The modern software stack, one of mankind’s greatest engineering feats, is the technological enabler of our digital society.

At the same time, prevailing code-test-fix software development practices endanger efficiency, security, and progress.

• Engineering costs of fixing software bugs alone run to two trillions of dollar (in the US)
• Cybercrime thrives on software deficiencies and now is 8 trillion dollar problem,  that is 913 million dollars an hour
• LLM-generated code is likely to exacerbate the situation

The root causes of this sorry state of affairs are well-known

• Overwhelming majority of bugs directly attributable to imprecise, ambiguous, and inconsistent requirements together with requirements creep
• The cost of bug hunting/fixing rises dramatically, usually on the order of two magnitudes, through SW lifecycle

To secure the SW supply chain we need a paradigmatic shift away from coding, testing, and fixing cycles, towards early lifecycle activitities.