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The Pentagon’s research arm, DARPA, wants to crowdsource a fully automated cyber defense system, and they’re offering a two million dollar prize:

The so-called “Cyber Grand Challenge” will take place over the next three years, which seems like plenty of time to write a few lines of code. But DARPA’s not just asking for any old cyber defense system. They want one “with reasoning abilities exceeding those of human experts” that “will create its own knowledge.” They want it to deflect cyberattacks, not in a matter of days—which is how the Pentagon currently works—but in a matter of hours or even seconds. That’s profoundly difficult.

On the one hand, this is brilliant. I can easily imagine some huge leaps forward made as a result of the contest. The Netflix Prize advanced recommendation algorithms while the DARPA Grand Prize gave us autonomous cars. Clearly competitions work, especially in this domain where the barrier to entry is low.

On the other hand, this is scary. They’re asking competitors to marry artificial intelligence with cyber defense systems. Cyber defense requires a solid understanding of cyber offense, and aggressive defensive capabilities could be nearly as destructive as offensive capabilities. Cyber defense software could decide to block a threatening virus with a counter-virus, or shut down parts of the Internet to stop or slow infection.

Artificial intelligence has taking over stock trading, and look where that’s gotten us. Trading AI has become so sophisticated it is described in terms of submarine warfare, with offensive and defensive capabilities.

I don’t doubt that the competition will advance cyber defense. But the side effect will be a radical increase in cyber offense, as well as a system in which both side operate at algorithmic speeds.

Full information about the Cyber Grand Challenge, including rules and registration, is available on DARPA’s website.

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Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit, spoke at Powell’s yesterday about the founding of Reddit and his new book Without Their Permission.

It was a fun talk: He’s a good speaker, clearly knows and enjoys his subject matter, and has plenty of fun anecdotes. His basic message is that we need to become entrepreneurs because its good for us personally and good for the world. The barrier to gain attention and achievement is high, but there are no gatekeepers stopping us from pursuing our dreams as there were even just ten years ago.

Here are my full notes from the talk:

