Wrangling Emerging Technologies
The farm can be a dangerous place. Many of the animals are far bigger and stronger than we are - bulls, cows, horses, even an 800-pound boar lumbering through the pen. If one spooked, or simply chose the wrong moment to move, your day could end very badly.
My Pop farmed in rural Mississippi, so from the earliest age, I had to learn real animal husbandry skills. The livestock weren’t pets, although bottle-feeding calves at 5 a.m. can make a person sentimental. They were massive creatures with strong fight-or-flight instincts, and when those instincts fired, they could turn a quiet afternoon into a disaster scene. Survival on the farm required learning how to wrangle these much-larger-than-you animals with respect, competency, and situational awareness.
As I got older, I learned to work cattle, train horses, and handle livestock with confidence. That work wasn’t glamorous, but it was essential. Food on the table depended on our ability to manage large, powerful animals whose potential for harm was always present. What looked simple from the outside was, in reality, a continuous practice of risk assessment, pattern recognition, and adaptive decision-making - all critical skills I’d deploy in a very different field.
From the Corral to the Classroom
After enrolling in the community college, I became fascinated with studying potentially disruptive things that needed to be wrangled, and discovered the thought-provoking discipline of computer science. While most folks fail to see any linear direction on my path from agriculture to cyberwarfare, the questions I approached each with were very similar:
How can this new technology help people? How can it hurt them?
How can it make their lives easier? How can it impair or hinder them?
How can it be used to save lives? How might it be used to take lives?
How can it positively contribute to the environment? How can it pollute or destroy it?
The pattern was the same: powerful things - whether it’s an angry bucking bull, or a social media algorithm - can be extraordinarily useful or extraordinarily dangerous. The outcome depends on how well we manage them.
Technology is not inherently good or bad. But like walking behind a steer and giving it a slap, approaching complex tools without understanding, training, or caution can get you kicked clean across the pasture. Humans carry the responsibility to wrangle technology ethically, effectively, and with a deep awareness of the risks. When we fail to do so, people get hurt.
The Digital Frontier
2025 is an exciting time to be alive. We’ve had front-row seats to the birth of the Digital Age. I remember logging onto a computer at our small-town library, waiting patiently for the dial-up connection to screech and sputter into existence. It felt like magic - sending an email instead of sending a letter through the mail, calling long distance, or driving hours to the recipient's house to relay the message in person. Technology was a real game-changer for rural American life. With just a few clicks of a button, you, me, we could all become connected. It’s the type of technological advance our telegram-sending ancestors could only dream about.
But technology is a lot like the farm animals on my Pop’s farm - it can be dangerous if not managed responsibly. Technology can hurt people, disrupt environments, and cause a lot of mayhem. Most of the “advancements” in the human experience present both the potential for good and bad outcomes. The medication I take to stay alive, if given in the wrong dosage, can kill me. Planes can get us where we want to go quickly, unless they result in a deadly crash. The nuclear energy plants can provide cost-effective and environmentally friendly resources, unless there’s a meltdown, which then…you know.
The pattern hasn’t changed, but the scale of potential disruption and impact has, courtesy of our hyperconnected, technologically-empowered global society.
Approaching Emerging Technologies with Skill
For thousands of years, humankind has been learning to wrangle new capabilities with extraordinary power. Those who master the responsible use of dual-use technologies, whether that’s biological, digital, or kinetic, will be far better positioned to thrive in a fast-changing world. Technology, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily evil - it requires specific capabilities for humans to navigate effectively and manage responsibly.
We shouldn’t fear emerging technologies. We should fear complacency, lack of training, and the belief that tools will manage themselves. Competency - not panic - is the antidote to uncertainty related to the Digital Revolution in which we are all living.
New technologies will come and go. Humanity will be impacted by these innovations. And it’s up to us to ensure that innovation is paired with responsibility, accountability, and the human judgment required to counter misuse.
The Digital Revolution will reward those who approach emerging technologies with preparedness, not passivity; with discipline, not fear. The future belongs to those willing to develop the skills, policies, and ethical frameworks necessary to wrangle this new generation of dual-use tools.