On Ken Thompson's Reflection on Trusting Trust

Early on, one can hear the humbleness from his voice. He expressed the importance of team work by recognizing other individuals who had collaborated and worked with him. When individuals in a team perform in a synergetic manner complementing the weaknesses of each other and taking advantage of each others strength, it leads to a situation where “ the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” ¹.

By following his lecture closely, one can see that his delivery was invigorating in a way that he showed the build-up of his capability as a programmer in a gradual manner. It seems that he is saying implicitly that anyone, who has the interest and determination, can excel in the field as long as he/she is persistent. For the purpose of progress and advances of the literature in our field, this thought is very welcoming. The real issue comes when the intentions of such individuals possessing such valuable knowledge is questioned. Are they the bad or the good guys?

On the subject of security, specifically in programming or software development, one can see the dilemma that we are facing. In our field where “don’t reinvent the wheel” is the common mantra, we are faced with trust issues each time we decide to use a 3^rd party application or API in the application that we developed. When we reuse a piece code, it’s easy for us to check if it contains malicious instruction. But when question on the integrity on the low level aspects i.e. compiler, assembler, etc. of the programming environment we are using, there comes the problem esp. if it’s not open-source² . I think it’s safe to say and very unfortunate that many of us in the field never really thought of this as an issue especially if these 3rd party libraries, tools or software came from "trusted" institution. Honestly, I never really have thought of this up until I read the article. When we become part of projects building software used in fields where human life will be at risk, then I believe we should take this more seriously and with greater responsibility.

Ken Thompson’s choice of topic to discuss in his lecture during a time when practitioners in our field faces moral and ethical issues because of the boom of individuals who called themselves hackers who undermine the integrity of the majority was very timely. He expressed vividly his position regarding the importance of honesty and trust in our kind of profession. His lecture was more of an open challenge to us practitioners of becoming morally and ethically ready when we work.

1 by Aristotle

2 Reflection on Trusting Trust