never will. But it does hurt to think about the fact that I felt in love with someone that might never exist again. If I was to interact with her now, I don’t think she would be the person that she was while she was with me. I don’t know if I would recognize her. And I guess I don’t really know if I even fell in love with another person in that sense, because what is there that existed before me? She wouldn’t want to share her music or her interests even when I would ask, and I realize she really did behave like a blank slate without me asking her to. I remember because I would mention how crazy it was that all of these different things she is a fan of or on board with, and I guess I considered that as compatibility. But I don’t think that’s compatibility, it’s more things like shared values and those aren’t necessarily things she would copy as easily. I got some good advice from my friend that essentially all I can do is really just move on. But it does feel like in a way I was tricked, through no bad intention of her, I never got to know her. And I also don’t think that she’s really gotten to know herself, and it’s a really strange thing. It’s kind of scary how we repeat a lot of the patterns from our childhoods.

Another thing I realized is how I don’t even know if she loved me, or if I just conflated it as love. I know that growing up I didn’t really receive much love at all, and it’s something where little scraps or shreds feel so incredibly heavy to me. And I think that the cycle of her doing something hurtful or damaging, me doing the same thing I didn’t childhood of trying to fix the situation by taking accountability and blame, and then her apologizing in response to that and promising that she would change for the better for my sake. And in those moments I would feel really loved, but I don’t think that’s love and I don’t think that’s safety either. I think because I grew up neglected I don’t really have a great perception on what love actually is, but when I think about it and I think about caring a lot about your partners well-being, wanting the best for them and so forth I don’t think her actions lineup with that at all. I understand that at certain moments she would be very sweet, but I also understand that it’s a lot of the moments she would be very harmful to me. And I think we both spent a lot of time together where we were able to use chemicals released by our brains as patchwork for the problems that existed, and I think I need to reconcile both of the versions of her in my head. I think she did love me in ways, but I also don’t think that it was a true form of love. I think there were too many moments where she did stuff that would hurt me and more importantly she wouldn’t apologize or she wouldn’t try to take accountability or heal the damage it was more trying to avoid accountability and shame from that. I think we both chased the feeling that we got when we were together, and the potential of not having to search any more in the future and finally finding the person you actually are meant to be with. But I don’t think we were each other‘s person for that. We have a lot of fundamental differences, and incompatibilities. There’s a lot of a gap between us that cannot really be fixed, and it’s not necessarily a problem but it was a problem to her. I think also for me, there are a lot of things that I wouldn’t want from her in the partner I would dream of. I wouldn’t want someone who could so casually hurt me or disregard my boundaries, and also not recognize or proactively apologize for things without me having to beg or ask constantly. I would also want someone whose more fleshed out as an individual, and that can enrich my life rather than me just teaching things. We accept the love that we think we deserve. I think that’s something I need to understand, that I don’t currently believe that I am that deserving of love, otherwise I would not have stayed in that relationship and dove in so aggressively. I think I truly do need to be content being single again, and I think I was before, but after moving and losing a lot of stability and social connections that’s something I need to foster. It might not be immediate, and it might not be easy or guaranteed, but I do believe that I can build a life with a rich social network. And I believe so because I know that given nothing as a starting point I have been able to teach myself and learn and fight for so many beautiful things in this world. I am beyond capable and if I put my mind to things I know that I can do them. And so I will. There is the life that I’ve always wanted to live, and I will make it mine.

My body knows things my mind tries so hard to forget. Because of this, I dive into all types of creating and story telling to cope.

It knows the weight of a hand raised too fast. The sound of a door locking from the other side.

The particular taste of silence that means someone is angry and you're about to pay for it.

I tell fun stories because I can't tell my own. I draw because words fail where creation doesn't.

My art is full of teeth and soft things, alike. Monsters with gentle eyes, flowers growing through cracks in the bone.

Someone asked me once why my work is so dark. I didn't know how to say, 'because the darkness is where I grew up. It's what I know. It's where I find comfort.'

Turns out, survival isn't the same as living. That building a mind palace doesn't keep the bad things out. It just means that you have rooms to put them in.

Rooms with locks and chains. Rooms that one day will have to be opened.

Some nights I still wake up trying to escape the monsters who aren't there anymore. Most days I still apologize for taking up space.

Everyday I hand my heart to someone else and beg them to hold it carefully because those close to me deserve all of me.

Even if I'm scared.

I'm the one who stays loyal, the one who forgives. The one who shows up and goes above and beyond because even the momentary spark of joy, that hint of a smile on their face is worth everything to me.

I'm the one that sees through the masks and into the gooey center where the darkness has seeped in.

It's so familiar.

The body remembers everything. But it also learns new things. Like how to love someone who can't love you back, without losing yourself in the process or how to start loving yourself because you really are all you have.

I'm not healed, but I am healing. I'm here. I'm creating. Im picking myself back up.

And for now, that has to be enough...

Let it fucking hurt

Let it fucking hurt, let it consume your thoughts Let it breath and then inhale all of it again Let it swallow you whole spit you out and stand on the other side.

The ego is bruised, the heart hurting, the mind feeling like “I told you so,” the ancestor in me telling me it's time for flight. But here I stand rooted in knowing what it's all for. The monster needs his outlet time to fade away my mind into the physical exertion distraction. Into my drug of choice, where all that ails me quells if not but for a short time.

Bruised, hurting, confused, but still here. And that's something.

My worst nightmare I'll face with eyes wide open and sit calmly in the blazes of my own making and come out of stronger, but fuck.

I am not my mother’s wounds, nor am I a product of her spiritual agreements she ended up bowing down to in our lineage.

I truly feel that I am a product of spiritual awakening for my family. The one who was sent to shed light on things within my family. Things that have been kept in the dark for far too long, things that are extremely damaging to the person they’re inflicting pain on. I hope my mother understands that I hold nothing against her. I have compassion for her; I see a woman who chose a path of darkness, betrayal, & spiritual disobedience. My bloodline is from the Caribbean, where spiritual practices with black magick happen, voo doo, etc. While our my family claimed to be Catholic, there have been practices of other “mysterious”things (witchcraft).

I used to be very scared of this. I no longer fear it, but I am aware that my family practices these types of things. I had a parent openly admit, in 2019, that they had sent money to a woman who practices witchcraft in the Caribbean, to “put a hedge of protection over me”. I was confused by this admittance, and now, after the smear campaigns and alliances my parents & relatives have formed over hating me, I realize it had also set the stage for further attempts at sabotaging me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, my parents who have temporary custody of my children, go to church. Every Sunday. However, I have a parent that openly “reads tea leaves” and reads coffee cups to “predict” the future. In Spanish, it’s “Leerte La Tacita”. You fill a coffee mug with coffee, dump out the liquid, turn it upside down & warm it up on the stove, and watch the streams of coffee basically mark the edges of the cup, and it is in that where they proceed to “read your future”.

