America’s small cities are on the front lines of a fight most of the country doesn’t see. A ransomware attack shuts down a county’s 911 dispatch system. A school district’s student records end up for sale on the dark web. A rural hospital pays a six-figure ransom it can’t afford because paying is cheaper than losing patient care for a week. These aren’t hypotheticals — they are a regular occurrence across the United States, and the institutions absorbing the damage rarely have the budget, staff, or technical bench to defend themselves.
美国的小城市正处在一场大多数国人看不见的斗争前线。一次勒索软件攻击让某县的 911 报警调度系统瘫痪；某学区的学生…
I spent the last several years working on exactly this problem from inside the U.S. government, first at the NSA and then as Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology in the White House. The pattern is consistent: the same institutions expected to protect the most sensitive data and systems in our communities — student records, patient files, water systems, emergency services — are the least resourced to do it. Meanwhile, the AI wave that is improving productivity, diagnostics, and cyber defense in well-resourced organizations is largely passing these institutions by. This isn’t because the technology doesn’t apply, but it may not be accessible, affordable, and practical for smaller institutions.
That’s the gap we built Securing America’s Infrastructure Foundation to try to close.
We believe that the best thing that a society can do for a person is to give them a chance. Give them a shot at a great life regardless of their circumstance, background, ethnicity, religion, gender or any other attribute. That’s the best we can do. We know across America, there are places where people don’t have an equal shot, where the social infrastructure, hospitals, municipal services don’t have the resources or training to get the benefits of AI, and may bear more of the risks. The goal of the Foundation is to change that. —Ben Horowitz