Alexis Ohanian
Cofounder of Reddit
Author of Without Their Permission
  • The fear of being embarrassed holds people back.
    • Reddit started as an incredibly barebones html site. If being embarrassed had held them back, they would never have done it.
  • The fear of not knowing what you’re doing holds people back.
    • The secret is that nobody really knows what they’re doing if they’re trying anything new.
  • The world is not flat, but the world-wide-web is flat. It’s all equal. Two guys with a laptop and an internet connection can anything.
  • Reddit started in a suburb of a suburb of Cambridge, which is a suburb of Boston, which is not at all silicon valley.
    • great burritos in silicon valley, but no need to be there.
  • The enemy is the back button — Paul Graham
    • The enemy is whether people leave your site. 
    • You have to be better than cat photos.
  • So much is competing for our attention.
    • If you have ideas you want to spread, the bar is high to compete.
    • But word of mouth is just as important as it ever was
    • Watercooler conversations have just moved online
    • It’s so exciting to see people doing philanthropy, art, and getting their message out.  
  • Gatekeepers vs. no gatekeepers
    • Anecdote about Gary Larson and The Farside. He just barely managed to get syndication, and only then because he went on vacation and managed to get a deal. 
    • What about all the other Gary Larson’s out there who got filtered out because the gatekeepers said no?
  • All the web comics out there today could only exist in this era. 
    • xkcd only exists because of the internet. 
    • it’s a business that earns a living for their creator. 
    • there’s no way that the math joke from the programmer drawn with a stick figure would have been put on the page next to family circus.
  • Kickstarter has now given more money to art than the National Endowment for Art.
  • Choose your own adventure version of Hamlet.
    • No traditional publisher would have backed this. If they had, it would have been a meager, several thousand dollar advance.
    • On Kickstarter, he got $600,000 to write this.
  • Alexis would have been an immigration lawyer if he hadn’t had a fateful conversation in a waffle house.
  • If you are a programmer today, you have the most valuable skill possible.
    • And, you can be entirely self-taught. 
    • All the knowledge you need is available for free.
  • Paul Graham gving a talk about how to start a startup.
    • Alexis and Steve heard of this talk, realized it would be during spring break.
    • Decided to go there, rather than the beach.
    • Went from Virginia to Boston. 
    • Introduced themselves, talk him that they wanted to pitch their business (Mmm… something mobile using text message) to him.
    • He said “you have a slightly better than awful chance”.
  • Soon after, Paul formed Y combinator.
    • They interviewed for it.
    • Were rejected that night.
    • Decided they would prove him wrong.
  • Out that night with a bunch of Harvard guys
    • Harvard guys bragging about their bank jobs
    • They lied, bragged that they got into Y combinator
  • On the train back the next morning, get a call from Paul.
    • He hated the idea because it was based on phones (not smart phones). Said he’d let them in if they did something on the web instead.
    • They got off at the next stop, turned around, went back to Boston.
  • Had discussion about their experiences using Slashdot, reading newspapers, etc.
    • Paul said yes, on the right direction…build the front page of the internet.
    • A lot of pressure, when all they wanted to do was continue to live the college lifestyle.
  • Humans of New York — Brandon
    • failed out of University of Georgia
    • bounced around different finance jobs
    • suddenly decided he wanted to move to NY and become a photographer
    • his friends told him he was crazy. he didn’t even own a camera, didn’t know anything about photography.
    • But he goes to NY. his photos sucks.
    • He reads how to get better. A few days turned into a few weeks turned into a few months.
    • In four years went from having never taken a photo in his life, to being a worldwide celebrated and viewed photographer
    • From no fame or credibility to worldwide credibility, making the world suck a little less.
    • Hilarious and moving.
    • Ten years ago, that never would have been possible.
  • “Dude, sucking is the first step to being kind of good at something.” — Adventure Time
Questions
  • “Nobody does know what they’re doing. It all seems like its luck.”
    • Malcome Gladwell’s book Outliers — chance is still the biggest component of the equation.
    • The idea that all web links are equal. True only on a technical level. In the real world, still subject to luck: which link gets attention. 
  • “A lot of luck is part of it, but it also seems like dedication is part of it. You need talents like design, development, ideas, etc. What do you think your talents are that got your over the hill?”
    • The ability to build the thing is probably the most important.
    • My talent is the willingness to do anything/everything else: get takeout, call the wireless provider, anything…
    • Tenacity
      • Airbnb: founders ate nothing but cereal for a year and a half to keep costs down. They just wouldn’t quit.
        • Aside: Airbnb one day discovered that really good, attractive photos make people far more comfortable to rent an apartment. That discovery helped them turn the corner, turn into a billion dollar company.
    • Be comfortable with failure / negative feedback. Alexis has a negative reinforcement wall:
      • “You are a rounding error to Yahoo. Why are you even here talking to us?”
  • “What’s appearing to you about bit coin?”
    • It’s a digital crypto currency for the internet.
    • I’m cautiously optimistic about it because it’s just absurd how much money financial institutions make just moving money around. they’re a drain on the economy/world/money.
    • Even though silk road is shut down, we still see bitcoin transactions at roughly the same level. Good sign that it’s being used for legitimate stuff.
    • He gets bitcoin donations from people who torrent his book.

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Kobo Books is a great ebook retailer with worldwide distribution, their own reader-focused ereaders, and reading apps for all major platforms (iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and web).

Free on Kobo through the
end of September 2013 with
the coupon code elopesgift

Kobo is also an indie-bookstore friendly company. Their devices are sold in indie bookstores, and many indie bookstores have an affiliate relationship with Kobo. If you care about DRM, my books are all DRM-free on Kobo.

Avogadro Corp, A.I. Apocalypse, and The Last Firewall are all available from Kobo.

And now through the end of September 2013, Avogadro Corp is available free on Kobo with the following coupon code: elopesgift

Just enter the coupon code before checkout and Avogadro Corp will be free!

So if you or a friend want to pick up Avogadro Corp or just check out an indie-friendly alternative to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, go visit Kobo today.

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Last month I got an advance review copy of Channel Zilch by Doug Sharp (Panverse Publishing). It was an absolute delight to read.