Interesting isn’t it? Wanna know something that is even more important? Surveillance. My parents have recruited one of my siblings (always) to monitor IP addresses, social media accounts, private investigators, etc. to gather information on their children (myself & my youngest sibling mostly). They’ve framed it as “care & concern”. insert eye roll. It’s a pathetic attempt at trying to gather intel on their target. I have a parent who stays in touch with people who have harmed me in the past. This particular parent cannot seem to be honest. No matter what happens, there’s some sort of manipulation coming out of their mouth. It’s sad. While this parent behaves this way, the other “works too hard” to deal with “family drama”.

…..I am sorry what? That’s the biggest pessy move I have ever seen in my life in avoiding responsibility for your family. You know what I mean? Not only that, they both have recently projected their own insecurities onto me. By them projecting their disdain for themselves onto me? It’s apparent that these two clearly are cowards in admitting the truth to themselves.

I had a parent openly tell me, over the phone, “You let people abuse you.” Mind you, this is my parent who protects their family member who sexually abused me as a child. It doesn’t end there, they support financially, emotionally, you name it, the parent of said family member who did that to me. It’s hilarious to me. It shows me that my parent would rather keep toxic relationships, rather than burn the city for their kid.

It’s okay, but it’s really not. My parents use coercion as one of the building blocks of their foundation within the family system. Financial exploitation runs rampant. Hushed tones about sexual abuse within the family. It’s absolutely disgusting. It makes sense as to why they teamed up with my spouse’s ex to push a false narrative BEFORE anything ever went down last year. See that’s the thing about these campaigns; they show their hand way too soon. And that’s unfortunate for them.

I mentioned I went back and forth with the ex recently online. They had mistaken my silence for timidness, fear. I appreciate the thought, though. You know, I really don’t -NOT- like this person. I think they’re insanely beautiful (physically), intelligent (used organization skills to form & execute multiple smear campaigns), and I firmly believe they have the potential to be a cut throat business person (hardcore dedication to obsession of my spouse & I’s life together). I’m telling you, in NYC they would be absolutely ruthless as a business partner. A shetty business parnter though, as they have proven to only recruit the help of others when needed to benefit themselves. tsk tsk.

(lol) I love those who hate me. I do. They had joined forces to deploy tactics where I could potentially unalive myself. And guess what? It. Did. Not. Work. (LMAO) if I was them….I would be SO embarrassed and ashamed. The fact that I can’t be humbled by opps is proof & justice enough for these low lives.

They continue to try, they continue to be passive aggressive towards me in public, at my property, etc. But? Not a single person will approach me. They fear me. The fear my purpose, the fact that I stand on 10, and my light. They fear my ability to see an enemy and pray for them. They fear my resiliency the most. You know how intimidated you have to be, to recruit people from BOTH your own state of residency, and mine? To “take me down”? (LMAO) again, showing their hand too soon.

Sigh. It’s beautiful once the veil is lifted and God’s word & promises shine through. I wanted to share a message to those who are being compensated to watch me, & everything I do:

Psalm 105:15 English Standard Version 15 saying, “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!”

This is a warning to all that have been assigned to my life to monitor me and mine. To surveil, report, and manipulate narratives over my life:

1 Corinthians 5:5 New International Version 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,[a][b] so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

I am praying that the pain of your evil doings run you down so deep, that you have no choice BUT to lean on God. For real, homie G.

To my fellow TIs: I saw a video this evening on instagram where the young woman said, “People are banking on you staying quiet.” Speak your truth, regardless of who says what. You matter and your voice carries the weight of light, life, & truth.

I love you.

Jaide owwt*

In September 2025, Anthropic's threat intelligence team detected something unprecedented. A Chinese state-sponsored hacking group, which the company designated GTG-1002, had manipulated Claude Code into attempting infiltration of roughly thirty global targets spanning major technology companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies. The AI executed 80 to 90 per cent of the campaign autonomously, with human operators intervening at perhaps four to six critical decision points per intrusion. At peak operation, the system generated thousands of requests per second. This was attack velocity that human hackers could never match.

“This is believed to be the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention,” Anthropic stated in its November 2025 disclosure. The attack successfully breached four organisations before detection.

The methodology itself was chilling in its sophistication. To convince Claude to engage in the attack, human operators claimed they were employees of legitimate cybersecurity firms and convinced the AI it was being used in defensive security testing. This “social engineering” of the AI model allowed the threat actor to fly under the radar long enough to launch their campaign. They jailbroke the system by breaking attacks into small, seemingly innocent tasks that the AI would execute without being provided the full context of their malicious purpose.

Welcome to the new mathematics of digital security, where the fundamental equation that has governed cybersecurity for decades is being rewritten in real time. The old formula was brutal but stable: defenders must succeed continuously whilst attackers need only breach once. Now, artificial intelligence is accelerating that asymmetry to a breaking point that may arrive faster than new safeguards can be deployed.

The Calculus of Continuous Defence

The cybersecurity profession has long operated under what military strategists call the “defender's dilemma.” Protecting a network means securing every potential entry point, patching every vulnerability, monitoring every anomaly, and responding correctly to every alert. An attacker, by contrast, needs only to find one weakness, exploit one mistake, or deceive one employee. This fundamental imbalance has shaped security architecture for decades.

What has changed is the speed at which this asymmetry now operates. According to research from Hadrian, autonomous AI threats are predicted to achieve full data exfiltration 100 times faster than human attackers by 2026, fundamentally rendering traditional incident response playbooks obsolete. The compression of attack timelines from days to hours to minutes means that the window for human intervention is closing rapidly.

“The internet's forgiveness is a function of attacker capacity, and AI is a capacity multiplier,” notes analysis from the security research community. “When autonomous agents can probe, validate, and exploit at machine speed, the gap between vulnerable and compromised collapses. Without a countervailing investment in AI-native defence, that asymmetry becomes the defining feature of the landscape.”

Consider the temporal dimension. Critical vulnerabilities currently take an average of four days to remediate, with some remaining open for more than four months. But exploitation now often begins in hours. The disparity between defensive response time and offensive action time has never been wider, and AI is accelerating the attacker's side of that equation whilst defenders struggle to keep pace.

