So let's review. Any computer that is connected to the internet can be fully breached by nation-states. Any webcam or microphone can be surreptitiously activated. All of your cpu cycles can be put to work for someone else. All of your online activity can be logged, including every key stroke.
What are the implications of living in this world?
Because some people seem to respond to this knowledge by seeking out data encryption and bitcoins and putting electrical tape over their usb ports, but this approach will never be fully protective. Your vanguard accounts can be drained. Your credit card information is for sale. You've been recorded masturbating in front of your laptop, and your nudes have been searched with facial recognition software. Your professional business computers can be held at ransom at any moment. Your private bedroom conversations have been keyword searched by google's AI. Your car's gps history has been cross correlated with your credit card transactions, your facebook account with your nude photos, your investment account with the address of your kid's school, and all of this is essentially public to anyone who knows where to look. You thought the internet was only good for tinder?
In this world, privacy is a privilege only granted to the uninteresting. Anyone can be blackmailed. Your only defense is to live within the matrix, paying your taxes and keeping your nose clean, and hoping you never get famous enough to become a target for criminals or governments.
These sorts of threats make me long for the days of human control of our society. I don't want everything to be automated by computers, I want a real human being behind a desk verifying my financial transactions. I want an individual person, not an algorithm, responsible for protecting my identity. I want an agent to verify and approve the sale of my house, or the execution of my will. I want a society built on trust in other people, not in technology. I want fraud protection on my credit cards, and FDIC insurance on my accounts, and law enforcement I can call on to assist me. In short I want MORE government control over my life, not the libertarian fantasy land that Neal Stephenson seems to think is the answer to this sad situation.