It’s a geek’s dream combination: mix Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a Space Shuttle caper, and a beautiful-brilliant computer wiz femme fatale who just happens to be cooking up some smart AI. I laughed out loud during many sections, and was glued to the book throughout.
The characters and their motivations are just awesome. Hel and her father want to set up a media company to shoot a reality TV show in space. Except that it’s set in present day, and of course, it’s not that easy to get into space. They recruit an ex-NASA shuttle astronaut, and decide to steal a space shuttle. What can go wrong? 🙂
I found it to be really funny. It’s book one of a series, and it wraps up the first part of the story quite nicely, so I’m eager to see what direction Doug Sharp will take us in book two. Either way I’m looking forward to it.
You can get it from Amazon and other retailers. 

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The Last Firewall
Minus Four Paragraphs

By the time a novel is done, from rough first drafts until final proofing, I’ve read it close to twenty times. However, the one of the best reads is when it’s finally Done, with a capital D, Done. That’s when I get to read it as a reader, not a writer. It usually happens a few weeks after it’s been published. I get a paperback copy that’s not already spoken for, and I hole up in a comfy chair or couch and start reading.

That happened with The Last Firewall this past weekend, when I had four days at the beach with my family.

But I was shocked to find a missing page in the paperback — and in one of the most exciting scenes, no less. I’m so sorry for the mistake!

Most copies sold so far have been the Kindle version, but for the thirty or so folks who have the paperback, you’re holding what we can hope will someday be a rare collector’s copy. 🙂

I will get the paperback copy fixed as soon as possible (and will clean up the other smaller mistakes I found as well.) In the meanwhile, if you get to the bottom of page 151, in the bar fight scene, these are the four missing paragraphs you’re looking for:

      Knowing the robot used the visual channel to attack, she instead built a three-dimensional wireframe from street and security cameras, calculated the bot’s location, and pointed the muzzle in the direction of the window.

      The three-inch rocket whooshed out, guidance fins snapping into position. It exited the bar at two hundred miles per hour and twisted hard, gunning for the bot.

      Cat’s wireframe fuzzed out, right in the middle where the robot should be, and the rocket veered off. Her heart sank as it exploded against a neighboring building.

      “Catherine Matthews,” boomed the robot. “Surrender. You are surrounded. I am a military-grade combat bot. You cannot hope to succeed and we do not wish to harm you.”

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Every once in a while, I read a book whose vision of the future makes me sit back and think Ah yes, this is how it will be. Accelerando by Charles Stross dealt with the acceleration of technological development. Daemon by Daniel Suarez depicted how a computer can manipulate the world around it.

Nexus and Crux, the two techothrillers from Ramez Naam, do that for neural implants, technology that provides an interface between our brains and the outside world.

I just read an advance review copy of Naam’s Crux, a sequel that follows tight on the heels of Nexus. (It will be available August 27th, but you can preorder a copy now on Amazon.) Both books revolve around a technology called Nexus, a nanotech drug that interfaces with the human brain. It allows a user to run apps in their brain, to exercise conscious control over their mood, augment their intelligence, and communicate telepathically with other Nexus users.

But even as this all-powerful technology improves the lives of millions by fixing debilitating mental illnesses, helping monks meditate, by facilitating more powerful group consciousness and thought, it is also restricted by governments, abused by criminals, and leads to power struggles.

Crux is an adrenaline filled ride through the near-term future. Set on a global stage in a near-future world where the United States tries to tight restricts technology through shadowy intelligence organizations, Nexus and Crux run the gamut of post-human technology: human-brain uploads, military body upgrades, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, but the definite star of the show is the Nexus drug and its impact on increasing the power of the human mind.

I recommend both books, although Crux won’t make sense without the setup of Nexus, so go read both. You’ll be left realizing the future will look much like Ramez Naam’s books, full of both beautiful and very scary possibilities.

