Covid vs Goliath

We all know what covid is. So, what exactly do I mean by Goliath? I mean anything huge that is man-made – whether a building or a vehicle or a factory or a ship or a plane or a software or a data center or a farm. Even a bank balance.

Anything huge that we make will sooner or later come into conflict with something that is tiny. The tiny thing could be man-made or nature-made – that really is not the issue. The issue is that our creation must be resilient in the face of threats coming from the tiny.

Nature has done this job and offers good lessons. We see species of animals and plants that are huge – whales, elephants, giraffes and the giant sequoia trees – that have survived millions of years despite a variety of threats over the ages.

One interesting thing about tiny things is they often threaten from inside rather than outside. External threats are usually easier to identify and fix than internal threats.

Our financial systems (banks, insurance, exchanges, etc) have grown bigger and bigger and become Goliaths. They were all challenged by the covid virus, and survived thanks to talent, technology and government support. Even for other threats, such as small frauds, the attack surface is within, rather than external, and here too we need talent and technology, and of course, eternal vigilance.

More challenges will surely come in the future and we cannot afford to be complacent based on our financial systems surviving covid. The grander our creations, the more we need to build protection from the minute.

Inner vigilance and re-engineering are musts to help us preserve the Goliaths that we are building.