I have a fun cybersecurity thought experiment:
Could Zero Trust survive the Borg?
Think about the Borg from Star Trek, or any future where humans somehow share knowledge collectively.
Everyone knows what everyone else knows.
Your password? Known.
Your PIN? Known.
Your favorite food? Known.
Your mother's maiden name? Known.
The answers to every security question you've ever created? Known.
Even traditional MFA starts getting interesting if a code displayed to you immediately becomes knowledge available to everyone else.
So how do you secure anything when knowledge itself can no longer be trusted?
The answer made me appreciate where modern security is already heading.
Stop relying on what someone knows and increasingly rely on what an entity can cryptographically prove.
A password can be shared.
A private key protected inside a TPM doesn't have to be.
A FIDO2 security key doesn't authenticate you because you know its secret. It proves possession of cryptographic material that was never exposed to your brain in the first place.
Then layer on device identity, hardware attestation, device compliance, behavioral risk, least privilege, continuous authorization, and context.
Instead of asking:
"Does this person know my password?"
Zero Trust can ask:
"Should this identity, using this cryptographically verified device, in its current security state, be allowed to perform this specific action right now?"
For highly privileged operations, take it another step.
Require multiple independently controlled cryptographic credentials.
Now even a collective consciousness that knows everything its members know still has to acquire the right physical capabilities.
That led me to an interesting conclusion:
In a world of perfect shared knowledge, knowledge proves almost nothing.
Security becomes about cryptographic possession, hardware identity, context, limited capabilities, and independent authorization.
And perhaps that's not really a Star Trek problem.
AI, credential theft, phishing, social engineering, massive data breaches, and increasingly sophisticated identity attacks are already pushing us toward the same conclusion.
Maybe the Borg don't break Zero Trust.
Maybe they're the perfect argument for it.