An update on our self-sovereign community, Undersco.re: https://undersco.re/
Friends,
Itโs been seven months since we last published. I owe you an explanation for that.
In the summer of 2025, NDC began working with Swiss journalists to release key findings from our digital identity research ahead of Switzerlandโs e-ID referendum. On 1 August, we were hit with a cease and desist that targeted both me personally, and NDCโs ability to operate.
That C&D was the culmination of a series of threats that had been escalating since January. In the wider world, 2025 was the year that much of what NDC had been forecasting since 2018 arrived in full. Because of this campaign, we were unable to publish, unable to respond publicly, unable to contribute to a discourse we'd been central to for over half a decade.
Itโs been seven months since we last published. I owe you an explanation for that.
In the summer of 2025, NDC began working with Swiss journalists to release key findings from our digital identity research ahead of Switzerlandโs e-ID referendum. On 1 August, we were hit with a cease and desist that targeted both me personally, and NDCโs ability to operate.
That C&D was the culmination of a series of threats that had been escalating since January. In the wider world, 2025 was the year that much of what NDC had been forecasting since 2018 arrived in full. Because of this campaign, we were unable to publish, unable to respond publicly, unable to contribute to a discourse we'd been central to for over half a decade.
During that absence, we turned our own methodology around on ourselves. We applied the same adversarial analysis we use in research and collaborations to protect ourselves, our work, and to confirm that what we had built was safe. That process took months. Itโs now complete.
Against the backdrop of data centres being targeted in war for the first time, today weโre publishing Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark? โ a long essay on digital memory, infrastructure fragility, and the movements building outside institutional protection. It draws on a decade of work and begins with a personal story Iโve never published before.
Against the backdrop of data centres being targeted in war for the first time, today weโre publishing Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark? โ a long essay on digital memory, infrastructure fragility, and the movements building outside institutional protection. It draws on a decade of work and begins with a personal story Iโve never published before.
Cade Diehm
5 May 2025 10 March 2026
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/who-will-remember-us-when-the-servers-go-dark/
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/who-will-remember-us-when-the-servers-go-dark/
newdesigncongress.org
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
We bet an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack, and now fate has come to collect that wager. California has a lot to fucking answer for.
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This is the first of several releases. Work that was suppressed last year is now being published alongside new material we've developed since returning to operation in December. The full Digital Identity Event Horizon report, new case studies, research notes, and follow-ups to publications such as The Imperial Sensorium and The Coming Game Engine Inflection Point are all coming.
NDC is back. More soon.
Cade
NDC is back. More soon.
Cade
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One day you wake up and missiles are falling on Tehran. A girl's school is obliterated and explained away as an 'AI hallucination'. The men who ordered it read GPT-tinged speeches, and none of it feels real because the last time you saw these people, they were podcasters and cable news hosts. Another strongman wins an election โ the headlines call it a shock win. All you feel is deja vu. Your body knows better.
You reach for your allies and find dust. You were so sure we were stronger, together. But the organisations that promised they would prevent this either no longer exist, or are unrecognisable. And you may ask yourself, "how did I get here?"
You are not alone. Today, we publish ๐ฃ๐ฑ๐ฎ ๐๐ป๐ฎ๐ช๐ฝ ๐๐ธ๐ท๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ท๐ฌ๐ฎ ๐ช๐ท๐ญ ๐๐ฝ๐ผ ๐๐ฒ๐ผ๐ฌ๐ธ๐ท๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ท๐ฝ๐ผ, a culmination of half a decade of work that helps to understand why this happened, why the people who seized power are who they are, and why their grip on power is far more brittle than it looks.
It might seem tempting to look for answers that neatly explain everything. There are many reasons why, but here we propose two. This is angry and ambitious, but I'm optimistic, and you should be too. Moments like these come once in a lifetime.
You reach for your allies and find dust. You were so sure we were stronger, together. But the organisations that promised they would prevent this either no longer exist, or are unrecognisable. And you may ask yourself, "how did I get here?"