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Now that The Last Firewall is out, I’ve been asked what order to read the books in. There’s no one right answer, and that’s because each novel is a completely independent, self-contained story. They’re set in the same universe, have some shared characters and there is a chronological order, but you could pick up any book and enjoy it. That being said, here are my recommendations:

  • If you’re new to my science fiction, I suggest starting with The Last Firewall. If you love it, then go back and read Avogadro Corp, then A.I. Apocalypse, as prequels. There aren’t any huge spoilers, and The Last Firewall is the most accessible and polished of the three novels.
  • If you’re a stickler for reading things in chronological order, or if your job involves programming or supporting computers, then go ahead and start with Avogadro Corp, then A.I. Apocalypse, and finish with The Last Firewall.
  • And if you’ve already read Avogadro Corp and liked it, then read A.I. Apocalypse before you go on to The Last Firewall.

To get your copy, see the Where To Buy matrix.

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To celebrate the release of The Last Firewall, I decided to do another article about the technology behind the books. I wrote about the technology behind Avogadro Corp a few months ago, and that turned out to be fairly popular, so I’m back with the technology behind A.I. Apocalypse. (I don’t want to do The Last Firewall yet, because that would give away too many spoilers.) Although I don’t say so explicitly in the books, Avogadro Corp is set in 2015, A.I. Apocalypse in 2025, and The Last Firewall in 2035. I make all the technology as plausible as possible. That means it either exists, or is in development, or can be extrapolated from current technology. I described how I extrapolate tech trends and predict the future.

    • Semi-autonomous cars: In an early scene of the novel, Leon runs across the street, trusting that the cars will automatically stop due to their mandatory “SafetyPilots”. As we know, Google has an autonomous car, and car manufacturers, such as Toyota, are working on them now. Many manufacturers are starting with small pieces of autonomy: maintaining location within a lane, maintaining the distance from the car ahead of them. Fully autonomous vehicles are clearly more expensive than partially autonomous vehicles, so it’s quite reasonable we’ll see collision avoidance technology before we see fully autonomous vehicles. Our safety conscious culture and insurance risk reduction could result in such technology being mandatory within ten years.
Autonomous copter from 3D Robotics
    • Autonomous package delivery drones: Leon and his friends make their escape from a burning city via an unmanned package delivery plane. These are very feasible. Autonomous flying planes are very popular among hobbyists now. Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired, left to form 3D Robotics, who manufactures auto-pilot systems. Fuel efficiency is partly a function of flight speed. It makes sense that in a more fuel efficient future, we want to convey packages at just the right speed: not faster than they need to get there. When human pilots are removed from the picture, package delivery drones can become an economical way to move goods.
    • Solar-powered flight: Also feasible, the first long-distance flights using solar power have already taken place. There are solar powered airships, solar powered quadcopter, solar powered fixed wing surveillance drone, and a long duration solar powered drone. The attraction to solar power includes indefinite flight time and low cost of flight. The drone Leon and his friends take has to land before dark, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the case in real life: most drones would contain battery power to allow them to maintain sufficient altitude at night (although they might lazily drift and trade-off some elevation during the dark hours).
    • Mobile Phones as Computers: Leon and his friends own phones that work as both smartphone and computer by synchronizing their output to nearby display and input devices. This is similar to the Ubuntu Edge, which can be used as a full computer or phone. While computing power is increasing all the time, one of the constraints is displays. Phones can’t just grow indefinitely larger. Flexible screens might help, but still have limitations. The solution in the novel is the availability of cheap, high resolution displays nearly everywhere. By knocking your device against them, the phone and screen exchange a handshake that then permits the wireless display of data. Bump does this sort of synchronization now for exchanging contacts, files, and other data. Air Display creates a wireless remote display for iOS/OSX devices. One Amazon reviewer knocked A.I. Apocalypse for failing to foresee Google
      Google Glass projector/prism system

      Glasses. At the time I wrote the manuscript, they hadn’t been invented yet. It’s still not clear to me whether this will be the future or not. Glass could be yet another type of screen (after desktop monitor, tablet, and mobile phone screen), and while it offers certain conveniences (always there, relatively unobtrusive) it’s still a very small screen (many call it tiny) that’s more suitable for the display of summary information than for an immersive experience. That may change over time, such that we see full-screen glasses.

