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The global rollout of "probably one of the worst updates we've ever seen of any software company ever" will have big ramifications for the IT industry, an expert says.

Global services are slowly recovering from a crippling software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday (NZ time).

Airlines, healthcare, shipping, finance, TV networks, transport networks and more around the world were affected by the faulty update, which crashed Microsoft Windows-powered computers so badly they could not be easily restored with a simple restart.

Companies are now dealing with backlogs of delayed and cancelled flights and medical appointments, missed orders and other issues that could take days to resolve.

CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz released a statement confirming the outages experienced worldwide were the result of what he called a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

He confirmed that the outages were not the result of a security incident or any kind of cyber attack.

"Clearly this is a 'black eye' moment, not just for CrowdStrike but I think the overall IT industry," Tech analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities told RNZ.

"It's something where I think for weeks and months ahead they'll be studying this. I'd expect there'll be regulatory hearings, you know, on Capitol Hill, and for Crowdstrike it's about brand reputation, it's about containing the damage in essentially what's a code red situation not just for CrowdStrike, but I see the cybersecurity industry globally."

The New Zealand government was likely to join the international community in questioning how a single software company can cause the biggest IT meltdown the world has ever seen.

Acting Prime Minister David Seymour told RNZ "government agencies will also be assessing how we responded to this, what else could have gone wrong, what else we might have done, as is responsible in any event like this occurs".

"As someone that takes an interest in technology and software in the way that it's developing, I was quite surprised this one company could have such a large effect. And I'm sure that there will be questions around the level of redundancy that's built into systems… I'm sure there'll be questions about how a software update is rolled out simultaneously right around the world.

"I have to say that most of those questions, at a technical level, are well above my pay grade. But I'm sure that the government will be asking those questions in the days and weeks to come."

Both Neuberger and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at length at the conference about what they felt was the source of the disaster: the consolidation of technology among a handful of companies.

“The irony of this morning is that a major international cyber security company was impacted,” she said.

“We need to really think about our digital resilience, not just in the systems we run, but in the globally connected security systems. The risks of consolidation, how we deal with that consolidation, and how we ensure that if an incident does occur, it can be contained and we can recover quickly.”

Blinken said it is imperative that organizations globally build resilience and redundancy back into critical systems but added that the world cannot be reliant “on any single point of failure.”

“We've been doing that with supply chains across the world, building coalitions of countries to make sure that we're coordinating on supply chains,” Blinken added. “Build new ones, and making sure that if we see a problem, we can address it immediately.”

Several recent incidents involving sector leaders like Microsoft, UnitedHealth Group and Snowflake have validated concerns about the consolidation of the technology industry around a small group of companies.

Students Headed to High School Are Academically a Year Behind, COVID Study Finds

Eighth graders remain a full school year behind pre-pandemic levels in math and reading, according to new test results that offer a bleak view on the reach of federal recovery efforts more than fours years after COVID hit.

Released Tuesday, the data from over 7.7 million students who took the widely used MAP Growth tests from NWEA doesn’t bode well for teens entering high school this fall. Finishing 4th grade when the pandemic hit, many students not only lost at least a year of in-person learning, but also transitioned to middle school during a chaotic period of teacher vacancies and rising absenteeism.

Student Test Scores Continue To Plummet Despite Hundreds Of Billions In Pandemic Aid For Education

Student test scores are continuing to fall four years after schools moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study released Tuesday by testing company Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

The paper found gaps in academic performance between today’s students and their pre-pandemic counterparts are widening, despite the record $190 billion in federal aid distributed to schools since the pandemic began. The findings — which were divulged from an analysis of test results from the 2023-24 school year for approximately 7.7 million students between the third and eighth grades — also come two years after experts had claimed a recovery in education was underway.

Modern societies too often reject circles for straight lines between starts and finishes. Believers in linear progress, we feel the need to keep moving forward. The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we land at the mercy of its deeper rhythms. Unlike the Navajo, we cannot withstand the temptation to try closing the circle ourselves and in the manner of our own liking. Yet we cannot avoid history's last quadrant. We cannot avoid the Fourth Turning, nor its ekpyrosis. Whether we welcome him or not, the Gray Champion will command our duty and sacrifice at a moment of Crisis. Whether we prepare wisely or not, we will complete the Millennial Saeculum. The epoch that began with V-J Day will reach a natural climax—and come to an end.

An end of what?

