A chilling near-miss shows how today’s digital infrastructure is vulnerable

FeW INVENTIONS in history have been as important for human civilisation and as poorly understood as the internet. It developed not as a centrally planned system, but as a patchwork of devices and networks connected by makeshift interfaces. Decentralisation makes it possible to run such a complex system. But every so often comes a chilling reminder that the whole edifice is uncomfortably precarious.