A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back

by Bruce Schneier

When everything is a computer, software controls it all. Imagine a hacker inside a financial network, altering how money flows. Or inside legal databases—making small, substantive changes in laws and court rulings. (Will people notice, or know enough to verify the original wording?) Imagine a hacker altering Facebook’s algorithms from the inside, changing the rules that govern whose post rises to the top of the feed, whose voice is amplified, and who else hears it. When computer programs operate the everyday systems we use to work, spend, talk, organize, and live, technology becomes the new policymaker. And for all the freedom that tech’s capabilities can offer us, in the hands of a hacker they can transform into an unparalleled architecture for social control. All of these systems are vulnerable to hacking; in fact, current research indicates that all machine-learning systems can be undetectably compromised. And those hacks will have increasingly large societal effects.