Monday, August 17, 2009



There is one small problem, though. If you turn TC off, Fritz won't hand out the keys you need to decrypt your files and run your bank account. Your TC-enabled apps won't work as well, or maybe at all. It will be like switching from Windows to Linux nowadays; you may have more freedom, but end up having less choice. If the TC apps are more attractive to most people, or are more profitable to the app vendors, you may end up simply having to use them - just as many people have to use Microsoft Word because all their friends and colleagues send them documents in Microsoft Word. By 2008, you may find that the costs of turning TC off are simply intolerable.

This has some interesting implications for national security. At a TCG symposium in Berlin, I put it this way: in 2010 President Clinton may have two red buttons on her desk - one that sends the missiles to China, and another that turns off all the PCs in China - and guess which the Chinese will fear the most? (At this point, a heckler from the audience said, `What about the button that turns off the PCs in Europe?') This may be an exaggeration, but it's only a slight one. Technology policy and power politics have been intertwined since the Roman empire, and prudent rulers cannot disregard the strategic implications of TC. It would be rather inconvenient for a government to have to switch all its systems from Windows to GNU/linux, and at the height of an international crisis.

... we need a european processor ...
... not to be exported outside the european community ...


# posted by intcoex : 10:37 PM




<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]