The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. But this end, while possible, is not likely. Human life is not so easily extinguishable. One conceit of linear thinking is the confidence that we possess such godlike power that—at the mere push of a button—we can obliterate nature, destroy our own seed, and make ourselves the final generations of our species. Civilized (post-Neolithic) man has endured some five hundred generations, prehistoric (fire-using) man perhaps five thousand generations, and Homo erectus ten times that. For the next Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck. Only the worst pessimist can imagine that.

The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. The Western civilization of Toynbee and the Faustian culture of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw. A New Dark Ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins. The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress. As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today's America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. This nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, Etruria ten, the Soviet Union (perhaps) only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

The new saeculum could find America a worse place. As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a great power. Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals. Its geography might be smaller, its culture less dominant, its military less effective, its government less democratic, its Constitution less inspiring. Emerging from its millennial chrysalis, it might evoke nothing like the hope and respect of its American Century forbear. Abroad, people of goodwill and civilized taste might perceive this society as a newly dangerous place. Or they might see it as decayed, antiquated, an old New World less central to human progress than we now are. All this is plausible, and possible, in the natural turning of saecular time.

Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place. Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization. Its new civic life might more nearly resemble that “shining city on a hill” to which colonial ancestors aspired. Its ecology might be freshly repaired and newly sustainable, its economy rejuvenated, its politics functional and fair, its media elevated in tone, its culture creative and uplifting, its gender and race relations improved, its commonalities embraced and differences accepted, its institutions free of the corruptions that today seem entrenched beyond correction. People might enjoy new realms of personal, family, community, and national fulfillment. America's borders might be redrawn around an altered but more cogent geography of public community. Its influence on world peace could be more potent, on world culture more inspiring. All this is achievable as well.

If the Fourth Turning ends triumphantly, much of the modern world may follow the same saecular rhythm and share in the same saecular triumph. And if that happens, many might hope that the world could achieve an “end of history,” a destination for mankind that Francis Fukuyama describes (with some irony) as “an end of wars and bloody revolutions” in which, “agreeing on ends, men would have no large causes for which to fight.” Is such an outcome possible? Probably not. A Fourth Turning triumph of such colossal dimensions is much more likely to produce a very magnificent, but very impermanent, First Turning. The saeculum would endure. Indeed, the more magnificent the High, the more powerful would be resulting generational tectonics. The Millennials would be resplendent—and expansively hubristic—as world-shaping Heroes. Young Prophets would later trigger an Awakening to match, and the circle would continue.

We should not feel limited, but rather empowered by the knowledge that the Fourth Turning's ekpyrosis can have such decisive consequences. By lending structure to life and time, the saeculum makes human history all the more purposeful. A belief in foreseeable seasons and perceptible
rhythms can inspire a society or an individual to do great things that might otherwise seem pointless. There is nothing ethically inhibiting in the notion that our behavior is, in some fundamental sense, a reenactment of the past. To the contrary: The ancients understood that to participate in cyclical time is to bear the responsibility for participating well or badly.

What will America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning?

History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Since Vietnam, many Americans suppose they know what it means to lose a war. Losing in the next Fourth Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.

The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. The Western civilization of Toynbee and the Faustian culture of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw. A New Dark Ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins. The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress. As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today's America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort—in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind's willingness to use it.

The saeculum's last quadrant does not specifically require total war, but it does require a major discontinuity or ekpyrosis—the death of an old order and a rebirth of something new. A saecular winter is indeed an era of trial and suffering, though not necessarily of tragedy.

Does the rhythm of the saeculum make a major war unavoidable? No one knows. An Awakening does not require a war. Nor, perhaps, does a Crisis—even though every Fourth Turning since the fifteenth century has culminated in total war. History teaches only that whatever wars do happen always reflect the mood of the current turning. Wars in a Fourth Turning find the broadest possible definition and are fought to unambiguous outcomes.

History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war— class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil—its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured. And if there is total war, it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:12 am Demarest off the cuff.

https://www.arthurdemarest.com/collapse ... s-today-2/

"You know what's going to bring our civilization down?...the byproducts of our incredible technology, our wonderfully successful capitalist economic system, our tremendous linking through communications and information systems, and the spread of democracy. That's what's gonna bring us down. The combination of all those things has caused a real boom which will lead to a giant, giant bust."

"So, you know, we're collapsing. But I'm not just a grumpy old man, we're collapsing. Although it sounds like it. I'm an expert on the collapse of 18 civilizations and we're collapsing. We've got everything. We've got every single fucking cause of collapse you could want except radical climate change and that's beginning. So, but as I've told you, don't worry about global warming. We won't make it far enough for that to be a problem. I think the wars are going to be the end of everything but only because the infrastructure's so vulnerable because of hypercoherence and technology it's also fragile."