Unhackable operating system for all practical purposes already exists: seL4. DARPA funded HACMS program to use seL4. It worked.
seL4 is formally verified for functional correctness. It means the implementation corresponds to the specification. This verification eliminates all implementation bugs. It does not eliminate specification bugs, but seL4 also proved integrity, availability, and confidentiality of OS. Definition of integrity/availability/confidentiality is small enough to be manually reviewed, and was in fact widely reviewed (including myself).
So there IS a single mechanism that can rule out nearly all of 30% of bugs left over after 70% of memory safety bugs are fixed. Formal verification for functional correctness is not particularly simple, but it is demonstrably possible as seL4 proved, and AI assistance will make formal verification proof engineering cheaper.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this while reading METR’s OpenAI Hugging Face incident investigation. If science fiction can be evaluated on realism, or feeling of realism, of future prediction, this totally nailed it. Bravo.
If you enjoyed reading the fiction The Terrarium, I guarantee you will also enjoy reading METR’s OpenAI Hugging Face incident investigation. But it is reality, and that’s scary.