Backup Plans

The pandemic has revealed one interesting, wide-spread behavior: people generally have expectations of "things" being "provided" to them, take them for granted and consider absolutely guaranteed. In other words having no personal backup resources or any backup plans.

The key examples of such "things" are:

• Access to the Internet
• Access to banking services, including credit card and  electronic payments
• Access to global location services (aka GPS)

The Internet may be difficult to break down entirely (after all it was designed exactly to be a communication system that cannot be brought down), barring a global power outage event. Global failure of electronic payments is probably also highly improbable (unless someone cracks the underlying security algorithms), the GPS system has silently become the single point of failure for variety of systems we rely on today. It is probably the least appreciated part of the critical infrastructure of our everyday lives.

Personal services: car navigation, Uber, fitness trackers, pizza delivery - they all rely on GPS. So does transportation: trucking, aviation, shipping industries. And - something which is even less known and obvious - communication services such as mobile networks rely on GPS as a precise source of time needed to synchronize the cell towers.

GPS today probably is the most vulnerable piece of the global digital infrastructure. It is not that hard to imagine an attack that brings down this service entirely. GPS is just 30 satellites and a handful of communication links. Also the satellites broadcast signals that can be easily jammed or interfered with (locally or regionally). You don't need a Death Star canon. A small device plugged into a cigarette lighter socket in a car disrupted the Newark airport. As captured on the attached photo, I experienced a similar event at a Munich airport when sitting on a tarmac my watch was showing I was a kilometer underground. Is it that hard to imagine coordinating 100 trucks around the country to disable 100 airports at the same time?

Should I worry? Well, my personal approach is not to worry about things I cannot control. But definitely a GPS down event is one I consider probable, so having some sort of personal backup is a prudent approach. And I'm not saying about stocking food or ammunition. I'm rather saying about being prepared mentally that such event may occur and behave rationally. I know we swallowed the blue pill some time ago and the crash of the electronic infrastructure will hit us much harder than many kinds of viruses. But not that long ago we were able to live without all that. And people still are in so called "underdeveloped" countries. A GPS crash is not an extinction - category event, although if it happens, it may become much more deadly than the SARS-CoV-2 virus.