Your "World" Will Be Destroyed Within 2 Decades

"We didn't know this could happen," his voice trembled in shock. "It's over." His world had been completely destroyed - decades of work gone in a matter of weeks. His confidence in the system he was a part of was completely gone.

Weeks ago, a long time partner admitted that he had ended his business, laying off all his employees. The economy "ended" as a reaction to an event. Several months ago, no one saw this happening. The event itself aside, the effects of the event have left many people in shock and his sentiment has been echoed with many people - "They can just shut everything down?" This event and reaction foreshadows the future perfectly and seeing, some will not see.

Within the next two decades, we will see a digital attack that has never been seen in our lifetime. This attack will not only drop confidence in the digital world, the unintended consequences of it will be enormous for everyone. One of the biggest reasons for this is that counterparty risk is not well-understood in the digital world: people think that it "works" without understanding how or why it works along with how many "actors" must be correct in the system in order for it to function. We've already seen previews of what future attacks may look like (stuxnet, DUQUs, etc), but the attack that I refer to here will absolutely shock the world. The effects even outside of the digital world will be extremely costly.

What people don't know will affect them. Most people do not want to understand risk until it's too late. Even with people knowing their tendency to overlook risks, people will still do it. In addition, after a period of prosperity, people tend to forget that risks even exist - much less risks they haven't considered. The digital world is much more dangerous than people realize, but within the next two decades, they will know this reality.

"We didn't know this could happen," will be a sentiment echoed by many people.