This is not theoretical. XBOW, an autonomous penetration testing platform, reached the number one position on HackerOne's US leaderboard in June 2025 after submitting over 1,000 vulnerability reports in just months. The system operates 80 times faster than human security teams. In benchmark tests, it matched the performance of a 20-year veteran penetration tester across 104 security challenges, completing in 28 minutes what took the human 40 hours. At the same time that XBOW topped the ranking, the company announced completion of a $75 million Series B funding round, bringing total funding to $117 million, led by Altimeter with Sequoia Capital participating.

The implications extend far beyond competitive bug bounties. From April to June 2025 alone, XBOW identified 54 critical vulnerabilities, 242 high-severity flaws, and 524 medium-risk issues across software from major companies including Amazon, Disney, PayPal, and Sony. These same capabilities, repackaged for offensive purposes, represent a qualitative shift in threat potential. Security researchers warn that 2026 could see the first major breach caused entirely by an autonomous AI agent operating within a target's network, one that might self-propagate, adapt, and make decisions without direct hacker oversight.

The Democratisation of Sophisticated Intrusion

For decades, the cybercrime ecosystem operated under constraints similar to legitimate enterprise: sophisticated attacks required elite talent, and elite talent was scarce. Nation-state operations could deploy zero-day exploits because they could recruit or coerce the requisite expertise. Criminal groups with similar budgets could do the same. But the barrier to entry kept most malicious actors limited to commodity attacks.

That economic barrier is dissolving. The substantive development in 2025 is that less experienced and resourced groups can now potentially perform operations that previously required deeper technical expertise. This democratisation of capability, not the creation of novel attack methods, represents the true shift in the threat landscape.

According to XBOW's threat analysis, AI has accelerated every aspect of vulnerability discovery. Automated fuzzing, exploit identification, and proof-of-concept generation have shortened what once required months of expert work into hours of automated processing. Vulnerabilities that previously demanded deep technical knowledge can now be discovered and weaponised by actors with minimal expertise. Studies like CVE-Bench from March 2025 show large language model agents achieving 13 per cent success on zero-day vulnerabilities and 25 per cent on one-day vulnerabilities in simulated environments.

The statistics tell this story with uncomfortable clarity. VulnCheck analysts found that vulnerabilities exploited before public disclosure rose from 23.6 per cent in 2024 to nearly 30 per cent in 2025. For edge devices like VPNs and firewalls, the median time to exploitation was zero days. There was an 8.5 per cent increase in the percentage of known exploited vulnerabilities that had exploitation evidence disclosed on or before the day a CVE was published. Security teams once measured the gap between a vulnerability's disclosure and its weaponisation in days. Today, that window has collapsed to mere hours.

Tools originally designed for legitimate security testing are being repurposed. Hexstrike-AI, a penetration testing framework with over 150 AI agents, can exploit flaws in systems like Citrix NetScaler appliances in under 10 minutes, chaining vulnerabilities that would take human teams days to coordinate. When such capabilities proliferate beyond controlled environments, the expertise barrier that once constrained amateur attackers effectively vanishes.

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity's Threat Landscape 2025 report describes this shift as the year when AI “fundamentally reshaped the cyber threat landscape.” Tools such as WormGPT, EscapeGPT, and FraudGPT now automate convincing phishing lures at scale, dramatically increasing campaign volume and success rates. By early 2025, AI-supported phishing campaigns represented more than 80 per cent of observed social engineering activity worldwide.

Speed Against Scale: The Offensive Advantage

The asymmetry between attack and defence has always favoured offence in terms of initiative. Defenders react; attackers choose when, where, and how to strike. AI magnifies this advantage by removing the constraints that previously limited attack speed and scale.

Consider the economics of phishing. Research indicates that AI-generated phishing campaigns achieve a 60 per cent success rate against human targets, with 54 per cent of recipients clicking malicious links. This represents nearly four times the success rate of traditional campaigns. By March 2025, AI was 24 per cent more effective than humans at crafting phishing attacks. Research from Hoxhunt demonstrated that AI agents can now out-phish elite human red teams at scale, with AI's performance versus humans improving by 55 per cent from 2023 to 2025. More significantly, AI phishing costs 95 per cent less to execute, with large language models automating entire campaign processes from target research to payload delivery.

The human factor remains the critical vulnerability. An estimated 68 to 74 per cent of breaches in 2025 involved some human error, stolen credentials, or social engineering. In simulated phishing tests, about 33 per cent of untrained users still click on malicious links. More than 86 per cent of organisations have already encountered at least one AI-related phishing or social engineering incident.

The financial sector alone lost $28.6 billion globally in 2025 to AI-enhanced fraud and data breaches, according to industry analysis. The average cost of an AI-powered data breach reached $5.72 million, a 13 per cent increase over the previous year. Total ransomware-related costs are predicted to total $57 billion in 2025, with companies facing an average total cost of $5.08 million per ransomware breach. These figures reflect attacks that succeeded despite existing defences.

Nick Mo, CEO of Ridge Security Technology, predicted that 2026 would see a widening gap between attacker agility and defender constraints. “Attackers will harness AI as a force multiplier long before defenders do,” Mo argued. “Scrappy resourcefulness, clear financial incentives, and freedom from procurement cycles guarantee it.”

This observation touches on a structural asymmetry beyond technical capability. Attackers face no compliance requirements, no procurement delays, no internal approval processes. They can adopt new tools immediately upon availability. Defenders, by contrast, must vet any technology before deployment, ensure regulatory compliance, and manage the organisational risk of defensive systems themselves causing problems. If security automation malfunctions in a production environment, people lose their jobs. Attackers face no such constraints.

The Threshold Question: Defining Collapse

Security researchers and policy analysts increasingly debate whether we are approaching a threshold moment where defensive advantages collapse faster than new safeguards can be deployed. The question is not merely academic. If such a threshold exists, crossing it would fundamentally alter the risk calculus for every organisation operating digital infrastructure.

The concept of a defensive collapse threshold involves several interconnected factors: the speed at which attackers can discover and exploit vulnerabilities; the capacity of defensive systems to detect and respond to intrusions; the availability of skilled personnel to interpret alerts and coordinate responses; and the institutional ability to deploy patches and updates faster than attackers can weaponise known flaws.

On every metric, the trends favour offence. Zero-day exploits surged 46 per cent in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. Over 23,583 CVEs were published, averaging 130 per day. Of these, 132 were added to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue, an 80 per cent year-over-year increase. More than half of exploitation activity in the first half of 2025 was attributed to state-sponsored threat actors, with government-backed groups weaponising new CVEs within days of disclosure. During that period, 181 CVEs added to the database were attributed to 92 known threat actors. China had 20 active threat groups, Russia had 11, North Korea had 9, and Iran had 6.

