In 2021, there was a cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline, the largest pipeline system for

refined oil in the US, carrying 3 million barrels of oil per day between Texas and New York.

The United States could have only afforded two to three more days of colonial pipeline being down

before it ground the country or economy to a halt.

That's Nicole Pearl Roth. She spent a decade as the lead cybersecurity reporter at the New York Times.

It was because colonial pipeline paid this ransom and the criminal group honored

their hostage note that they were able to eventually get these operations back up and running.

But it is worth pausing to think that all it would take to bring the world's richest economy to

its knees is one stolen password. That is what it took. You know, this is what a

Bumbling cyber criminal group could do. Think of what a nation state could do in this space.

As Nicole intimately understands, Bumbling cyber criminals and nation states alike

can bring entire economies to their knees through the mere identification of bugs in our software.

So as software eats the world, fragility eats the world.

I'm Tristan Harris. And I'm Azeraskin. And this is your undivided attention,

the podcast from the Center for Humane Technology. Nicole Pearl Roth is a member of the Department of

Homeland Security's Cybersecurity Advisory Committee. She recently published, this is how they tell me

the world ends, an in-depth investigation of the global cyber arms race.

Nicole, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me Tristan.

We are really big fans of your work here. And, you know, we have not covered on this podcast,

the aspect of cyber defense, cyber offense, cyber weapons. But it actually links very closely.

You know, people know us for our work on the social dilemma, social media, which is a kind of way

in which to always invoke E.O. Wilson's problem statement that the fundamental problem of humanity

...