Lately, I've noticed the digital world feels strained—services and apps that were once reliable are slower, and errors and glitches are more common. This “finger on the pulse” sense is concurrent with recent issues like Claude AI lagging and the Azure outage. These problems suggest we're in the midst of a challenging infrastructure transition driven by insatiable demand.
The Pattern of Progress
Years ago, George Gilder described a fundamental pattern in technological innovation: progress moves from scarcity to abundance, but there's always an uncomfortable period in between. I saw this firsthand in the 1990s and early 2000s during the bandwidth buildout. Everyone wanted high-speed internet, but the infrastructure to deliver it was still being constructed. The system felt stressed because it was stressed—demand had outpaced capacity.
Eventually, abundance arrived. The bandwidth got built, the clouds got scaled, and what seemed impossible became routine.
We're in that middle period again, but this time with AI.
Every company is racing to add AI features.
Every service wants to be "intelligent." The infrastructure to support this explosion of demand is being built in real-time, under load. And like any system operating at the edge of its capacity, there are consequences.
Here's where it gets interesting from a security perspective: stressed infrastructure creates predictable vulnerabilities.
✓ Stressed infrastructure creates predictable vulnerabilities.
What Strain Reveals
When systems are pushed to their limits, three things happen that matter for your security.
1) First, friction gets quietly removed. Services under load start cutting corners—authentication steps get simplified, verification processes get streamlined, security measures that slow things down get deprioritized. It's not malicious; it's just the reality of keeping systems running when they're overloaded.
2) Second, erratic behavior becomes normalized. When legitimate services constantly behave unpredictably, our instincts get dulled. We stop trusting the feeling that "something's off" because everything feels a bit off. That's a problem, because your instincts are one of your best security tools.
3) Third—and this is perhaps most interesting—the impersonal becomes acceptable. When even trusted services feel robotic and disconnected, we stop expecting the human touch. We accept cold, generic communication. Which happens to be exactly the environment where social engineering thrives.
✓ Re-read the third point above - this is where vulnerability escalates.
What the Data Shows
Let me give you three current examples that illustrate this pattern.
The Billion-Dollar Text Scam
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on Chinese criminal networks that have generated over $1 billion from SMS scams. What's fascinating isn't the sophistication—it's the opposite. These operations succeed through sheer volume and persistence, not advanced technology.
But here's what caught my attention: these same tactics work significantly better now than they did three years ago. Why? The infrastructure strain creates cover. People are experiencing message fatigue, notification overload, digital exhaustion. In that environment, one more weird text doesn't trigger the same alarm it should.
The High-Tech Bank Scam
There's been extensive coverage of a new wave of bank scams where victims lose significant amounts—sometimes life savings—in moments. The pattern is consistent:
An alert appears to come from the victim's bank, often referencing a legitimate concern. Urgency is created. The victim, already managing multiple digital frustrations, acts quickly. Access is gained, money moves, and by the time the victim realizes what happened, it's over.
What makes this work so well right now? Banks' systems are under strain. Legitimate security alerts have increased because fraud genuinely is up. Customers are already confused and anxious. The scammers don't need to be particularly clever—they just need to ride the wave of existing chaos.
Practical Adjustments
None of this requires panic. It does require adjustment.
The reality is that things will be glitchy for a while. Services will be slower. Error messages will pop up. That's the current operating environment. Fighting it just creates frustration.
✓ What we can do is adjust our decision-making to account for this environment.
Use Independent Verification
This is an old principle that matters more in stressed times: never trust single-channel communication about money or accounts.
Email says there's a problem? Call the number from your statement.
Text says urgent action needed? Log in directly through the app.
Phone call requests immediate action? Hang up and call back using a number you independently verified.
✓ Use independent verification. It's not paranoid. It's adaptation to current conditions.
Your Human Judgment
In a fragile ecosystem, your judgment becomes your primary defense. Before acting on any financial communication, three questions:
1. Did I initiate this contact, or did it come to me?
2. Does this create artificial urgency?
3. Can I verify this through a completely separate channel?
If you can't answer these confidently, the answer is no—at least until you've verified independently.
A Note on Foundations
At Total Digital Security, we built our client security environments on a bedrock foundation using advanced SASE technology - what we call "Your Own Private Internet" - refer to: https://www.totaldigitalsecurity.com/blog/your-own-private-internet —a zero-trust architecture prioritizing stability over scale. While commercial cloud services scramble to handle AI demand, our approach focuses on security and reliability as job #1. and our record proves the efficacy of this approach.
✓ It's the difference between building on bedrock versus shifting sand. Both work in stable times. But in periods like this one, the foundation matters.