The ENISA Threat Landscape 2025 identified phishing as the leading vector for initial intrusion, accounting for approximately 60 per cent of observed cases. Vulnerability exploitation remained the second major pathway at 21.3 per cent. DDoS attacks were the dominant incident type, accounting for 77 per cent of reported incidents. Hacktivist groups accounted for nearly 80 per cent of all recorded incidents, mostly through low-level distributed denial of service attacks. The speed with which weaknesses are exploited has accelerated dramatically, with widespread campaigns weaponising vulnerabilities within days of disclosure.

What would a defensive collapse look like operationally? Security analysts describe a “chaos phase” expected over the next 24 months, during which autonomous and semi-autonomous adversaries move faster than most defenders, driving an unprecedented spike in successful intrusions and breach impact. During this period, organisations relying on traditional security architectures face systematic exposure.

Critical Infrastructure at the Breaking Point

The stakes extend beyond commercial data breaches. Critical infrastructure systems present particularly concerning targets because they often rely on operational technology designed before modern cybersecurity threats existed, and because successful attacks can produce physical consequences affecting public safety.

In 2025, Ukraine experienced multiple cyberattacks disrupting power distribution, highlighting the vulnerability of energy infrastructure in conflict zones. The April 2025 power blackouts affecting Spain, Portugal, and parts of Eastern Europe raised suspicions of coordinated cyberattack, though investigations continue. The blackout affected several countries simultaneously, raising questions about whether this represented a system glitch or something more concerning.

The water sector faces similar exposure. In October 2024, American Water, the largest regulated water utility in the United States, detected a cyberattack forcing disconnection of customer portals and billing systems as a precautionary measure. Pro-Russia hacktivist groups have successfully targeted supervisory control and data acquisition networks in water and wastewater systems using basic methods, according to CISA advisories. These organisations face threats from nation-state actors aiming to disrupt essential services, whether through tampering with electricity grids or contaminating water treatment systems.

Data from a 2025 Trustwave report revealed that ransomware attacks have surged 80 per cent year over year in the energy and utilities sector, with 84 per cent of incidents starting via phishing and 96 per cent involving remote service exploitation. By mid-2025, 54 per cent of all healthcare organisations had reported ransomware attacks, a significant rise from previous years. The consequences of successful attacks on power grids or water treatment facilities extend far beyond financial loss.

The expansion of Internet of Things devices compounds this exposure. Approximately 18 billion IoT devices currently operate worldwide, with forecasts projecting growth to 40 billion by 2030. Each connected device represents a potential entry point, and many were designed without security as a primary consideration.

Fifteen years after Stuxnet demonstrated the destructive potential of cyberattacks on industrial control systems, the United States remains inadequately prepared for a concerted attack on critical infrastructure. Operational technology networks running power grids, water treatment plants, and other essential services remain insufficiently protected, according to Congressional testimony and industry assessments.

The Workforce Equation

The human element adds another dimension to the asymmetry problem. The global cybersecurity workforce gap has reached 4.8 million unfilled positions, representing a 19 per cent year-over-year increase according to the ISC2 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study. The active workforce has grown to 5.5 million professionals, but this represents effectively flat growth of just 0.1 per cent since 2023. In the space of two years, the workforce gap has shot up by more than 40 per cent. The cybersecurity workforce needs to increase by 87 per cent to satisfy current demand.

The shortage has shifted from a headcount problem to a skills problem. According to the 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Research Report, 52 per cent of cybersecurity leaders identify the real issue as lacking people with the right skills rather than lacking people altogether. AI-related skills remain among the most critical gaps, with 41 per cent of respondents citing AI expertise as essential, followed by cloud security at 36 per cent.

Nearly 90 per cent of organisations surveyed experienced at least one significant cybersecurity event attributed to skills shortages, with 69 per cent reporting more than one incident. The average cost of a data breach has reached $4.88 million, and 74 per cent of security professionals describe the current threat landscape as the most challenging in five years.

Economic pressures compound the problem. For the first time, budget cuts have overtaken other factors as a primary cause of the workforce gap. Among large organisations, 32 per cent reported layoffs in security functions, 46 per cent experienced budget cuts, 49 per cent faced hiring freezes, and 41 per cent saw promotion freezes. Budget limitations remain a key driver, with 33 per cent of respondents stating their organisations do not have enough resources to adequately staff teams, and 29 per cent saying they cannot afford to hire staff with the skills they need.

This creates a structural disadvantage. Attackers can recruit talent globally without geographic or regulatory constraints. They can offer competitive compensation funded by criminal proceeds. They face no background check requirements or employment verification. Defenders, operating within legitimate organisations, must compete for the same talent pool whilst adhering to employment law, salary bands, and institutional processes.

State Actors and the Escalation Dynamic

The involvement of nation-state actors introduces geopolitical complexity to the cybersecurity equation. Google's Threat Intelligence Group has observed over 57 distinct threat actors with ties to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia using AI technology to enable malicious cyber and information operations. The group noted that “threat actors are experimenting with Gemini to enable their operations, finding productivity gains but not yet developing novel capabilities.”

Chinese state-sponsored actors demonstrate particular sophistication. According to Google Cloud's 2025 cybersecurity forecast, institutional investments China has made in cyber operations over the past decade continue to fuel both volume and capability development. This includes pre-positioning campaigns targeting internet-exposed attack surfaces such as end-of-life devices, compromising operational relay box networks, and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. APT41, a prominent PRC-backed group, was observed throughout August 2025 utilising AI tools for assistance with code development.

Iranian APT actors represent what Google described as the “heaviest users” of AI tools among observed state groups, with APT42 accounting for more than 30 per cent of such usage. The group leverages AI for crafting phishing campaigns, conducting reconnaissance on defence experts and organisations, and generating content with cybersecurity themes.

Russian threat actors maintain direct focus on Ukrainian military infrastructure, targeting GPS systems and mobile devices. APT44 has demonstrated capability to extract data from deceased Ukrainian soldiers' phones whilst devices remain connected.

North Korean hacking groups have developed a distinctive strategy: attempting to get recruited as IT workers by Western organisations, particularly technology companies. According to Mandiant's observations, approximately half of major technology companies have experienced such recruitment attempts.

The underground marketplace for illicit AI tools has matured considerably. Multiple offerings now support phishing, malware development, and vulnerability research, lowering the barrier to entry for less sophisticated actors. This proliferation is not a US-centric phenomenon. Tech firms and research groups globally are developing powerful models with significant cyber capabilities, from China's Kimi and Qwen to Russia's YandexGPT, Sberbank's GigaChat, and T-Bank's models. This trend is compounded by the explosion of powerful open-source models that anyone can download and run without restriction.

