Code Red: Y2K Is Here

When the clock struck midnight on 1 January 2000, the planes stayed in the air, the cash machines kept dispensing notes, and the power grid held firm. Within a week, a consensus formed among newspaper columnists that the Year 2000 bug had been a mirage. In reality, as the United States Senate Special Committee on Y2K documented in its final report, midnight passed quietly only because governments and corporations saw the deadline coming years in advance, took it deadly seriously, and spent an estimated $100 billion in the United States and $300 billion worldwide rewriting their code before the calendar flipped.7 weeks ago, on 26 September, I warned that artificial intelligence was bringing a software security crisis of the same shape and far greater magnitude. For 30 years, our digital infrastructure stayed standing on a fragile economic truce: skilled human vulnerability researchers cost $200 an hour, need sleep, and only have time to test a tiny fraction of the world’s software.…

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