Alex Golbin
The forensic trail from Arizona leads to an unlikely culprit: a tiny script, written years earlier by a “citizen developer” to automate a mundane task. Over time, it is wrapped in no-code interfaces and APIs, connected to agents, and promoted into the critical path without ever being formally inventoried. In isolation, it was harmless; under agentic load, it becomes a single point of catastrophic failure—Digital Asbestos: legacy code that seemed stable until modern automation disturbed it at scale. As 70&M digs deeper, they uncover a patchwork of similar artifacts—old integrations, forgotten macros, shadow workflows—showing up not just inside their portfolio but in energy and logistics systems far beyond it. The chapter tests RIVER’s “Validate Risk Debt” promise: innovation at the edges is only an asset when matched by disciplined retirement and mapping of legacy code. What you don’t know you’re running can still be the thing that breaks you.