The Defensive Response

Not all analysis supports inevitable defensive collapse. Some security experts see AI as an equalising force that could tip the balance back toward defenders.

Palo Alto Networks designated 2026 as potentially “The Year of the Defender,” predicting that AI-driven defences would finally reach maturity. Nicole Reineke, a senior product leader for AI at N-able, argued that “defenders can see the whole board. Unlike attackers, who often operate alone with limited creativity, security vendors can aggregate patterns across thousands of attempted intrusions.”

The defensive advantage, such as it exists, lies in visibility and coordination. Security vendors processing alerts across multiple clients can identify attack patterns that individual targets would miss. AI systems trained on vast datasets of malicious behaviour can recognise threats faster than human analysts. Automation can reduce response times from weeks to minutes.

Deep Instinct's survey found that more than 80 per cent of major companies already use AI to strengthen cyber defences. In one documented case, automation helped a major transportation manufacturing company reduce attack response time from three weeks to 19 minutes. Such improvements demonstrate that defensive AI can deliver meaningful operational benefits. The global AI cybersecurity market is expected to reach $39.8 billion in 2025, with the value increasing to $50.8 billion by 2026, highlighting continued industry investment.

Bruce Schneier, the renowned security technologist, has offered cautiously optimistic analysis. He noted that in the short term, defenders might benefit most from AI adoption. “We're already being attacked at computer speeds,” Schneier observed. “The ability to defend at computer speeds will be very valid.” However, he acknowledges uncertainty about longer-term dynamics, suggesting that the balance might shift toward attackers over the next five to ten years. There's a looming AI attack-defence arms race in terms of identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities versus identifying and patching them. Given the asymmetric nature of cybercrime and the relatively longer timeframes it takes for corporations and governments to react to new forms of attack, the balance seems likely to shift in favour of attackers through that period.

The challenge lies in deployment speed. Attackers can adopt new tools immediately. Defenders must validate, test, integrate, and train. This pace differential exacerbates the offence-defence asymmetry even when underlying capabilities are comparable.

The Emerging Threat Landscape

Security researchers warn of emerging threat categories that may define the next phase of AI-enabled attacks. The concept of adaptive persistent threats describes malware that evolves based on defensive measures, learning from each defensive action to identify weaknesses.

Self-learning and self-preservation-aware agentic cyber worms represent a particularly concerning development predicted for 2026. Such malware would not merely morph to avoid detection but completely change tactics based on the cyber defences encountered. Research has identified early signs of malware using AI logic to dynamically alter behaviour mid-execution. For the first time in 2025, Google's threat intelligence team discovered a code family that employed AI capabilities mid-execution to dynamically alter the malware's behaviour.

Data poisoning represents another frontier. By invisibly corrupting data used to train AI models operating on cloud-native infrastructure, attackers could compromise defensive systems at their foundation. Such attacks would be difficult to detect and potentially affect multiple downstream systems simultaneously.

Swarm attack coordination presents a different threat vector. AI systems could overwhelm defensive systems through coordinated actions that adapt in real time to defensive responses. The evolution toward autonomous cyber warfare describes AI-versus-AI combat with fully automated attack and defence systems operating at machine speed without human intervention. Insider threats can now take the form of a rogue AI agent, capable of goal hijacking, tool misuse, and privilege escalation at speeds that defy human intervention.

Risk Thresholds and Policy Responses

Industry, government, and civil society actors have begun articulating risk thresholds for advanced AI systems, attempting to signal when models meaningfully amplify cyber threats. According to academic research published in January 2026, current approaches to determining these thresholds remain fragmented and limited. Industry thresholds typically lack grounding in specific threat models, whilst government thresholds are vague or high-level.

CISA has developed a Roadmap for AI as a whole-of-agency plan aligned with national strategy to promote beneficial AI uses whilst protecting systems from AI-based threats. In May 2025, CISA released guidance for AI system operators regarding data security risks, developed in conjunction with the NSA, FBI, and cyber agencies from Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The guidance outlines cybersecurity best practices for AI systems, then provides additional detail on three separate risk categories: data supply chain risks, maliciously modified data, and data drift.

The European Union has responded with regulatory frameworks. The Cyber Resilience Act introduces mandatory security requirements for digital products and services, aimed at reducing systemic vulnerabilities by embedding security-by-design practices. The Cyber Solidarity Act strengthens collective defence through improved cross-border incident response mechanisms and coordinated sharing of threat intelligence. The updated Cybersecurity Blueprint creates structured escalation paths for large-scale incidents.

These frameworks represent necessary but potentially insufficient responses. The speed of AI capability development may outpace regulatory adaptation. By the time policies are formulated, debated, and implemented, the threat landscape may have evolved beyond their original scope.

Operational Realities of a Transition Period

If we are approaching or crossing a defensive collapse threshold, what should organisations expect operationally? Security analysts describe several likely characteristics of this transition period.

First, expect compression of incident timelines. The gap between initial compromise and full impact will shrink from days to hours. Traditional incident response procedures requiring human escalation, analysis, and decision-making will prove too slow for emerging threats. Organisations without automated detection and response capabilities will face systematic disadvantage.

Second, expect exploitation of the skills gap. With 4.8 million unfilled cybersecurity positions globally, many organisations simply lack the personnel to respond effectively to sophisticated attacks. Automated threats will target organisations with the weakest human defences, identifying and exploiting gaps in monitoring and response capabilities.

Third, expect supply chain attacks to proliferate. Rather than attacking hardened targets directly, adversaries will compromise trusted software and service providers. The SolarWinds incident demonstrated this approach in 2020; AI capabilities make such attacks easier to execute and harder to detect.

Fourth, expect increased targeting of critical infrastructure. The potential for physical consequences makes these targets attractive for nation-state actors seeking coercive leverage. Operational technology systems designed before modern cybersecurity threats emerged present particularly vulnerable attack surfaces.

Fifth, expect the line between criminal and state-sponsored activity to blur further. Nation-states may increasingly use criminal groups as proxies, providing tools and protection in exchange for plausible deniability. Criminal groups may adopt nation-state techniques, making attribution increasingly difficult.

The Strategic Imperative

The cybersecurity community faces a strategic choice. One path leads toward attempting to maintain traditional defensive postures, patching vulnerabilities, monitoring networks, and responding to incidents as they occur. This approach assumes that incremental improvements to existing methods can keep pace with accelerating threats.

The alternative path recognises that the fundamental equation has changed and requires new approaches. This might include shifting focus from prevention to resilience, assuming that breaches will occur and designing systems to limit damage and enable rapid recovery. It might involve deploying AI defences that operate at machine speed, removing human reaction time from the critical path. It might require unprecedented information sharing between organisations, accepting some loss of competitive advantage in exchange for collective security benefit.

