> We, people who really understand the technology that the world runs on, are a slowly dying breed. We are still here as tech leads, managers, directors, bu

> We, people who really understand the technology that the world runs on, are a slowly dying breed. We are still here as tech leads, managers, directors, business owners. But there will be a point in time when we will go on retirement and there will be only precious few people who had perseverance to really understand all those things by diving into obscure, historical manuals Some people like to say this is a perennial problem that every generation bemoans. I get why that might seem intuitive, and for the longest time I've hoped they're right and I'm merely getting old. Sadly they are wrong. Long term historical patterns of empire collapse follow this over-reach and under-education cycle that leads to a catastrophic rebuild capability gap that is triggered at some point. Thomas Thwaite's "The toaster project" [0] is a wonderful commentary on this. I cited it in a talk I did about education in world that will no longer pay for teaching kids how to use chips and breadboards in skinflint universities that prefer to teach them Microsoft Excel or use some crappy simulators of everything [1]. When it comes to cybersecurity we can only obtain defence in depth if we have knowledge in depth, and there are ever fewer of us around who understand how computers actually work. It's more than a little unnerving to meet CISOs and folks with high-flying titles who have no idea why using a phone app to control a Fortune 500 company infra might not be a good idea. [0] http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxoSskalOrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxoSskalOrM