For those interested in thoughtful commentary on current issues in Canadian political economy and international affairs, I recommend having a look at my friend Andrew Strebkov’s blog: Opinions International.
Category: economics
An interesting article about the prevalence of cybercrime and the costs of defending against it: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-cybersecurity-cybercrime-hack-canada/. It is interesting that the move to remote work has created business opportunities for hackers, security consultants, and the cloud providers that host virtual private network access. Corporations and governments are almost guaranteed to lose money to crime, to security measures, or both. Should the costs of managing cyber risks be passed on to consumers/taxpayers? Or are they more like maritime shipping hazards that should be handled primarily by insurers? If so, digital services could only be delivered economically by the largest multinationals, much as in the maritime shipping industry.
To complicate the picture further, there are high environmental costs to maintaining all the processing power that supoorts AI-driven hacking and real-time security monitoring. But so are the costs of pushing the office workforce to commute more regularly. Should customers be asked to pay for carbon offsets for security measures, or should taxpayers and drivers be asked to pay for road maintenance, tolled roads, energy efficient vehicles, and so forth?
Lucas Jerusalimiec 