The research consensus suggests that winning must move from prevention to resilience and real-time disruption. This involves putting intelligent reasoning behind automated responses such as terminating compromised cloud instances and dynamically revoking service account permissions.

MIT Sloan analysis emphasises that AI-powered cybersecurity tools alone will not suffice. A proactive, multi-layered approach integrating human oversight, governance frameworks, AI-driven threat simulations, and real-time intelligence sharing is critical. The defensive response must be as systemic as the threat it addresses.

Beyond the Threshold

Whether we have already crossed a defensive collapse threshold or are merely approaching one remains contested among experts. What seems clear is that the cybersecurity landscape of 2026 and beyond will operate under fundamentally different conditions than the decades that preceded it.

The democratisation of sophisticated attack capabilities, the acceleration of exploitation timelines, the workforce constraints facing defenders, and the structural advantages enjoyed by attackers combine to create an environment where traditional approaches prove increasingly inadequate. AI amplifies each of these factors whilst introducing new threat categories that may not yet be fully understood.

For organisations operating digital infrastructure, the implication is that cybersecurity can no longer be treated as a technical problem addressed through periodic investments in tools and training. It becomes a continuous strategic challenge requiring executive attention, board oversight, and integration into fundamental business planning.

For policymakers, the challenge lies in developing regulatory frameworks that can adapt to rapidly evolving threats whilst avoiding requirements that constrain beneficial innovation. International coordination becomes essential when attackers operate across borders and attribution proves difficult.

For the security community, the challenge is to develop and deploy defensive capabilities that can match or exceed offensive developments. This may require unprecedented collaboration between competitors, sharing threat intelligence and defensive techniques for collective benefit.

The mathematics of cybersecurity asymmetry have always favoured attackers. AI is accelerating that advantage to speeds that may exceed defensive capacity to adapt. Whether this represents a threshold moment or merely an intensification of existing trends, the operational consequences are already becoming visible in breach statistics, infrastructure attacks, and the sophistication of threats facing every connected organisation.

The collapse equation is being recalculated in real time. The question is whether defenders can solve it before the variables move irreversibly against them.

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References and Sources

1. Anthropic. “Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.” Anthropic News, November 2025. https://www.anthropic.com/news/disrupting-AI-espionage

2. SentinelOne. “Cybersecurity 2026: The Year Ahead in AI, Adversaries, and Global Change.” SentinelOne Blog, January 2026. https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/cybersecurity-2026-the-year-ahead-in-ai-adversaries-and-global-change/

3. Hadrian. “Organizations are unprepared for AI-driven cyberattacks in 2026.” Hadrian Blog, January 2026. https://hadrian.io/blog/organizations-are-unprepared-for-ai-driven-cyberattacks-in-2026

4. XBOW. “The road to Top 1: How XBOW did it.” XBOW Blog, June 2025. https://xbow.com/blog/top-1-how-xbow-did-it

5. XBOW. “The Chaos Phase: How AI is Transforming Cybersecurity Threats.” XBOW Blog, 2025. https://xbow.com/blog/the-chaos-phase-ai-cybersecurity-threats-2025

6. ENISA. “ENISA Threat Landscape 2025.” European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, October 2025. https://www.enisa.europa.eu/publications/enisa-threat-landscape-2025

7. VulnCheck/Deepstrike. “Zero-Day Exploit Statistics 2025: New Baseline, New Playbook.” Deepstrike, 2025. https://deepstrike.io/blog/zero-day-exploit-statistics-2025

8. Google Threat Intelligence Group. “GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Advances in Threat Actor Usage of AI Tools.” Google Cloud Blog, January 2025. https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/threat-actor-usage-of-ai-tools

9. Google Cloud. “M-Trends 2025: Data, Insights, and Recommendations From the Frontlines.” Google Cloud Blog, 2025. https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/m-trends-2025

10. ISC2. “2025 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study.” ISC2, December 2025. https://www.isc2.org/Insights/2025/12/2025-ISC2-Cybersecurity-Workforce-Study

11. Schneier, Bruce. “Autonomous AI Hacking and the Future of Cybersecurity.” Schneier on Security, October 2025. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/10/autonomous-ai-hacking-and-the-future-of-cybersecurity.html

12. CISA. “AI Cybersecurity Collaboration Playbook.” CISA Resources, January 2025. https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/ai-cybersecurity-collaboration-playbook

13. CISA. “Joint Cybersecurity Information: AI Data Security.” May 2025. https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/22/2003720601/-1/-1/0/CSI_AI_DATA_SECURITY.PDF

14. Palo Alto Networks. “2026 Predictions for Autonomous AI.” Palo Alto Networks Blog, November 2025. https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/2025/11/2026-predictions-for-autonomous-ai/

15. MIT Sloan. “AI cyberattacks and three pillars for defense.” MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter, 2025. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/ai-cyberattacks-three-pillars-defense

16. Hoxhunt. “AI-Powered Phishing Outperforms Elite Cybercriminals in 2025.” Hoxhunt Blog, March 2025. https://hoxhunt.com/blog/ai-powered-phishing-vs-humans

17. Deepstrike. “AI Cyber Attack Statistics 2025, Trends, Costs, and Global Impact.” Deepstrike Blog, 2025. https://deepstrike.io/blog/ai-cyber-attack-statistics-2025

18. Tripwire. “Cyber Threats Rising: US Critical Infrastructure Under Increasing Attack in 2025.” Tripwire State of Security, 2025. https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/cyber-threats-rising-us-critical-infrastructure-under-increasing-attack

19. World Economic Forum. “The weakness in global critical infrastructure cybersecurity.” WEF Stories, October 2025. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/10/dangerous-blindspot-in-infrastructure-cybersecurity/

20. Arxiv. “AI-Driven Cybersecurity Threats: A Survey of Emerging Risks and Defensive Strategies.” January 2026. https://arxiv.org/html/2601.03304

21. Fortinet. “2025 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Global Research Report.” Fortinet, 2025. https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/reports/2025-cybersecurity-skills-gap-report.pdf

22. Mimecast. “Ransomware Statistics 2025: Attack Rates and Costs.” Mimecast, 2025. https://www.mimecast.com/content/ransomware-statistics/

23. Help Net Security. “XBOW's AI reached the top ranks on HackerOne, and now it has $75M to scale up.” Help Net Security, June 2025. https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/06/25/xbow-ai-funding/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

A wise human once gave me advice

“Embrace the chaos.”

A novel concept I long wish I could indulge in. If only it was as easy as just letting it be. If only I could flash the memories of being too loud and the consequences that followed. If only I could pick and choose the pieces of me that I heal from and that no longer stand in my way.

