If you believe security is largely about locking doors encrypting data and putting processes in place you miss the most volatile part of the equation. The mind is endlessly flexible which is both its genius and its fatal vulnerability. A skilled manipulator does not waste energy trying to break your system from the outside they instead step inside and rewrite the rules by which you see the world. Once your internal narrative changes your actions will change and no firewall can stop the command you give to yourself.
It is tempting to frame this sort of loss in simple terms as stupidity or gullibility. But that framing blinds us to the uncomfortable truth that there is nothing structurally different between the victim’s susceptibility and our own. Given the right emotional pressure the right sequence of events and the right imagined outcome any of us can be persuaded to do what we would otherwise swear is unthinkable. The internet amplifies this risk because it lets strangers construct highly targeted psychological pressure at scale and over long periods of time.
If you believe security is largely about locking doors encrypting data and putting processes in place you miss the most volatile part of the equation. The mind is endlessly flexible which is both its genius and its fatal vulnerability. A skilled manipulator does not waste energy trying to break your system from the outside they instead step inside and rewrite the rules by which you see the world. Once your internal narrative changes your actions will change and no firewall can stop the command you give to yourself.
It is tempting to frame this sort of loss in simple terms as stupidity or gullibility. But that framing blinds us to the uncomfortable truth that there is nothing structurally different between the victim’s susceptibility and our own. Given the right emotional pressure the right sequence of events and the right imagined outcome any of us can be persuaded to do what we would otherwise swear is unthinkable. The internet amplifies this risk because it lets strangers construct highly targeted psychological pressure at scale and over long periods of time.