The scary case isn't the internet going down. The scary thing is the internet becoming to hostile a place.
When I can't reach the internet, all it takes is a new cable. When anything I connect to the internet is going to be infected and DDosed to oblivion, the fix is a lot harder.
The other scare is that some critical infrastructure is exposed but not widely known. This allows the infrastructure to develop resilience to unintended failures, but not malicious failures. When this finally gets found, carnage may happen. An interesting example of this is BGP.
The same concerns were expressed about electricity [1] when it was first invented. The usage of the electric chair for executions was sponsored by Edison Electric [2] (now GE) as a way to link rival alternating current (and specifically Westinghouse; Thomas Edison made sure that the first executions were conducted with Westinghouse machines) with death in the public's mind.
The solution wasn't to give up on electricity, it was to adopt basic safety precautions like step-down transformers to household voltage, elevated power lines, and insulated couplings.
The three-letter agencies haven't changed their minds. They still think that every computer being insecure makes us all more secure, and they will and they have acted to create this situation. That's the difference between now and a century ago. The govt back then didn't feel it was in their interest for electricity to be fundamentally unsafe for consumers. Until the agencies genuinely reverse course, inventions to promote safety can't move forward. We'd have basic safety now, as you describe, had room been made for it. But instead, they played past the edge - way past the edge, and have no profound regrets about that that I've heard.
I've never heard about this part of history before. I wonder if a dentist inventing the electric chair has something to do with why people don't like them :-)
When I can't reach the internet, all it takes is a new cable. When anything I connect to the internet is going to be infected and DDosed to oblivion, the fix is a lot harder.
The other scare is that some critical infrastructure is exposed but not widely known. This allows the infrastructure to develop resilience to unintended failures, but not malicious failures. When this finally gets found, carnage may happen. An interesting example of this is BGP.