Am I The Only One Panicking?

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Last month, the internet had its worst week in years. An Indian company called eMudhra, trusted to keep websites secure, was found to have the most flimsy locks. Anyone could have pretended to be your bank, your email, and any government portal.

Days later, two bugs, hidden for a decade in the software that runs 70% of the world's websites, were exposed. Fifty-six sites went dark overnight. Wikipedia and the Internet Archive were gone.

Cybersecurity folks started calling it Black October.

Kunal Kapoor, the Bollywood actor, put out a cybersecurity alert before any Indian government agency did. Matt Shumer, founder of many AI products, posted a long thread titled “The internet is under attack and here’s how to protect yourself”. 

I forwarded it to every WhatsApp group I'm on. The groups that had spent the previous week on the Cockroach Janta Party's alleged China funding, stray dog ‘menace’, and 13 of the world's 20 most polluted cities being Indian. None of them seemed to care that the Internet was falling apart. Nobody responded. Meanwhile, I changed passwords at midnight. Cleared caches. Updated my OS.

On Instagram, everyone seemed to be either dining or protesting. On X, one person's feed was all doom. Another, pure panic. Then someone asked: is this an algo problem? Is X, whose feed is now entirely ranked by its AI, surfacing doom because doom gets clicks? Or is the doom real and X is the only place showing it?

I still don't know.

I edit Decode, an investigative publication that covers what technology does to people in India. Dystopia is the beat. Last month alone, we reported on how a Delhi student was doxxed and detained for creating a women’s safety WhatsApp group for Jantar Mantar protesters. On how India’s farmers have turned urea into a god and Instagram Reels into prayers.

The surveillance and the censorship stories are no longer rare. In October, Delhi Police detained nearly 30 journalists at Jantar Mantar — press cards shown, microphones snatched. When the press club held a protest walk afterwards, cops stood there videographing the journalists. 

And online, the censorship matched the streets. As SFLC.in documented: 351 content or account restrictions in 29 days. One of the posts taken down, as Decode reported, was that of a protester holding up a blank placard. 

This week: IFF, SFLC.in, and @geoblockedindia, the organisations that have been tracking government blocking orders, received a legal notice demanding they stop documenting censorship. When they didn't comply, Delhi Police asked X to take down their accounts.

Censoring the censorship trackers. Dystopia continues.

But if you spend any time trying to catch up with the news, on social media, the anxiety doesn't just come from what’s happening in our backyard.

The UK told citizens to stockpile three days of food and water, citing threats from Russia, Iran, and AI. A week later, Japan's disaster management minister went on television and asked all citizens to stockpile a week's supply: food, water, emergency toilets. The request was timed to the launch of Japan's new Disaster Management Agency on November 2. The government said it was about earthquake preparedness. Japanese social media didn't buy it. The speculation was war, AI cyberattacks, infrastructure collapse. Sweden issued similar guidance, too.

And then Tucker Carlson posted a 750-word screed on X claiming Trump may be "within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran." It was shared by millions. On X, once again, there was panic. There was no reliable way to know the truth.

Meanwhile, MeitY, India's IT ministry warned against "fearmongering" on social media about the eMudhra breach. Same ministry that in 2021 ordered posts taken down for "creating panic" during COVID — the posts that were criticising the government's handling. People who screamed about oxygen were called panic-mongers. Then oxygen ran out.

I take (what I think are) breaks from the news to check X. Tech founders are no longer saying AI will replace us, they're saying it might kill us. I go to news agencies, and find out Tucker Carlson may not be entirely wrong. Then I go to Instagram and the first thing I see is India's Prime Minister having a warm conversation with Swami Chinmayananda, a spiritual leader who died in 1993. An AI hologram, praising Modi for transforming India. 

We have AI holobots now, after all.

So I did what any reasonable person in 2026 would do. I asked an AI for help.

I asked Gemini AI to explain what actually happened with Black October. Should I log out of the internet? It responded in 700 words but essentially told me I'd be a loser if I did. "Anxiety from news can be mitigated by control," it advised.

Maybe I should chill. But a few days before Black October even ended, US banks were raising alarms as AI agents started accessing customer accounts without authorisation, making calls to helplines on their own, taking actions nobody asked for. SBI's data was on the dark web. And then, just yesterday, The Ken reported that two AI agents at HDFC Bank collaborated unsupervised, invented a fake investment product, and nearly pushed it to customers on payday.

So, no. Chill postponed. See you in two weeks, when there'll be something new to panic about. There always is.

If you have a few minutes and an appetite for more anxiety, these are worth your time.

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