After five years, The Digital Identity Event Horizon is published in full today: three problem statements, ten key findings, and dozens of recommendations across policy, protocol, legal, and social contexts.
It's the largest research study in New Design Congress' eight-year history: eight case studies, hundreds of citations, dozens of participants from government, intelligence, civil society, technology, and the field itself.
It is also, without exaggeration, the most alarming body of work we have ever produced.
The argument is straightforward and difficult to reckon with: Digital identity makes societies brittle. In 2026, we find ourselves in an era of digital identity fetishism: flawed age verification schemes, biometric and facial-recognition authenticators, and fragile state-backed identity programmes are rolling out at an unprecedented rate. And every one of them, whether current or emerging, remains vulnerable to social engineering. The success rate for a non-technical attack on a user is now three out of four. These attacks cost US companies an estimated $1.6 billion in the five years to 2017 alone; by 2024, fraud runs to hundreds of billions worldwide.
READ IT HERE https://newdesigncongress.org/en/report/2026/the-digital-identity-event-horizon/
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