What Happens When the Wrong Person Gets the Keys?

I have more passwords than I have any reasonable chance of remembering. There’s the bank, the credit card, email, streaming services, the phone, the laptop, and a couple dozen websites that are still very concerned about my account’s security. On top of that, I have set up two-factor authentication, which usually means finding my phone so I can prove to my laptop that I am the same person who was sitting here thirty seconds ago. It can be annoying, especially when the code arrives after I’ve already asked for another code and now I’m staring at two six-digit numbers wondering which one the machine wants. Still, I understand why it all exists. We put locks on doors even though most people walking past the house are perfectly decent. Electrical systems have circuit breakers because nobody expects the toaster to exercise mature judgment during a short circuit. Airplanes have checklists because even highly trained professionals occasionally forget things, especially when tired, distracted, or convinced they already know what they are doing. We build safeguards because humans are fallible, circumstances change, and “Dave is a really good guy” isn’t generally considered an engineering specification.

Then we get to government, corporations, AI, and other systems capable of rearranging millions of lives, and suddenly our standards weirdly go missing. We appoint…