The Internet: A weapon of mass destruction?
Consider the following scenario:
- Your power goes out. You do not know for how long.
- Water stops running. Bottled water becomes scarce.
- Toilets do not flush. Disposal of waste becomes critical.
- Your freezer and refrigerator no longer keep food edible.
- Panic buying at supermarkets sets in with resupply questionable.
- Medicines are lost. Diabetics and Home health patients begin dying.
- Emergency personnel are overwhelmed.
- Fuel is running out. Gas stations cannot run their pumps.
- Communications of all types are lost. No one knows how far the outage extends or how long it will be out.
- Panic and chaos sets in.
- Looting, stealing, neighbors becoming enemies.
- Starvation and disease….one in ten survival rate.
Science fiction? Hardly. How could this happen?
Ted Koppel, in his book “Lights Out” describes how vulnerable this country is to an attack on our electric grid…an attack he and other authorities describe as not only possible, but probable. Unlike other attacks on this nation where we can define a perpetrator and retaliate, a cyber attack on our electric grid could generate from anywhere… by anybody including ISIS who is quickly becoming expert in cyber recruiting… and is only a short step away from initiating an attack.
Koppel also describes the weaknesses in the United States beginning with our culture of blame versus a culture of prevention. Consider our positions on Global Warming, Global Jihad, Illegal Immigration, Black lives Matter, etc. We are immune to arguments and facts that are often challenged by one ideology or another. We no longer trust anything our government or the media presents as factual without some bias attached. We are a reactionary society not a prevention society. Prevention too often means trampling on our Constitutional rights.
Koppel describes three power grids serving the United States. Each of the three tethers us to our modern lifestyle. Within each three are power companies of varying sizes since the breakup of the past monopolies. The big players can afford to spend billions on the prevention of cyber intrusions. Within each grid, however, are smaller companies that cannot afford the same security. A cyber intrusion into one or more of these small companies can set off a cascading meltdown throughout the entire grid. One third of the country is without power. Unlike a bomb that takes out a generator where the damage is obvious, finding the cyber intrusion that set off the cascade will require months if not years to locate and repair.
What about the government? There are federal “recommendations “for safety and security. The power companies are self-regulating and self- governing. Attempts at government intervention are controlled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce…using the fourth amendment as its weapon.
This is not a new topic to Washington. Warnings from commissions and various authorities go back to 2001…which were placed on the shelf due to the 9/11 attack in New York. Since then, a Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act passed the House of Representatives where it gathers dust in the Senate…through both parties. This is a case of bi-partisan ignorance.
Washington has been warned, yet, there are no disaster plans in place. Homeland Security scoffs at the potential of this attack while at the same time, the Defense Department has moved all of their electronics and computer services below the mountain in Colorado where NORAD once patrolled…only to be reduced to predicting the movement of Santa Claus. We have plans for Hurricanes, for Flooding, for Snow Extremes but the loss of our power is limited to assumed short duration outages.
Unlike Global warming or Global jihad or other priorities that our President and a Congress in gridlock and controlled by lobbyists deem more important in the never ending battle for money, with no visible return, it is possible to prepare for an attack on our grid whether by the Internet as a Weapon of Mass Destruction or by an Electro Magnetic Pulse event that is nearly as easy as the cyber crime.
We squandered billions on banks that were too big to fail. The cost to secure our power grid would be far less, yet our government has not accepted the fact that failure is a priority.
Koppel asks, “Suppose America, as we know it, dies that day. It died from complacency, from blindness, from not being able to face the hard realities of the world… died from complacent self-centeredness. Suppose America died that day.”
Suppose America succumbed to a Weapon of Mass Destruction…the Internet? The enemy will not have fired a shot. We will become our own enemy. Survivors will be returned to the mid 19th century…those one in ten estimated who survive…the rest would perish from starvation, disease or societal breakdown.
Prevention, according to Koppel, is your own responsibility. Think about it. What will your plans be?
Recommended Reading:
- LIGHTS OUT by Ted Koppel
- ONE SECOND AFTER by William R. Forstchen
Rich Sobieray is a resident of The Villages.
