A physical wiring diagram for the human immune system
In terms of information security, as viewed by an infosec engineer, biological systems seem to have incredibly weak architecture. Hear me out, please.<p>If any piece of DNA code manages to find its way into the nucleus, it&#x27;s happily added to the cell &quot;runtime&quot; and has root access to the system.<p>To defend against this, biology relies on multiple layers of security, both physical, like the skin, and chemical, like the secret protein password it requires to allow foreign DNA to breach the cell membrane. But both are easily circumvented, for example weak points exist in the physical layer and the protein passwords are static and low entropy, easy to bruteforce by an enemy that already has a botnet of infected hosts which produce random permutations of these keys.<p>And once infection happens, the body response is sort of like the experience of cleaning a Windows 98 which has been used by your grandma to surf the internet for the last two decades, without the option to do a fresh install (kill the host). It&#x27;s messy and insanely complex - the sort of thing you would expect blind evolution to generate against a blind, brute-forcing script kiddie.<p>You just have to wonder what are our chances on this planet if intelligent and rational enemies, be they human or AI, gain the knowledge, tools and motivation to attack biological systems and intelligently design sophisticated attack vectors. Our most precious systems are wide open, folks.<p>Perhaps some day, to prevent such attacks, we will take control of this complex immune machinery and inject ourselves with highly engineered &quot;anti-viruses&quot; built on the same info-sec principles we build software on.