Cybersecurity incidents have been in the news lately.

Due to the disruptive and destructive nature of such incidents, the focus for everyone who works in information technology — myself included — is ensuring such an incident doesn’t happen again, or at least ensuring the next incident is less disruptive. The best way to do so, as codified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is to always assume that at least one user or one device on your network should not be trusted and to adopt a zero trust architecture in response.

In an environment built according to a zero trust architecture, user accounts and devices are carefully authorized and monitored. An employee may be able to connect to a system with one account authenticated to one device in one location, but may not be permitted to connect to the same system using the same account from a different device or a different location — this sort of account, device and location segregation is common when discussing privileged access to sensitive systems, for example.

Privileged access, such as the sort used by me and my colleagues in our information technology (IT) work, should also be further controlled through the use of privileged access management tools that ensure each privileged user has just enough access just in time. Instead of using one account that perpetually retains administrative access over multiple systems, administrators operating in a zero trust architecture must request just enough access to perform specific privileged tasks. If they receive authorization, they only retain it just long enough to perform those tasks. Once the work is complete, authorization is revoked until the next request is submitted.

That’s right — in a zero trust environment, privileged accounts operate with checks and balances, a strictly defined separation of powers and time-limited terms that automatically expire unless they are renewed by others. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

All of this is a far cry from the computing environment I grew up with. When I was a child, early computers could only run one unitary executable program at a time. That program — and the elementary school student running it — was given total control over the machine. When personal computers started to multitask — to execute more than one piece of software at a time — each running process could and often did overwrite the memory and data used by other running processes, causing frustrating errors such as the dreaded “blue screen of death” as a result. 

When I was in college, any user of a computer could install any software they wanted — which explains why many family computers become virus-riddled disasters after children downloaded malware instead of music files with file sharing services such as LimeWire. Power fantasies of the time, such as the Bastard Operator From Hell and The IT Crowd, conditioned future IT administrators to think of superuser access as a potential sword of justice.

For decades, home computer users and enterprise systems administrators were omnipotent digital despots. That absolute power corrupted data and systems absolutely.

Who could have predicted that outcome, I wonder?

One of the more curious aspects of working in information technology these days is watching my colleagues and I relearn well-worn lessons of the past the hard way, only at internet speeds. The principle of least privilege, for example, is nothing new — it’s simply the same separation of powers John Locke described in the 17th century, only applied to information networks.

This brings me to Unitary Executive Theory.

Article II of the Constitution starts with, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” According to proponents of Unitary Executive Theory — such as those serving in President Donald Trump’s cabinet — that first sentence grants the president the right to end mail voting nationwide, seize a 5 percent stake in a lithium mine in Nevada in exchange for a loan that didn’t previously require an ownership stake, arbitrarily add and remove Nevada from a list of “sanctuary states” with no explanation, investigate Nevada’s flagship universities, and appoint a partisan hack as Nevada’s acting U.S. attorney without the constitutionally required advice and consent of the Senate.

According to proponents of Unitary Executive Theory, Trump can refuse to assent to laws — such as the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials from engaging in partisan political messaging. 

He can refuse to pass laws for the accommodation of large districts of people — such as when he cut funding for multiple projects in Democrat-controlled cities and states. 

He can obstruct the laws for naturalization of foreigners — and send U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to disappear family members without a trace. 

He can obstruct the administration of justice by refusing to assent to laws — and by ordering his officials to punish his political enemies.

He can keep among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of state legislatures.

He can cut off our trade with all parts of the world and impose taxes without our consent — while he also bails out overseas allies as the government is ordered to stop providing Americans vital services.

He can transport us overseas to be tried for pretended offenses.

He can declare us out of his protection and wage war against us.

The president can, in short, run through the entire list of grievances our Founding Fathers fought against in the Declaration of Independence — and eviscerate the Bill of Rights our Founding Fathers authored as well while he’s at it. He has an Article II, which gives him the right to do whatever he wants.

It’s all in the art of the deal of wielding executive power.

It seems unlikely that the Founding Fathers would write a constitution that would grant anyone the very same absolute power they fought against. For example, in Federalist 77, Alexander Hamilton argued that under the Constitution he helped write, consent of the Senate wasn’t just required for presidents to appoint federal officials — it was also necessary for presidents to remove them. Taking the “unprecedented opportunity” of a government shutdown to fire or lay off federal workers from “many Democrat Agencies,” as Trump has threatened to do, would compromise the “steady administration” that Hamilton and his colleagues claimed the Constitution was designed to deliver.

Even if they did, however — even if the Founding Fathers truly believed the role of the president shouldn’t be limited to executing the law as written and funded by Congress but should expand to the execution of any whim he has the power to post about on social media — there’s no reason any of us should accept that today. With the benefit of 236 years of hindsight, there’s no reason to grant any elected official more than zero trust in the execution of their duties. By now we should all understand the perils of absolute power and the importance of minimizing the privileges — and minimizing how long anyone holds them — of those who claim to serve on our behalf.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.