"Fear is a business model. It captures your attention and opens your wallet"

Killer robots make great headlines - and for great fundraising - but we can't let fear, uncertainty and doubt distract us from the real causes of harm

- Rois Ni Thuama

Businesses exist to solve problems. You can't get to work, so you buy a bike. You have a legal problem, so you instruct a lawyer. The bigger the problem, the bigger the business opportunity.

In technology, however, it’s not always obvious what the problem is, or even that one exists. We rely on systems so complex that their weaknesses hide beneath the surface. Most of us (count me in this) never pop the back off a router or a phone. Even if we did, we'd learn very little, because the real issues are buried deep in the hardware and code.

That's why tech firms, researchers and the media often have to teach us what to worry about. Sometimes that's valuable; for instance, explaining why phishing emails are such a plague, or why multifactor authentication matters. But sometimes, the problem being sold isn’t really a problem at all. And that's where fear, uncertainty and doubt - FUD, as it’s known - plays a role.

Fear sells

Contrast securing email or making backups of your data with the hot topic of “killer robots”. On the face of it, you might think killer robots is a bigger problem. Spend five minutes looking at this problem and you'll find urgent orange “Donate Now!” buttons warning that the world is on the brink of annihilation from autonomous weapons systems (AWS, not to be confused with the supplier of another recent business-killing event).

The implication: unless we act now, a fleet of Terminators will roll off the production line and start picking targets of their own accord. It sounds dramatic. It is dramatic. It’s also nonsense.

The word “autonomous” does a lot of heavy lifting in this debate. In ordinary language, autonomy means the ability to choose. You have autonomy when you can decide between genuine alternatives – to go left or right, to act or refrain.