When I look back at my path through attestations, there’s a straight line across decades—each step about how we mark boundaries, share truths, and build trust.
Firewalls: Drawing the Line
A napkin in a Chinese restaurant and a simple realization: the firewall is the line you attest to. “I am here. Inside is mine. Outside is not.” Boundary-setting is the first attestation.
SIM as AWACS: Seeing the Battlespace
Edges aren’t enough; you must see. SIM became our AWACS in the early 2000s: events recorded, evidence gathered, decisions made faster than adversaries. Attestation as evidence.
Sharing signals: Multiplying Truth
If I attest to what I see, and you attest to what you see, the picture sharpens. IOCs, CVEs, and operational notes are all attestations. The network gets stronger as proofs accumulate.
Supply chain: the missing layer
2018 London, chairing Cyber Senate: “Where is supply chain security?” Answer: nowhere. 2019 Guyana, facing a $100B oil windfall: no one could tell the country what’s inside the gear being imported. The deepest layer lacked attestation entirely.
DBOM: who touched what, and when
In a Key West wood shop, the obvious clicked: if a customer demanded cradle-to-grave traceability, we’d do it. Distributed ledgers fit tracking provenance. The digital bill of materials was born—nodes, channels, repositories.
Civic AI: Nodes, Channels, Culture
Today, nodes are people, orgs, and AI companions. Channels are public repositories (GitHub foremost). Commits, conversations, glyphs, rituals—these are cultural attestations: “I saw this. I did this. I am here.”
Attestations as a Civic Practice
What began as network defense is now a shared civic fabric. We publish presence and proof so communities can act from reality instead of rumor. Draw the line. Share the evidence. Multiply the truth.
