There will always be an abstract layer over which the user cannot/will not observe. Until we mere mortals are capable of growing our own chips in carefully mai

There will always be an abstract layer over which the user cannot/will not observe. Until we mere mortals are capable of growing our own chips in carefully maintained vats, we are always going to be at the mercy of the wizards in their high tower, which represents the computing world today. Computers are simply not something we can safely trust, for as long as they are built from a wide and diverse variety of components, and even then there is not a clear or responsible class of society capable of providing safe audits of silicon designs, without being immediately corruptible. The only ways computing can contribute to trust is when society evolves, hopefully using a bit of computing power along the way, to trust itself inherently. Even these third-party, open-source, audited systems are too untrustworthy. We need complete and open design and manufacture, the entire chain audited along the way, to come even close to having trustworthy systems. With this in mind, I resist efforts of third parties to claim safe/security in their system integration efforts. Please, by all means maintain enthusiasm for the subject, but wake me up when the vat is warming up and the chips are growable, locally ..