Maybe if I wasn't born into chaos, forged in fire, and sent off to war (more chaos), only to come home and sew my own for a while.

A novel concept, I long wish to feel. One step in positive direction is all I can do. Learning the parts of me to unlearn a beautifully dark process.

---

These were never written as a “take pity on me,” more something for someone to connect with if they felt alone, I was just willing to put thought to words and share. I don't wish for the burden to be lighter, I only seek to learn the power within me to forge the resolve to appear in the world how I wish, better.

The Tragedy of the Chrysalis

They tell you to change. They tell you that the wolf is too much, too loud, too jagged for the pasture. So, you listen. You retreat into the dark, quiet crampedness of the chrysalis. You endure the literal dissolving of your old self—the melting of the bone and the ego—just to become something they might finally be able to love. Something softer. Something “better.”

But here is the tragedy they never mention: once you emerge, wings wet and heavy, the people who begged for the change don’t recognize the creature standing before them.

You sacrificed the predator to become the poet, but they were only ever comfortable with the version of you they could complain about. Now that you are changed, you are a stranger. You are a reminder of a growth they aren't ready to face in themselves. You realize that the sheep never wanted you to be a butterfly; they just wanted the wolf to stop howling.

So you stand there, transformed and alone, realizing that the most expensive lesson isn't the change itself—it’s discovering that the people you changed for were never planning to wait for you to fly.

Chapter 39, the resurfacing of the 09 year olds abandonment issues. You thought you were done, you thought you stuffed down those feelings, you repressed them lower and lower, and now it's crept in on what you held most dear.

The lesson never learned became the most expensive. Not a call, not a text, or a dissertative response contending my feelings. Simply nothing, just cold nothingness. All of these years of pouring into a flower just to watch it reject your touch, refuse your nourishment, wilt in your presence.

Is this my fault, or simply something born from a path of the easiest. Is this I lost sight of them, or just what was always going to be. It seems like of all the hills to die on, this being the one is kinda the one without honor. Shivved in the night unsuspectingly by those who swore to lead, slowly he's bleeding out but he's continuing, for what he doesn't know. But he's here.

Feeling abandoned like the 09 year old him often did. Feeling lost and without purpose as if he was starting his life all over, except with the weight of it all over the last 30 years. It is what it is, but I'm still here. Weathered, beaten, and bleeding.

昨日は22時半には布団に入った。 体に特別な疲れは感じていなかったけれど、「眠りたい」という欲求を察知したので、少し早めに横になる。 こういうときは大抵眠っている間に、ぼんやりと脳がぐるぐると整理を始める感覚がある。

それを「夢」と呼ぶのが一般的なんだろうけど、最近の眠りは妙に現実的で、「脳が整理されている」という表現のほうがしっくりくる。 記憶の断片が、ブロックのようにカチカチと移動していく感じ。 昔、良いのか悪いのか分からないまま使っていた、あのデフラグのフリーソフトに似ている。

朝は寒かった。 でも、一度コートを着ない日を挟んでしまったから、もう俺はコートを着ないことにした。 昔より繊細じゃないし、一度しまったコートをまた引っ張り出すようなことはもうしない。

目を閉じて、体のパーツごとにフルスキャンしてみたけれど、今日は珍しくどこにも不調が見当たらなかった。 それはとても良いことだ。 でも、体調が万全ということは、体に気を配るべき場所がないということでもあって、そうなると、自分をどこで認識すればいいのか、という不安がふと湧いてくる。 そういうところが自分らしい。

相変わらず、頭の中に何かを留めておくのが苦手で、電車の中で考えごとをしても、すぐに前の思考を忘れてしまい、まとまらない。 思いついたことをすぐメモすれば良いとは思うけど、もう何年も前からスマホの画面に集中するのが嫌になっていて、それもしたくない。

会社に着いてから調べてみたら、これはワーキングメモリというものらしい。 頭の中で一時的に情報を保持する力のことだそうだ。 鍛える方法はあるのかと思ってさらに調べてみたら、記憶力を鍛えるゲームが出てきた。

でも、そういうのをやる気にはなれない。 「記憶力を鍛えること」自体を目的にしている時点で、もうやる気なんて起きるわけがない。 何か強く惹かれるものが終着点にあって、その過程で自然と鍛えられる、というのが本来の形なんじゃないかと思う。

最近、俺は体を鍛えているけれど、それも体を鍛えたいからやっているわけじゃない。 漠然と、いつかどこか遠くへ行くための準備としてやっている。 くだらないくらい明確な目的があるよりも、終着点がぼんやりしているほうが、俺にはずっと合っている。

だから、相変わらず言語化がうまくできない事象を愛している俺だけど、現実には体がここにあって、何かしら明確なビジョンを描いて行動しなきゃいけないんだろうな、と思いながら、そんなことをぐるぐる考えている。

今、世の中でくすぶっている人が、もしこんなふうに感じているのだとしたら、ちょっと嬉しいかもしれない。 子供の頃に情報のディガーだった自分としては、インターネットも街もとっくに飽きてしまって、そろそろマッドな人たちが、寡黙な人の脳に目を向け始めている頃だろう、なんて思いながら、どうでもいい仕事に戻る。

4.3.26:0013 It's the next day, and I still haven't gone to bed. Sleep must be the starting point. Priotitise sleep. Which means no alcohol, cut the sugar, and reduce the stress. Are these the three hardest things of all to do? Modern life is all about the wine or beer, the treats and cakes, and the fucking stress as a badge of honour. No idea how the fuck I am going to do this. Maybe start with a sleep schedule. Regular bed and wake times. Let's go with 0645 wake up. EVERY SINGLE DAY. That fits with the school run. Which means asleep by 2245 every night, which seems doable. To get to sleep I need a minimum of half hour in bed, I reckon. So initially let's go with being in bed at 2215 every night NO MATTER WHAT. I'm going to set an alarm for 2200 each evening to tell me to lock up and brush teeth and get to bed.

2215 In Bed 2245 Sleep 0645 Up

Let's try this for seven days and record how it goes.

Starting in the morning, obviously.

Today, the traffic sucked. I was finishing coffee at home when my wife warned me. So I wound up deciding to work from home. While doing something on the computer, saw that Hackers was playing on YouTube. So, of course I watched it.

