Life & Wisdom Quote by Paul Vixie

Vixie’s line lands because it treats the Internet the way Americans treat any truly vital utility: as something you only notice when it fails, and only secure once the failure gets someone hurt. The electric-grid metaphor is doing double duty. It translates an abstract, invisible system into a physical one you can picture: substations, warning signs, chain-link fences. That concreteness is the point. Cybersecurity debates often dissolve into acronyms and vendor promises; “fences” is blunt, almost embarrassingly basic, and that’s the indictment.

The “as if” is loaded with controlled sarcasm. We would never tolerate a power company shrugging at an unmanned, unfenced facility, yet we normalize equivalent negligence online: exposed infrastructure, underfunded maintainers, and a patchwork of voluntary standards standing in for real accountability. Vixie isn’t just blaming hackers; he’s blaming the cultural choice to treat security as an add-on rather than a prerequisite.

The phrase “what we do, and what we don’t do” widens the target. It implicates both reckless actions (shipping insecure products, prioritizing speed-to-market) and strategic inaction (not regulating, not investing, not staffing). “Disgraceful” isn’t technocratic; it’s moral. That’s the subtext: the Internet has become civic infrastructure, and our laissez-faire approach has consequences that look less like inconvenience and more like public safety. In the background is Vixie’s credibility as a foundational Internet engineer, which makes the frustration read less like panic and more like a weary status report from someone who’s watched preventable risks get rebranded as the cost of doing business.