Essential digital technologies are critical infrastructure – they are not always built and managed that way

What do the water system in Flint, Michigan, the electrical grid in Puerto Rico, and your search engine have in common? They are all critical infrastructure – systems essential to everyday life.

People expect critical infrastructure to be reliable, to minimise risk and to promote public well-being. When it fails – such as when lead seepage poisoned Flint’s water supply in 2014, or when nearly all of Puerto Rico’s power went out on New Year’s Eve in 2024 – the public expects risks to be mitigated and problems to be addressed.

Today’s critical infrastructure includes food and water systems, roads and bridges, and financial and health systems. Much of the digital technology everyone depends on is also critical infrastructure. People depend on search engines for information, social media for public announcements and important communications, and AI-powered services for analysis and decision-making. All are essential to function in modern civic society.

When search engines opportunistically shape the information that people seek, social media is polluted with misinformation, and AI-driven services serve up unsafe recommendations or “digital slop,” many people chalk it up to the cost of engaging with the commercial sector and feel powerless to control their information – or one form of “digital resignation.”

My experience as former director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and co-founder of the international Research Data Alliance suggests that it doesn’t have to be this way. Digital infrastructure can be designed, built and managed for human well-being just as other critical infrastructure is.

To do so, society will need to change both its expectations about digital critical infrastructure and its actions – the way the public and private sectors create and regulate these services and systems and the way the public uses them – to better protect the people who depend on them.

From food to search engines

People expect critical infrastructure to be safe and secure for widespread use. They expect it to be broadly accessible and reliable, and to promote public interests at least as much as commercial profit. This means incorporating safeguards for the public such as speed limits on roads, redundant systems in power plants, and privacy regulations governing health data. It is never perfect, but people expect critical infrastructure to be built, managed and regulated to support and protect a vulnerable public.

Consider food and information systems: Both sustain the well-being of the public in different ways. In the food system, public health standards safeguard the way your food is processed so that it does not make you sick. Restaurants are evaluated based on their compliance with these health standards: Is food handled and stored at safe temperatures? Are kitchens sanitised properly? In many places, restaurants must publicly display the letter grade the health department gives them. It’s easier to make healthy choices when you know if a restaurant got an A or a C.

Search engines are also critical infrastructure, shaping how people access information essential to modern life. Yet the ranking systems of opportunistic search algorithms often prioritise content that is commercially advantageous, heavily optimised, and attention-grabbing. These priorities shape public understanding, influence democratic discourse and can sometimes give users a distorted view of reality.

What if people expected search engines to provide similar transparency about how they select and rank content? What if you knew a search engine’s algorithmic priorities, how it profiles you as a user and how advertising shapes the information you receive? That might help you decide where to look for information and how much to trust what you find.

Digital critical infrastructure can put people at risk in different ways. Sometimes people feel the impact immediately, as when the power grid blacks out or the internet goes down. Sometimes it fails by exposing people to a toxic environment – a polluted river can harm the people and wildlife that depend on it, just as dangerous misinformation on social media promoting health scams or body dysmorphia can harm people seeking information and advice. Sometimes digital critical infrastructure fails by not including sufficient protections – by creating a fertile environment for predators or by supporting surveillance pricing models that use personal information to extract the most that consumers can pay.

To counteract these risks, it’s important to incorporate more safeguards in the design, deployment and management of the systems people depend on. It’s also important to provide users with more control over what they see on social media and who appears in their feeds, and more transparency about how the personal data collected by connected doorbells or e-commerce services is used, shared or sold. Such safeguards could reduce risk and help users avoid exploitation, manipulation and predators.

Where to start?

Making digital critical infrastructure better is within reach, and the strategies described in my book, Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace, and elsewhere can make tech both better, and better for the people who depend on it.

Consider transportation as an example. Experts predict that self-driving cars will be ubiquitous in the coming decades. Engineers can reduce tomorrow’s public risks today by designing these connected “data centers on wheels” to reduce emissions from onboard computers, protect passenger data and create fail-safe measures needed to operate safely when the internet on tomorrow’s connected highways goes down. Such efforts involve human planning, work and intervention now to ensure that future transportation will promote public well-being.

Digital critical infrastructure can be built and managed better; people’s well-being depends on it. The challenge today is to ensure that as we develop the technologies that shape our future, they also advance society and help humans thrive.