And Together We Crossed the River…

Josh Corman opens with a reflection on the decade since his 2013 talk "I Am the Cavalry," which asked technically skilled people to take responsibility for connected devices that affect human life. He describes the climate of that era, when security research was being criminalized and trust between hackers and government was strained, and how a group of volunteers chose to work with regulators, lawmakers and device makers rather than publicly attacking individual vendors.

The middle of the talk walks through the results. The group's work on cars, medical devices and hospitals produced safety frameworks, helped win good-faith research protections in US law, and contributed to federal requirements that FDA-approved devices be patchable and have a disclosure program. Corman links hospital ransomware to measurable excess deaths, and explains how critical infrastructure can be ranked by how quickly a disruption could cause loss of life, with food, water and emergency care singled out as under-defended.

He closes by acknowledging that the effort has not clearly succeeded, and that rural hospital closures continue. He asks whether the initiative should end, change focus, or become a training pipeline that mentors new contributors. The takeaway for practitioners is a call to bring policy-literate technical work to the sectors that are most exposed and least resourced.