[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 4 - The Maginot Line

Scene 4 - The Maginot Line

[Image]

1926  [Black and white like a silent movie]

[Image]

The Maginot Line  [Black and white like a silent movie]

[Images] Diagrams and Plans and Photos of the Maginot Line

Voice Over: The Maginot Line was this enormous super bunker that the French constructed after WWI when it was obvious the Germans were violating the treaty.  They wanted assurances that their larger more powerful neighbor wasn’t going to just roll over them, and so they thought the way to go was not just trenches but SUPER air conditioned concrete hardened trenches.

[Video Footage of the Blitzkrieg]

Voice Over: That didn’t work out so well.  Technology and tactics have a way of evolving.  Fighting the last war, isn’t always the way to go.  The Maginot line fell to the Blitzkrieg and was completely crushed by the Nazi regime.

[Video Footage of Google and Facebook]

Voice Over: In 2017, Google and Facebook signed a secret deal to corner the ad industry because they knew that working together was more efficient than wasting resources as competitors.  Among other things, Google agreed to feed data to Facebook that was ‘anonymized’

[Video of Anonymization of Data]

Voice Over: The way this was supposed to work was that certain key data was removed like names and phone numbers, but other data was passed directly to Facebook.  Google also fights charges it has too much information by using advanced AI tools and anonymization so that humans can’t abuse it.

[Video of Mark Zuckerberg]

Voice Over: But this is Mark Zuckerberg.  We’ll speak more about him later.

[Video of Blitzkrieg and Puzzles]

Voice Over: But technology adapts.  Facebook and others can learn pieces about you by taking bits from their puzzle and matching them with third party databases and reverse engineering what they know.  Even the most advanced AI Maginot line in the world isn’t going to stop a clever human using social engineering against a stupid human that stands as gate keeper.

[Image of ????]

And that’s just what we know about.