Israel’s “green pass” is an early vision of how we leave lockdown

Recovering from the SolarWinds hack could take 18 months

Sponsored by Darktrace The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology The way out 03.02.21 Good morning! Today: what we can learn from Israel's vaccine passport program, it could take 18 months for the US government to recover from the SolarWinds hack, and why GPT-3 is the best and worst of AI right now. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Israel’s “green pass” is an early vision of how we leave lockdown   A tempting idea: Can we go back to normal life once we’ve been vaccinated? And if we can, what kind of proof should we need? Enter the idea of vaccine passports. Japan, the UK, the EU as well as airlines and music venues are all considering them as a way to let people enjoy the benefits of a post-pandemic life while others wait for their shots. They should first look to Israel. What is happening there gives us a glimpse of the promise—and of the difficulties—such schemes face. How it works: Israel’s vaccine passport was released on February 21, to help the country emerge from a month-long lockdown. Vaccinated people, or people who have recovered from covid-19, can download an app that displays their “green pass” when they are asked to show it, giving them access to amenities like pools and concert venues (restaurants are not open in Israel yet.) However: It’s still too early to tell how well Israel’s program will work in practice—or what that will mean for vaccine passports in general. Some ethicists argue that such programs may further entrench existing inequalities. The green pass is also a potential privacy nightmare. Read the full story. —Cat Ferguson and Joshua Mitnick Recovering from the SolarWinds hack could take 18 months  The news: The hack on SolarWinds, a US software firm with customers around the world, was used to infiltrate thousands of companies as well as the US Treasury and Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security. It will take the US government as long as 18 months to make a full recovery, according to Brandon Wales, the acting director of CISA, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency. Some networks will have to be completely rebuilt from scratch. Why the delay: The Russian hackers managed to breach SolarWinds in 2019, use it to distribute malware by March 2020, and their actions were not discovered until November 2020. That’s a long time to go unnoticed. The hackers were stealthy and specific in targeting, which is why it took so long to catch them—and why it’s taking so long to understand their full impact. Read the full story. —Patrick Howell O'Neill Why GPT-3 is the best and worst of AI right now When it was first released, GPT-3 captured the public’s imagination for its ability to produce complex sentences that read as though they could have been produced by a human.  Language is crucial to making sense of the everyday world: humans use it to communicate, to share ideas and describe concepts. An AI that mastered language would acquire a better understanding of the world in the process.  But GPT-3’s abilities also make it hard to ignore AI’s growing problems. Its enormous power consumption is bad news for the climate. And it soaks up much of the disinformation and prejudice it finds online and reproduces it on demand.  Despite all these issues, GPT-3 is a win for those who believe bigger is better‚ and we can expect the next version to be even more impressive—and more likely to fool us into thinking it's something that it’s not. Read the full story. —Will Douglas Heaven This story is from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, which is all about progress. Read the full magazine, and subscribe if you don't already. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + You know it's the start of spring in Holland when the cows start dancing. (Thanks Kate!)   + Want to find a way to break up the pandemic monotony? Give these ideas a go.    + If your cooking is getting a bit tired, try chucking one of these sauces into the mix.    + Philosopher John Gray explains why we should all learn to live a bit more like cats.   + These blankets bring joy and warmth to people all over the globe. (NYT $)   + Make some JAZZ. Right here, right now, from your laptop. Sponsor Message A new era of cyber-threat is here, using offensive AI to supercharge its attacks Offensive AI allows attackers to automate reconnaissance, craft tailored impersonation attacks, and even self-propagate to avoid detection. Security teams can prepare for this eventuality by turning to defensive AI to fight back – leveraging autonomous cyber defense that learns on the job to detect and respond to even the most subtle indicators of an attack, no matter where it appears. Tune in for our free webcast with experts from Darktrace, as we explore current and emerging applications of offensive AI, defensive AI, and the ongoing battle of algorithms between the two. Sign up to watch. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The evolutionary race between humans and covid-19 🧬 Understanding how viruses evolve will define the next stage of the pandemic. (Wired $)   + The UK variant now accounts for 10% of all cases in the US. (Ars Technica)   + The UK reported vaccines are 80% effective at preventing hospitalizations in the over-80s. (Reuters)   + WHO investigators are deeply skeptical of China's covid-19 origin theory. (FT $) 2 What it's like to live under Myanmar's internet shutdown Scary. (Wired $)    + An overview of the advanced surveillance technologies that Myanmar's generals are using against the population. (NYT $)  3 How the pandemic has changed social media 🤳 It is no longer such an aspirational place of faux-perfection. Let's hope that trend stays. (Recode)   + YouTube's TikTok clone is now live in the US. (Ars Technica)    4 Trump's Gab account got hacked Along with all the data from the other 15,000 accounts on the far-right platform. (Ars Technica)  5 Is it legal to digitally resurrect the dead? 💀 It may (not) shock you to learn there are no laws governing this yet. (The Next Web)   6 Grimes made $5.8 million in 20 minutes selling a digital artwork One of those NFTs we keep hearing so much about recently. (Business Insider)   + How a 10-second video clip sold for $6.6 million. (Reuters)   + Bitcoin is either going to implode or go mainstream, says Citi. (CNBC)   + The very tight circle that holds sway over bitcoin. (Bloomberg $)   + Why we should worry about the rise of bitcoin mining in China. (Barron's)   7 Why does music make us feel things? 🎵😌 "Where words fail, music speaks." (Gizmodo)   8 Email is making us miserable  It feels more like a symptom than the disease itself to me. (New Yorker $)   9 A new technique lets us read centuries-old locked letters ✉️ A method that combines advanced X-rays with virtual reality could give us access to pages and pages of previously unseen history. (NYT $)h   10 China’s digital currency is really happening The electronic Chinese yuan is now being tested in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. (NYT) Not an expert? Not a problem. Our team is full of those. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review today for an insightful look into technology for the future without getting bogged down by the jargon. Quote of the day “We stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.” —Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, says she is deeply concerned about the rollbacks of restrictions in some states, the New York Times reports. Top image credit: MAYA ALLERUZZO | AP Please send blankets to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free The age of implementation Join us virtually | March 23–25, 2021   Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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