Martin Hellman “has achieved legendary status as the co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman public key exchange algorithm, a breakthrough in software and computer cryptography,” Martin Hellman said in a new interview. info world.
Nine years after winning the Turing Award, the 78-year-old cryptographer shared his views on several other issues.
What do you think about the state of digital espionage today?
Hermann: More international cooperation is needed. How can we ensure true cyber security when countries are planning and carrying out cyberattacks on each other? When countries incorporate AI into their weapons systems, how can we ensure that it is only used for good purposes? What should we do? And then there's the mother of all technological threats: nuclear weapons. If the war continues, it will only be a matter of time before one of them explodes.
Extremely unacceptable levels of nuclear risk highlight the need to consider the choices we make regarding important decisions, including cybersecurity. For our strategy to be effective, we must consider the needs of all participants.
The struggle with governments to make private communications available to the public in the digital age has become the stuff of legend. But in your recent book (co-authored with his wife Dorothy), [and freely available as a PDF]), you talk about your emotional exchange with former NSA Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. Until I read your book, I thought the National Security Agency was the bad guy and Diffie Hellman was a good guy, plain and simple. You describe how you came to see the NSA and its people as honest actors rather than a cynical cabal bent on repression. What changed your perspective?
Hermann: This is a great example of how taking a holistic rather than unilateral view of a conflict resolved an apparently intractable impasse. Those insights were part of a major shift in my approach to life. As we say in the book, “Be curious, not furious.” These ideas are effective in all aspects of life, not just in visible conflicts like with the NSA.
Hellman also had an interesting answer when asked if mathematics, game theory, and software development can teach us lessons that can be applied to issues such as nuclear nonproliferation and national defense.
“The main thing to learn is that the stories we (and other countries) tell ourselves are oversimplified and tend to make us look good and our enemies look bad.”