A power failure in San Francisco yesterday resulted in Waymos blocking intersections. As autonomous vehicles proliferate, they could block entire urban areas. We need a new plan.
This incident exposes a critical infrastructre dependency most ppl haven't considered. When you scale AV fleets to millions of vehicles, a targeted power grid attack becomes a denial-of-service weapon against entire cities. The remote assistance bottleneck is especially concerning, basic queuing theory tells you centralized control cant scale during simultaneous failures. Cities need decentralized failover protocols where AVs can coordinate locally without constant cloud conectivity.
This incident exposes a critical infrastructre dependency most ppl haven't considered. When you scale AV fleets to millions of vehicles, a targeted power grid attack becomes a denial-of-service weapon against entire cities. The remote assistance bottleneck is especially concerning, basic queuing theory tells you centralized control cant scale during simultaneous failures. Cities need decentralized failover protocols where AVs can coordinate locally without constant cloud conectivity.