According to former HSL director, Janet
Napolitano, 'A
massive and serious cyber attack on the U.S. homeland is coming, and
a natural disaster, the likes of which the nation has never seen is
also likely and on its way.'
In my view, she should know.
So,
would it surprise many to learn that the United States in the persona
of President Obama, is more interested in passing legislation
concerning global warming? Rather than investing tax dollars to help
and improve our vital infrastructures, Obama is much more interested
in hobbling the energy industry via a set of sweeping reforms that
would see the demise of the coal fired electrical plants nationwide.
His arm of enforcement would be the EPA – a department that looks
more and more gestapo like every day!
Make
no mistake, a successful hacking attack on the control interfaces
that keep the electrical power going, would be a disaster on a scale
hereto unknown to modern man. Overnight, the nation would be plunged
back into the dark ages with all that would imply. Should the outages
last longer than a week, food dearths would become widespread, cell
phones and towers would cease to function, even the water supply in
home would stop as the batter backups at the local water departments
would stop the pumps. Shortly thereafter the riots would begin as
those desperate for food and water would surge out of control.
Massive deaths would follow with the specter of disease growing each
day. Not a very good scenario to be sure.
But,
really! What are the odds of that actually transpiring? Rep. Yvette
Clark (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity,
Science, and Technology Subcommittee, said the United States faces
chilling odds of an electrical-grid attack. According to a statement
recently made by her, “Our networks are already being penetrated as
we stand here,” Clarke said, according to a report on
InfoSecurity.com.
“We are already under attack. We must stop asking ourselves ‘could
this happen to us’ and move to a default posture that acknowledges
this fact and instead asks ‘what can we do to protect ourselves’?”
Indeed,
Ms. Clark's fears are backed up by many industry experts. Government
and utility industry officials were so concerned, in fact, that in
November 2013, they staged a massive emergency drill, called GridEx
II, that involved thousands of utility workers, business executives,
National Guard officers, FBI anti-terrorism experts and government
officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. They practiced responding
to a simulated failure of large parts of the electrical system across
North America. The scenario envisioned by GridEx II is a particularly
scary one, in which terrorists or an enemy country stages a
combination of cyber attacks and physical attacks that destroy or
render inoperable crucial power facilities and take down large
sections of the grid. Then, it will be checkmate!
So,
next time you wander out to your kitchen to fix up a nice tasty
snack, just remember that most everything you and your family take for granted is
available only for so long as the national grid is up and functional. Perhaps
you can even find a moment to shoot off an email to your
Congresspeople to give them a heads up....
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