When I last looked up, it was Thanksgiving. I blinked and Christmas is around the corner. For a lot of folks December is a time to slow down and bring the year to a gentle close, but for us, it’s typically a mad dash to the year-end to wrap up projects, spend the rest of the annual budget and somehow squeeze it in around everyone’s holiday schedule. In one of those fun, calendar-year serendipities, the next two scheduled newsletters actually fall on holidays, giving me a tidy excuse to skip writing blogs for the “rest of the year”. Which means this one needs to be a banger, right?

What I hope we don’t see next year (but probably will)

Chris is making a list and checking it twice: most will be naughty, but we can hope everyone plays nice.

1. Technology hardware prices will likely go up by 20-40%. The incoming administration has promised tariffs will be levied against our biggest trading partners and primary source of electronics. I’m not just talking iPhones and televisions – almost all technology is based on manufacturing and assembly overseas. Regardless of what the politicians are saying, us folks in the cheap seats will be paying for those tariffs through increased retail pricing, impacted supplies (and scalping-driven pricing), and continuing degradation in manufacturing quality as suppliers squeeze profit out of an increasingly impoverished middle class.
2. Hackers will up their game with AI. Phishers have long since graduated from the clumsily worded “business propositions” from African princes to carefully crafted emails mimicking your closest colleagues and friends. They now have easy access to AI-powered platforms that cost them virtually nothing to implement, and they are backed by big budgets, well-trained teams, and often nation-states with even higher stakes than draining your personal bank account. Banks have proven that they are struggling to keep up with just human-based attacks, and when those attackers gear up with AI, it’s going to be a bloodbath. And don’t get me started on how far behind government agencies are in this escalation.
3. There will be a social media showdown. Several social media platforms are fighting for relevancy (and revenue) but clearly they still have a huge influence on politics, and all of them have made no bones about wielding that influence to gain and retain power. A certain upstart has gained some market share from folks fleeing the more toxic discourse on the established platforms, but we all know the internet breeds trolls and hate just as quickly as everything else, and trolls feed on the turmoil they cause. This new platform is a wide open “sky” for them unfortunately. We will see if the newcomer can survive the more bloodthirsty internet demographic.
4. There will be more out-in-the-open, nation-based cyberwarfare. Politically-motivated but mostly low-profile cyberwarfare has been a thing for several decades now, but the war in Ukraine has given both sides ample testing grounds and tangible, publicized results that are definitely being added to every APT playbook while justifying creation, funding and resource prioritization for nations trying to catch up. Successful cyberwarfare attacks don’t rely on throwing armies into a meatgrinder to cause political or economic instability – just a handful of well-funded hackers can do considerable damage without shedding a drop of blood. Because of this, we will also see the impact spreading to the everyday citizen as opposition nations test their reach on aging utilities (like power grids and water supplies) who have always lagged in cybersecurity development.

My job is to watch for the worst, so it may come as no surprise that I always see danger around the corner. I also know that the world is full of compassionate and enlightened humans who are focused on making the world a better place, despite the fact that hate and fear seem to be gathering power. The mass media has always made the most money off leading with blood and conflict which makes us feel like that’s all there is, so perhaps “turn off” the internet for a little while. If there is one thing the holidays should remind you of, it’s to put the phone down and look around you to the friends and family that make holidays important and memorable. Change happens locally. If all of us focus on improving and changing the things we actually have influence on, I believe love and empathy will carry us through even the darkest times.

Image by kewl from Pixabay