Societal Threats

Connected products quietly widen societal gaps — through cost barriers, digital literacy demands, and accessibility blind spots — while governments wield cybersecurity rules as both shield and trade barrier.

A smart thermostat costs more than a dumb one. The companion app needs a recent phone, a stable home network, and a comfort level with creating accounts, accepting permissions, and reading two-factor codes. The “advanced” features — energy reports, geofencing, voice control — assume a household that already lives online. For everyone else, the connected product is either out of reach or quietly worse than the analog version it replaced.

Multiply that across heating, lighting, healthcare, transport, and education, and a pattern emerges: connected hardware has a way of upgrading the lives of people who were already doing well, and downgrading — or excluding — everyone else. Cost is only the surface. Digital literacy, broadband access, language support, and the patience to navigate poorly-designed apps all act as silent filters. Accessibility is the part that gets cut last and patched first.

Then there’s the other layer — the one that plays out between governments. Cybersecurity legislation, certification schemes, and product bans exist for real reasons: connected devices touch national infrastructure and personal data, and the threat surface is real. But the same instruments are routinely used as non-tariff barriers — slowing foreign entrants, protecting domestic manufacturers, and reshaping global supply chains. The U.S. Entity List action against Huawei in 2019 is the textbook case: a security argument with industrial-policy consequences that rippled through allied nations and reset how the world thinks about trustworthy hardware.

For product teams, the takeaway isn’t to pick a side. It’s to recognize that “ship it and let the market decide” is no longer a complete strategy. Inclusive design, accessibility, and regulatory posture have moved from nice-to-have to load-bearing — and they show up in due diligence, procurement, and boardrooms long before they show up in customer reviews.