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Plywood Drones and Digital Doubles (Audio Edition + extras)
Hey, it’s Marek,
Fresh back from Europe, I recorded this episode while processing a surreal experience: Russian drones made of plywood and polystyrene triggered NATO fighter jets over Poland. The airport I was flying to was closed during the event. The drones? They were decoys - $5,000 pieces of plywood triggering million-dollar defence responses.
Here’s the pattern that should keep you up at night: You’re facing the same asymmetric exhaustion in your digital infrastructure.
Recently, we’ve crossed a symbolic threshold. Automated traffic now exceeds human traffic on the internet (51% according to Imperva). One AI bot made 39,000 requests per minute to a single website. Meta’s crawlers alone generate 52% of all AI crawler traffic - yes, the same Meta whose AI glasses I wear to work, bypassing our corporate AI policies. We’re simultaneously victims and perpetrators of bot multiplication.
A simple web form for reporting parking violations in Poland generated 2,000+ reports in days, overwhelming police operations. If organised humans with an efficient interface can break systems, what happens when everyone has AI agents?
But should we treat all bot traffic like enemy drones? Or perhaps create new channels for bots? Grasshopper Bank shows the way - they created dedicated MCP channels for AI agents to access banking data directly, instead of having bots pretend to be humans. We need bot lanes, not bot wars.
Monday morning action: Check your analytics for those telltale perfect traffic patterns. If your traffic curves are mathematically smooth, you’re looking at bots pretending to be human.
Correction to last week’s episode: Michael (self-proclaimed biggest Nirvana fan) caught me - Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged was recorded in ’93, not ’94. I just looked at the Apple Music release date, and didn’t realise there was a delay between recording and releasing. Thanks for keeping me honest!
Stay curious!
Listen to the full episode for the complete story of NATO’s drone problem and why it’s your problem too.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marekkowal.substack.com
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By Marek KowalkiewiczHey, it’s Marek,
Fresh back from Europe, I recorded this episode while processing a surreal experience: Russian drones made of plywood and polystyrene triggered NATO fighter jets over Poland. The airport I was flying to was closed during the event. The drones? They were decoys - $5,000 pieces of plywood triggering million-dollar defence responses.
Here’s the pattern that should keep you up at night: You’re facing the same asymmetric exhaustion in your digital infrastructure.
Recently, we’ve crossed a symbolic threshold. Automated traffic now exceeds human traffic on the internet (51% according to Imperva). One AI bot made 39,000 requests per minute to a single website. Meta’s crawlers alone generate 52% of all AI crawler traffic - yes, the same Meta whose AI glasses I wear to work, bypassing our corporate AI policies. We’re simultaneously victims and perpetrators of bot multiplication.
A simple web form for reporting parking violations in Poland generated 2,000+ reports in days, overwhelming police operations. If organised humans with an efficient interface can break systems, what happens when everyone has AI agents?
But should we treat all bot traffic like enemy drones? Or perhaps create new channels for bots? Grasshopper Bank shows the way - they created dedicated MCP channels for AI agents to access banking data directly, instead of having bots pretend to be humans. We need bot lanes, not bot wars.
Monday morning action: Check your analytics for those telltale perfect traffic patterns. If your traffic curves are mathematically smooth, you’re looking at bots pretending to be human.
Correction to last week’s episode: Michael (self-proclaimed biggest Nirvana fan) caught me - Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged was recorded in ’93, not ’94. I just looked at the Apple Music release date, and didn’t realise there was a delay between recording and releasing. Thanks for keeping me honest!
Stay curious!
Listen to the full episode for the complete story of NATO’s drone problem and why it’s your problem too.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marekkowal.substack.com