    • Evolutionary Computer Viruses: One of the main themes of the novel is that artificial intelligence will evolve rather than be programmed. I’ve braved surveillance by the NSA to research current articles on evolutionary computer viruses. (Don’t try this at home, kids.)  Computer Virus Evolution Model Inspired by Biological DNA is a research paper describing the idea in more detail that concludes “The simulation experiments were conducted and the results indicate that computer viruses have enormous capabilities of self-propagation and self-evolution.” The Frankenstein virus was a self-assembling and evolving computer virus put together by two researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas.
    • Pilfering existing code to build a virus: Yup, the Frankenstein virus does that too.
    • Humanoid robots: Later in the novel, the virus AI embody several humanoid robots. ASIMO is a long-running research project by Honda. Part of the reason Japan does research into humanoid bots (as opposed to other, more utilitarian designs) is that they see the use of robots as essential in caring for their growing elderly population. Even in the United States, we’re starting to see more research into humanoid form robots. That’s because robots need to navigate structures and tools designed for the human form. If you need to go up stairs, open doors, or use utensils, the human form works. If you look at the DARPA

      robotics research challenge, you see humanoid robots being used, such as ATLAS, from Boston Dynamics. The same folks who brought us the scary looking Big Dog bring the even scarier looking ATLAS. (ASIMO is so cuddly by comparison.) Since the DARPA challenge requires the robot to negotiate human spaces (e.g. to go into a nuclear reactor and shutdown equipment), it takes a humanoid form to succeed at the challenge. Boston Dynamics has a ton of experience in this space. Their earlier PETMAN robot is also worth looking at.

    • Mesh networking: In the novel, Avogadro Corp (a thinly disguised Google) has deployed Mesh networking every to guarantee net neutrality. Mesh networking is real and exists today. I think it would be a great solution to the last mile bottleneck. Google Fiber is proof that Google cares about the connection to the end-user. They just happened to have chosen a different technology to achieve the same result. Fiber is coming to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah after starting in Kansas City, so clearly Google wants to continue the experiment. Unfortunately, commercial use of mesh networking seems to have been relegated to creating networks for legacy hotels and similar buildings. But I think there’s promise for consumers: Project Byzantium is a mesh network based on the Raspberry Pi for the zombie apocalypse. The low cost of the Raspberry Pi is awesome, but we should see even lower cost, smaller size, and lower power consumption solutions as time goes by. Then it becomes easy to sprinkle these all around, creating ad-hoc mesh networks everywhere.
    • Internet Kill Switch: A late plot point involves a master password embedded in all network routers. While this doesn’t exist in reality, in the context of the novel, Avogadro Corp has basically given away mesh boxes and routers for years, and they’ve effectively become the sole provider of routers. Historically speaking, many routers come with default passwords, and many people don’t change them. Thanks to all the recent disclosures around the NSA spying on Americas, we know there are more backdoors than ever into computer systems around the world. I think it’s within the realm of feasibility that if you had one company providing all the routers, that there could exist a backdoor to exploit them all. (Of course, how the kill signal propagates around the internet is another question.)
  • ELOPe’s Plane: This was modeled after Boeing’s X-37b. It’s pretty far-fetched that this could be considered a multi-mission military plane, but it’s what I had in mind visually. Think of the X-37b being 50% larger, wings large enough to make it aerodynamically appropriate for sustained flight, and the payload section holding a small number of passengers, and you’ve basically got ELOPe’s white unmarked plane.
  • Rail gun: PA-60-41 uses a rail gun to shoot down the incoming military attack. Rail guns exist of course, although why one would be in downtown Chicago is questionable.
  • Lakeside Technology Data Center: As the time of writing, Lakeside Technology was the world’s largest data center. It’s now the third largest. It does have a distinguishing cooling tower that was the target of ELOPe’s attack.
  • Evolving General Purpose AI: The biggest leap in the book, of course, is that general purpose AI could evolve from simple computer viruses to sophisticated intelligences that communicate, trade, and form a civilization complete with social reputation. As much as possible, I matched the evolution of biological life: from single cell organisms to multicellular life, learned intelligence vs. evolved intelligence, etc. For this reason, I think it’s inevitable that will eventually occur: it’s just life evolving on a different substrate. (It’s probably not reasonable that it could happen so quickly, however.)
Hopefully I haven’t missed anything huge. If I have, just let me know in the comments, and I’ll address it. If you enjoyed Avogadro Corp or A.I. Apocalypse, I hope you’ll check out my latest novel The Last Firewall. 

