alt Hacker NewsLook, in the corporate/enterprise world, I am sure that it's still possible to purchase devices and machines that literally have no receiving or transmitting radios at all. But that feat is no longer possible for consumers.
At home, on the go, any device I purchase is basically bristling with radio transceivers, whether it's a dishwasher, refrigerator, smartphone, printer, or whatever. It seems that radio-based connectivity has been established by Divine Mandate.
It really gets me down, because wired Ethernet is far more reliable and secure, and those features are exactly why nobody wants consumers to have reliable or secure connectivity. I recently purchased an enterprise-class HP LaserJet that has no radios in it, but it is also not even compatible with the consumer OSes that I use at home!
If a device has a radio in it, and that radio is fully software-controlled, it's literally impossible to "air-gap" the device, short of performing surgery on it. This is my point: that for ancient technology, "air-gapping" was a meaningful practice, because if you didn't connect the cables, connectivity was impossible. In today's world of ubiquitous radio connectivity, my 5G reception in the middle of a cemetery on a Saturday afternoon is, unfortunately, crystal clear.