You asked so many great questions that could be part of a LongNow debate / discussion. I think this is a very relevant question / exercise: "I wonder, is there

You asked so many great questions that could be part of a LongNow debate / discussion. I think this is a very relevant question / exercise: "I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this could be avoided?" There's a dystopian set of novels called "The Domination" where the author explores this. Instead of the Internet, because of a protracted Cold War between two superpowers (not the ones you're thinking), this alternate world has iron fused memory cores immune to any hacking that we can conceive of in our timeline.