It’s 1999. I’m 23 years old, living in Amsterdam, and working at UUNet WorldCom, the world’s largest Internet service provider at the time.
One of my jobs was to manually edit DNS files for new clients, assigning their domains to IP addresses. For those who remember, we were using the vi editor back then. To me, it felt like a routine administrative task.
Until it wasn’t.
One Semi-Colon, 200,000 Websites
A few hours after I updated a file, the support calls started. At first, it was a handful of websites offline. Then thousands. Then tens of thousands.
Panic set in, escalations flew, and senior engineers were pulled in.
Eventually, the culprit was found: a rogue semi-colon. One stray “;” meant the system ignored everything that followed. Unfortunately, after that semi-colon came 200,000 websites, roughly 5% of the entire Internet at the time.
And yes, I was the culprit.
I knew how to add the client line. What I didn’t fully understand was the broader system and how fragile it was if something went wrong.
Lessons From Fragile Systems
That mistake became an unforgettable lesson: large, complex systems are often held together by fragile rules. Hackers exploit these rules deliberately, but sometimes insiders break them accidentally.
Believe it or not, this wasn’t even my most expensive mistake at the company. (The story of the time I accidentally deleted Italy from the Internet will have to wait for another post.)
But it taught me a critical truth: without understanding the system as a whole, you’re blind to its vulnerabilities.
From IP Packets to People
These days, I don’t manage DNS files. I work with ambitious professionals instead, helping them get into rooms they were never invited into, build leverage, own equity, and create status they control.
The principle is the same. Most people:
- Know their role but not the business ecosystem.
- Understand how to apply for jobs, but not why someone would hire them.
- Ask for capital, but don’t grasp why investors actually invest.
Without seeing the bigger picture, they miss the chance to engineer access to what they want.
Why Understanding Systems Creates Access
The very systems designed to keep people out to preserve exclusivity are often more fragile than they appear. With the right understanding, access to almost anything can be engineered.
That’s the foundation of what I call Access Engineering. I’ve seen it help people land dream jobs, build elite networks, and raise serious capital. And later this year, I’ll be sharing examples and a playbook for exactly how this works in a 3-hour workshop.
Systems may look impenetrable. But like that semi-colon in 1999, they’re often held together by rules that, if understood can be worked to your advantage.