You are not alone. Today, we publish ๐ฃ๐ฑ๐ฎ ๐๐ป๐ฎ๐ช๐ฝ ๐๐ธ๐ท๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ท๐ฌ๐ฎ ๐ช๐ท๐ญ ๐๐ฝ๐ผ ๐๐ฒ๐ผ๐ฌ๐ธ๐ท๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ท๐ฝ๐ผ, a culmination of half a decade of work that helps to understand why this happened, why the people who seized power are who they are, and why their grip on power is far more brittle than it looks.
It might seem tempting to look for answers that neatly explain everything. There are many reasons why, but here we propose two. This is angry and ambitious, but I'm optimistic, and you should be too. Moments like these come once in a lifetime.
โก7๐1
READ THE REPORT HERE: https://newdesigncongress.org/en/report/2026/the-digital-identity-event-horizon/
After five years, The Digital Identity Event Horizon is published in full today: three problem statements, ten key findings, and dozens of recommendations across policy, protocol, legal, and social contexts.
It's the largest research study in New Design Congress' eight-year history: eight case studies, hundreds of citations, dozens of participants from government, intelligence, civil society, technology, and the field itself.
It is also, without exaggeration, the most alarming body of work we have ever produced.
The argument is straightforward and difficult to reckon with: Digital identity makes societies brittle. In 2026, we find ourselves in an era of digital identity fetishism: flawed age verification schemes, biometric and facial-recognition authenticators, and fragile state-backed identity programmes are rolling out at an unprecedented rate. And every one of them, whether current or emerging, remains vulnerable to social engineering. The success rate for a non-technical attack on a user is now three out of four. These attacks cost US companies an estimated $1.6 billion in the five years to 2017 alone; by 2024, fraud runs to hundreds of billions worldwide.
We were prevented from fully publishing this work last year by a hostile US-based third party. It's out now, complete, and nothing in it has changed except that more of what it warned about has come true.
If you do one thing after reading The Digital Identity Event Horizon, let it be this: put this report in front of someone who still believes in digital identity as it exists today, so that we may start to recognise and respond to the threat together. The most tragic outcome would be for the very architects of digital identity to one day shrug and say, "We had no idea."
This report exists so they never can, and so the rest of us know where to start designing the alternatives, in code and in policy.
If that's the work you're doing, contact us.
After five years, The Digital Identity Event Horizon is published in full today: three problem statements, ten key findings, and dozens of recommendations across policy, protocol, legal, and social contexts.
It's the largest research study in New Design Congress' eight-year history: eight case studies, hundreds of citations, dozens of participants from government, intelligence, civil society, technology, and the field itself.
It is also, without exaggeration, the most alarming body of work we have ever produced.
The argument is straightforward and difficult to reckon with: Digital identity makes societies brittle. In 2026, we find ourselves in an era of digital identity fetishism: flawed age verification schemes, biometric and facial-recognition authenticators, and fragile state-backed identity programmes are rolling out at an unprecedented rate. And every one of them, whether current or emerging, remains vulnerable to social engineering. The success rate for a non-technical attack on a user is now three out of four. These attacks cost US companies an estimated $1.6 billion in the five years to 2017 alone; by 2024, fraud runs to hundreds of billions worldwide.
We were prevented from fully publishing this work last year by a hostile US-based third party. It's out now, complete, and nothing in it has changed except that more of what it warned about has come true.
If you do one thing after reading The Digital Identity Event Horizon, let it be this: put this report in front of someone who still believes in digital identity as it exists today, so that we may start to recognise and respond to the threat together. The most tragic outcome would be for the very architects of digital identity to one day shrug and say, "We had no idea."
This report exists so they never can, and so the rest of us know where to start designing the alternatives, in code and in policy.
If that's the work you're doing, contact us.
newdesigncongress.org
The Digital Identity Event Horizon
A five year investigation into digital identity and its central role in creating brittle societies.
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