Ask yourself a couple of questions:

(1) If someone stole 10 cents from your bank account would you know? $1? $10? $100? $1,000? Could you prove it?

(2) Luckily, I have Colleen; she counts everything! But how many others wouldn’t even know if money was being taken out? 25%, 50%, 75%. Even if you caught it, how many people would not?

(3) If your computer was hacked and someone got all of your passwords, credit cards, etc how much damage could they do? This is happening every day, but what if it happened to everyone in mass, all at once?

(4) When was the last time you backed up your photos? Your work computer?

(5) What the hell happened at twitter last week? Or all the other strange emails you get from companies saying your data has been stolen.

(6) How do credit card companies make money? Yes they charge 20% interest but they lose billions of dollars every year.

(7) When was the last time you paid in cash all day long? Honestly, we are 50/50. Every now and again we go through a cash phase. But it is fair to say that all your money is tied up electronically.

(8) Could the financial system, governmental system, etc survive losing power for a week? That sounds unbelievable but in 1988 so did the fall of the Soviet Union, in 2000 so did US being attacked, in 2012 New York City being hit by a massive hurricane, and of course everything that has happened in 2020.

(9) Who is surprised that google knows that you want to buy a spatula before you do?

(10) Would you be surprised if China, or Russia, or the USA knew every detail about your life? Or novel business idea you had.

(11) Is all of your health data stored electronically? I know mine is. That is just how Drs roll these days. Hell, we don’t even go to Drs any more; we just talk to them on the computer.

I remember a conversation I had with my father-in-law in 2006 or 2007. We were walking somewhere in a mall. We were both stressed out by the general “goodness” of things. How were the housing pricing going up so fast as jobs were being sent overseas with the same speed? People were flipping houses like crazy and everyone I knew was in massive debt. We both were in distress. But we didn’t know what was going to happen though.

Right now it feels like it does right before the housing crash. We keep hearing about all the flaws with our e-society but we keep adding to it. I think we all know it too. Credit card companies know there is massive fraud but keep giving out cards. Twitter, Facebook, etc know there is giant risks associated with their business model, but it doesn’t stop them or even slow them down. It just keeps growing. It doesn’t make sense, something has to give. The system is becoming critically organized (I really hope not).

Our current crisis is pushing more and more of society on online. Much of 2020-2021 school year will be online. More and more commerce is now ecommerce. The Amazon guy seriously stops at our house way too much. And to say we have an unpredictable president might be an understatement. We know that the 2016 election was hacked and I can’t imagine what is going to go on behind this scenes this year.

I am not saying we shouldn’t turn off our computers and go back to 1980’s MO. However, this crisis has pushed us even farther online – uncomfortably farther. This has made us even more vulnerable to an e-attack. Everything is online. Of course banks, google, twitter, and governments take extraordinary care to protect our data and access. But as the twitter attack shows, it can happen. We have to be ready for collapse. We are vulnerable.

Unfortunately, we can’t really know where it is going to come from. Could we have imagined that 9/11 hijackers would have stolen airliners? Just a few months ago, I was swimming with my daughter at a hotel pool in Florida. THAT JUST SEEMS RIDICULOUS NOW!