You may recall a news story from some years back about how the Nazis of Germany used American made computer punch card systems to keep track of people. They knew everything about everyone and that made it relatively easy to spot “enemies of the state,” gather them up and ship them to death camps. You just can’t beat the combination of American inventiveness and German efficiency.
Well… it’s happened again. This time in
Afghanistan. American computer systems’ triumph of the Reich. We
may have gotten our troops out, those still breathing. But we left behind
a computer system that would have made Hitler beam.
Computing has come a long way since the dark days of World
War II. Those US-built data systems are bringing new darkness to the
Taliban. They contain the same kind of records that the Axis kept -- and
no trees were killed to make punch cards.
Pages and pages of ages and wages. All the good men
and women who helped America in its longest war are right there on thumb drives
and hard drives and the internet. All they have to do is hack the system.
Oh, you might say, aren’t those machines restricted to
“authorized users?” Why, yes. They certainly are. And oh, you might say,
haven’t all the authorized users left the building? Why, yes, if not all,
then certainly most are gone and their secret passwords, fingerprints,
eye-prints, DNA and such went with them? So, no worries, right?
Wrong.
The safeguards are weak. And surely, there are 18-year-old
boys living in mom’s basement among the Taliban who can break into this system.
When they hack the database, what fun they’ll have rounding
up enemies of the state and shipping them off to gas chambers or sword singing
practice centers.
The Afghans probably aren’t as efficient now as the Germans
were then. But they’re just as enthusiastic. And even more
brutal.
My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
© WR 2021
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