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I’d like to announce that The Last Firewall is available!

In the year 2035, robots, artificial intelligences, and neural implants have become commonplace. The Institute for Applied Ethics keeps the peace, using social reputation to ensure that robots and humans don’t harm society or each other. But a powerful AI named Adam has found a way around the restrictions. 

Catherine Matthews, nineteen years old, has a unique gift: the ability to manipulate the net with her neural implant. Yanked out of her perfectly ordinary life, Catherine becomes the last firewall standing between Adam and his quest for world domination. 

Two+ years in the making, I’m just so excited to finally release this novel. As with my other novels, I explore themes of what life will be like with artificial intelligence, how we deal with the inevitable man-vs-machine struggle, and the repercussions of using online social reputation as a form of governmental control.

The Last Firewall joins its siblings. 
Buy it now: Amazon Kindle, in paperback, and Kobo eReader.
(Other retailers coming soon.)

I hope you enjoy it! Here is some of the early praise for the book:

“Awesome near-term science fiction.” – Brad Feld, Foundry Group managing director

“An insightful and adrenaline-inducing tale of what humanity could become and the machines we could spawn.” – Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger

“A fun read and tantalizing study of the future of technology: both inviting and alarming.” – Harper Reed, former CTO of Obama for America, Threadless

“A fascinating and prescient take on what the world will look like once computers become smarter than people. Highly recommended.” – Mat Ellis, Founder & CEO Cloudability

“A phenomenal ride through a post-scarcity world where humans are caught between rogue AIs. If you like having your mind blown, read this book!” – Gene Kim, author of The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

“The Last Firewall is like William Gibson had a baby with Tom Clancy and let Walter Jon Williams teach it karate. Superbly done.” – Jake F. Simons, author of Wingman and Train Wreck

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By now I’m sure everyone knows about how the NSA is spying on virtually every email coming in or out of the country, and nearly everyone that’s connected, even indirectly, to anyone even vaguely suspicious. If you’re not sure why we should care about privacy, read this piece by Cory Doctorow.

Brad Feld posted this morning about Lavabit committing corporate suicide. Lavabit is the company who provided Edward Snowden with secure email, and they were being forced by the US government (presumably) to violate their privacy/security agreement with their users. Rather than compromise security, they chose to end business operations.

What I found particularly interesting was the comment thread, in which Brad’s readers were asking him to take a stance, and he said that he didn’t yet know what action to take (more or less).

During my drive to work, I started brainstorming what possible actions might be. I don’t know what would be effective, so consider this nothing more than a list of raw ideas.

  • Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). They, more than anyone else, are the single point organization on the topic of privacy and security on the Internet. They’re organizing information and fighting legal cases. 
  • Don’t make it easy for people to spy on you. While we should assume that our emails, web browser activity, and everything else is widely available (both for legitimate government use as well as abuses of that power), we can still take steps to make it more difficult to be spied on. Some of these include:
  • If you are running a business, reconsider your use of cloud services. Although that’s the direction we’ve all been heading in the last few years, is it worth the potential risk? How would you be affected if your private business correspondence, plans, and data were leaked to random folks, including your competitors? For many years the argument in favor of cloud computing was that you can leave the security to the professionals. Now that we know virtually all cloud computing companies are insecure, that argument is no longer valid. (Consider also that many companies host on AWS. If Amazon is providing data to the NSA, then every company using AWS is also compromised.)
  • If you’re an investor in a tech startup, consider the cloud strategy for that company. Is privacy or security an integral aspect of what they’re offering? If so, they should strongly consider hosting in a privacy-friendly country, like Sweden. The company itself might be better off being located outside the US. If privacy or security is an integral part of their product, this should be a serious concern. That doesn’t just mean companies providing privacy or security as a product, but any product where the value of the product is threatened or diminished without privacy. For example, we can’t even begin to comprehend how genetic data might be used in the future. I’d like to know where my 23andme data is housed. (Given that Google is an investor, is it on Google servers? Great, now the NSA has my genetic profile.)
Any other ideas?