Editor’s Note: It’s time to confront the elephant

Ignorance isn’t bliss.

It’s a thought that’s occurred to me more than once whilst trying to navigate the complexities of tech. The risks and suspicions, the acronyms and ethics, the innovations and opportunities: it can all seem – to quote Churchill, as we Brits love to do – a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

And that feeling of bliss-less ignorance occurred to me again in a conversation with Bruce Schneier, a Harvard fellow, author and noted security expert, for this debut edition of Transform. 

“Technology companies are creating the world,” Bruce told me. “And letting them create the world for the short-term benefit of a bunch of tech billionaires is kind of a dumb way to run society.” 

When it’s put like that, you can perhaps see why trust in tech – and its “bunch of billionaires” – appears to be on the decline in a number of countries. How can we trust tech giants? Few of us know what they’re doing.  Even if we know, we often don’t really comprehend what it means. And almost no-one, the giants included, can know where it will all ultimately lead.

So no, ignorance really isn’t bliss. Which is one of the core reasons Huawei decided to start Transform – a publication aimed at providing insight into the present, plus a glimpse of the future. From the Internet of Things and blockchain to digital power and cyber security, our world is transforming around us, and it’s in all our interests to be more aware of what those changes mean.   

My entirely non-expert view is that the change will doubtless be bumpy in parts but ultimately exciting and transformative in a way that makes making our lives easier and more connected. But then working as I do for a tech giant, perhaps I would say that, wouldn’t I? Which is why the more open debate we can have about these current and looming changes – and the more light we can shine upon them – then surely the better.

Each edition of Transform will look at a single theme impacting the tech industry and therefore, in time, impacting you. And it’ll do so in an accessible and (we hope) engaging manner. 

The theme of the first edition is Trust in Tech, since trust surely underpins and eclipses every other consideration for consumers and innovators alike. And yes, it would feel a bit like skirting around a sizeable elephant in the room if Huawei chose to ignore the issue of trust.

In our headline discussion, the self-declared optimist Bruce Schneier explains why declining public trust scores in tech are actually a good thing – after a “collective indifference” we’ve woken up, he says, to the power of the industry. But we need regulation and government help to hold tech to account and achieve the security and privacy we value. Bruce’s main worry is that regulation and is continually outpaced by the sheer speed of tech industry developments. 

“What we have now is the level of computer security that the market rewards: not very good,” he tells me. “The only solution is for tech to solve tech problems… The question is: does the market reward the problem-solving tech, or just the problem-causing tech?”   

Elsewhere, the former Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, says we “need to mitigate de-globalization, in order to avoid making this world a worse place.” 

In addition, we offer a four-point guide to tackling ransomware, explain why fear of AI could give the bad guys a head start, explore the data trust rating system aiming to become the global standard, and still find space to guide you through the treacherous world of backdoors and network vulnerabilities.

And much more besides. We think Transform offers a rich list of interviews, essays, videos and thoughts: but I trust you to let us know either way... 

Gavin Allen
Editor-in-Chief
Huawei Technologies