You Have To Trust Someone …. Right?

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent. - William Shakespeare

The #1206 “fiction” series continues …….

The President rubbed his eyes in the early morning hours as he shuffled in slipper-clad feet down the halls of the White House. It was early on a Saturday morning and most of his staff had not yet arrived, with Secret Service being his only company this morning.

As he acknowledged the “Good morning, Mr. President” comments from the people he passed, he found himself looking forward to a reasonably quiet day, as quiet as any that the President could imagine anyway.

Stepping into the Oval Office, he noticed his morning briefing notes on his desk. He sat in his chair and sighed. “Always more paperwork”, he thought.

As he thumbed through the file, there was an urgent request from one Senator in particular, a Senator who had been a particular pain in his butt for some time.

As his eyes skimmed over the latest rant from the Senator, his mind thought back over the last couple of years to the many antagonistic exchanges with this Senator.

There was the time when the government had established a connection between electronics, the heavy metals in them and cancer. It was a proven fact and passing laws limiting electronics manufacturing had been a no-brainer.

The Senator protested vehemently to no avail.

The fact that this law targeted private storage medium such as hard drives, thumb drives and the like was purely coincidence but the Senator whipped up the conspiracy people with an intention to block such the law.

He failed.

Passing laws requiring the mandatory returning and recycling of this technology had been a hassle as well but made easier using the contact information gathered in the healthcare legislation.

The Senator had yelled and screamed about this also but no one listened.

Giving citizens time to migrate all of their locally stored information to the cloud was also a nuisance but the pain was compensated for by the tens of thousands of jobs that had been created to help people with their data migration.

The Senator screamed much less regarding this when large contracts were awarded in his state. “Everybody has their price”, thought the President.

In fact, the NSA, the EPA, social media companies, private industry and other groups collaborated in ways he had never seen before in order to get everything done as quickly as possible, with the NSA doing an outstanding job quarterbacking the entire effort.

“Maybe we’re finally learning to work together”, he thought. “There is hope for us after all”.

The President returned his attention to the Senator’s note and his latest conspiracy-laden rant that with the capture of 99.9% of all privately owned data storage, the American people were putting their trust into agencies that were not to be trusted, either because of their own intentions or their inability to protect the people from the intentions of others. The Senator also claimed to hear of rumblings of a concern that he needed to speak to the President about immediately and in private.

The President tossed the note onto his desk and leaned back in his chair.

“This is ridiculous”, he thought, “If the President of the United States can trust his information to the cloud, then surely the average American citizen can.”

Feeling agitated, he turned towards his tablet to fire off a note to his Press Secretary to address this matter once and for all.

As his tablet awoke from sleep mode, the President stared at the message displayed on the screen:

Unable to connect to the cloud. Please contact customer support.

Sighing in frustration, he pulled out his cellphone to call his exec for help. Pressing the contacts button on his cellphone to find the right number, he was surprised to see a message appear on his cellphone screen:

Error: Unable to connect to provider.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door and an urgent voice calling for the President’s attention.

To be continued.

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Addendum:

This series, a departure from my usual musings, is inspired as a result of conversations with former senior advisors to multiple Presidents of the United States, senior officers in the US Military and other interesting folks.

While this musing is just “fiction” and a departure from my musings on technology, strategy, politics and society, as a strategy guy, I do everything for a reason and with a measurable outcome in mind. :-)

This “fictional” musing is continued from ……

National Security–Arming Both Sides – October 30, 2013

Be Careful What You Wish For – October 27, 2013

When Avoidance Produces The Unavoidable – September 26, 2013

By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War – August 30, 2013

Serving Two Masters – August 22, 2013

Growing the Rot From Within – August 6, 2013

The Coming Storm – June 8, 2013

The Master of Distraction – May 15, 2013

Living on the Edge – How Close Do You Dare? - March 29, 2013

Preventing A Disaster – Or Preparing To Survive One - November 29, 2012)

Divide and Conquer - August 5, 2012