Happy New Year! In this issue:
- The Current Regime of Government Internet Censorship
- The Rise of the Distributed System Toolkit
- Critical Infrastructure Is Down Bad
The Current Regime of Government Internet Censorship
The current regime of government censorship began in 2014 with Ukraine. Former State Department official Mike Benz explains that the U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine's government led to Crimea joining Russia, at which point Western intelligence agencies feared their media influence was weakening. They developed a concept of "hybrid warfare" to justify controlling social media, claiming Russia could win wars by dominating information spaces rather than traditional battlefields.
This framework expanded dramatically after Brexit and Trump's 2016 victory. The national security establishment saw these populist successes as existential threats to the "rules-based international order." They feared that without censorship control, populist movements could collapse NATO, the EU, and Western financial institutions through democratic elections.
By 2019, the justification shifted from stopping foreign interference to protecting "democracy" itself—which they redefined to mean the consensus of institutions rather than the will of voters. A vast "censorship industrial complex" emerged, with government agencies funding universities, NGOs, and private companies to control online speech. This network now operates in 140 countries, using sophisticated AI tools to identify and suppress dissenting narratives.
We think this was a significant interview that may have flown somewhat under the radar, likely of particular interest to Nockchain readers.
Listen to the full interview of Mike Benz on Rogan.
The Rise of the Distributed System Toolkit
The future of blockchain development is what we call "Distributed System Toolkits:" Collections of modular software components that developers can mix-and-match to build distributed applications. We've taken notice of a new project called Commonware, backed by Haun Ventures and Dragonfly Capital among others, which seems to have a similar vision of the future.
Traditional blockchain stacks offer one-size-fits-all solutions, but the best applications require customization and specialization. Commonware provides modular crypto primitives rather than forcing developers to work around rigid frameworks (they call it an "anti-framework"). Their latest release, for example, consensus::simplex, delivers Byzantine Fault Tolerant agreement with fast block times (~300ms) and quick finality (~450ms).
We love to see it. This mirrors our vision for the NockApp framework: developers need flexible building blocks, not monolithic architectures.
The shift toward distributed system toolkits is driven by increasing complexity in modern applications and the need for sophisticated distributed system capabilities that are too complex to build from scratch. As their Head of Engineering Brendan Chou notes, "Building something exceptional doesn't require writing everything from scratch."
Critical Infrastructure Down Bad
A few recent security breaches show how vulnerable critical infrastructure remains in the United States.
The Chinese hacking group "Salt Typhoon" infiltrated nine major U.S. telecom networks, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Lumen. One compromised admin account had access to over 100,000 routers. Your phone company just got hacked by China, and they waited months to tell you. Via @nockchain.
Meanwhile, even the road systems are getting hacked. Los Angeles commuters faced a wave of fake "FasTrak violation" text messages, flooding Metro's system with panicked calls from drivers afraid of fines. Commuter anxiety is a cognitive security exploit (maybe you're not supposed to live like that?). Via @nockchain.
In a separate incident, Chinese hackers exploited the U.S. Treasury—essentially through its IT help desk—accessing unclassified workstations via a third-party vendor's cloud-based support system. Via @nockchain.
Finally, researchers discovered AI models can leak their secrets through electromagnetic waves, achieving 99.9% accuracy in stealing model architecture through simple probes. The only barrier is physical access to the processing chips. Via @nockchain.
