Today's King Canute

All the brouhaha over Huawei is a little bit mystifying, unless of course one sees it as purely a Trumpain campaign to impugn China as part of his re-election bid. The idea that Huawei may or may not be a surreptitious arm of the Chinese government is really neither here nor there, since these days any cyber technology can be used for nefarious ends by whomever has the know-how. The concept of cyber security is laughable, as hackers and others mutate and adapt as fast as a virus. The Iranians thought they could develop their nuclear plans without interference simply by not connecting their computers to the internet. But all it took was one fallible(?) human being to plug in a USB stick and the Stuxnet malware did its job. I assume that all these cyber technologies have, by design or not, got a ‘backdoor.’ Was there ever a perfect machine? The Nazis thought they had one in Enigma, and look where it got them. Now it seems that our craven government, following pressure from Trump and his admirers on the Tory backbenches have won the day and Huawei will be expunged from our networks. This it is said will slow down the introduction of 5G in the UK. I confess that doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t need an app to tell me that there isn’t much cheese left in the fridge. Although such information could be of tremendous use to the Chinese, or indeed the manufacturers of Colston Bassett, possibly the world’s best Stilton. Another aspect of this story is that the only way that all the information that is being gathered and utilised by new technology can only be handled by artificial intelligence—there is just too much for old fashioned techniques to digest. It is technology, in other words designed to dehumanise us. In that sense I am quite relaxed about the Huawei ban. Perhaps we have a new iteration of Ludditism, albeit in the company of some curious fellow travellers.