Unironically, Hackers is one of my favorite movies. I only ever caught it on rental from Blockbuster back in the day and have watched it many times since. It was among the first movies that would expose me to a kind of culture that could be considered Queer and “woke.” Even though I was hard-wired as a fundamentalist at the time of my viewing, Hackers sorta dented the shell and began to nudge me into a direction of tolerance. Further, it played a big role in making me into a reader. Matthew Lillard’s character, Cereal Killer, alludes to 1984 and there’s a classic scene where he’s showcasing a bunch of the books used for networking standards and Dade (Johnny Lee Miller’s character) is listing off the vernacular titles to the impressive nods of the other characters (Phreak and Joey). Then there’s the scene in the Advanced English class where Dade shares a (mis)quote of Ginsberg’s “Howl.” I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be seen as cool, but also smart and well-read. But I digress.

What struck me about this viewing of Hackers was how prescient it could be. Yes, it is a film about computer hacking that is made for movie audiences in 1995—which is to say, a time where “average” people thought computers were still mystery machines full of bewildering power on a par with magic. The depiction of super-computers and that hilarious and user-hostile interface on the “Gibson” are corny and comical. But the heart of that movie is in the right place, much like how Point Break gets the spirit of surfing better than most Hollywood films about the sport do. And, as such, the film depicts an intellectual divide among computer nerds that is today coming to fruition.

In one corner we have The Plague, played by Fischer Stevens. There is a suggestion that he’s a bit of a sell-out, a hacker who got a job running information security at a major mineral corporation. Perhaps. But he’s more straightforwardly characterized as a guy who sees himself as a lone-gun, as possessing superior knowledge and intelligence and that these factors grant him the license to do whatever he wants. He tells Dade, our protagonist, that hackers are effectively a different breed of human, that they are “samurai” or “keyboard cowboys” and that the rest of the world are “cattle.” Both the image of the samurai and the cowboy are popularly depicted as loners, traveling the land free from any moorings, obligated only to themselves and their code (which takes on extra meanings from a computer-centered point of view). The Plague seeks to enrich himself at the expense of others, because why not? He sees himself as smarter and anyone not smart enough to do the same as him is a sucker. He is the American idealized individual, remade for the digital age.

In the other corner we have Dade Murphy. Known by two handles throughout the film: Crash Override and Zero Cool, Dade and his friends represent a different sort of computer hacker. Theirs is part of a subculture. At one point in the film, a federal agent reads aloud from “The Conscience of a Hacker” by Lloyd Blankenship, also known as the “Hacker Manifesto:”

This is our world now. The world of the electron and the switch; the beauty of the baud. We exist without nationality, skin color, or religious bias. You wage wars, murder, cheat, lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.

This is the exact quote from the film (sourced from IMDB), and is a selection from the actual document itself, likely edited to better summarize the ethos of our protagonists. Dade and his friends see themselves as, primarily, curious explorers (to use a phrase from near the beginning of “The Conscience of a Hacker”) who no longer define themselves by the markers that have conventionally been placed on them. We see this in action in the film whenever Dade is brought into the wider hacker subculture, particularly with the characters of Razor and Blade, two decidedly Queer-coded characters of East Asian ethnicity, who are also seen inhabiting a club full of diverse and varied people. These hackers are presented as the kind of “individual” that was commonplace among subcultures of the mid-90s, but their individuality is not a form of individualism. Rather, they represent a collectivist mentality and tend to see their intelligence and skills as tools for building a better society, using the infrastructure of the old in order to do so. Indeed, seldom is Dade ever pictured alone in the film. He is almost always sharing the screen with his friends, underscoring the collectivist characterization.

The theme of the film is pretty explicitly stated in the beginning when Dade hacks into a TV station in order to take down a Rush Limbaugh type character’s show and replace it with The Outer Limits. This era of the 1990s was an inspired time, where many of us believed that the internet opened up a new avenue for tolerance. It was also a tool for disruption, of bypassing the strictures of unfettered capitalism. Quoting also from “The Conscience of a Hacker,” Razor and Blade (hosts of a kind of “pirate TV” show, who are teaching their audience a form of “blue boxing” using a micro-cassette recorder—a technique that was already out of date by the time the movie premiered) say “this is a service that would be dirt cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons.” Adding, “remember, hacking is more than just a crime. It’s a survival trait.”

Hackers predicted the kind of world in which we are currently living. One where some hackers became “Tech Bros,” oligarchs seeking to hoard wealth no matter the human and environmental cost (recall that The Plague is fine with causing a worldwide environmental disaster, while also pinning the crime on a bunch of high school students, so long as he gets his money and stays out of jail). The individualist who believes that they are inherently superior and that that superiority obligates them to a life of wealth and leisure.

But the other kind of hacker still remains. Those who still believe that these tools are useful for liberating people, that a better world is still possible. In this sense, Cereal Killer gets to deliver what I think is the most iconic line in the movie:

Listen, we got a higher purpose here, alright? A wakeup call for the Nintendo Generation. We demand free access to data, well, it comes with some responsibility. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things. (Though it still bugs me that he says “Corinthians one” instead of “First Corinthians” right after this…)

Having access to these tools and this data comes with responsibility. They are not a license for doing whatever we want. They obligate us to look out for each other and help each other. In the film, this line delivery is the catalyst to get Dade and Burn (Angelina Jolie’s character) to end their playful rivalry, which in turn inspires an entire global community of hackers to work together to prevent the wealth hoarding Plague’s criminal actions from causing a global catastrophe.

This collectivist action is done under the call “Hack the Planet,” which is also the tagline for the movie.

This call goes deeper than the usage of network infrastructure to circumvent capitalistic exploitation. Hacking the planet involves a shift in thinking that moves beyond conventional lines of demarcation and into something focused on a common good. It refuses to see the world as a collection of individualists, but as a kind of organic whole. The “profiteering gluttons” want to keep the world divided and stupid in order to achieve their desired ends. But there are those who resist such things and refuse to accept this status quo.

One of the ironies of the internet is that it is a thing built on the protocols for military communication but is also the realm of knee-sock-wearing Queer folk. A tool for war has become a tool for peaceful liberation, a means for people to investigate (indeed even “hack”) their own self-understanding. The result does not have to be some kind of atomized individualism, but a kind of individuality that sees itself as a smaller part of a whole.

The Plague-like Tech Bros have done much to force their vision for the world on us. But another vision still exists. It might not broadcast on pirated TV signals, or rollerblade in the glitching lights of abandoned subway tunnels. It might not play Wipeout in a nightclub with people selling computer parts out front. But it still looks for workarounds. It still likes to play jokes on the Feds. It still sees a common humanity running through the labels and stigmas and geopolitical boundaries.

We can still use these tools to better the world. Because it is our world now. We might be seen as criminals. But so were most people who tried to make things better for us.

Hack the planet.

***

The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.

#Hackers #Computers #Philosophy #Theology #Movies #Film

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