How America Could Go Dark
wsj.com
wsj.com
What is much more dangerous is this marketing tactic to attack the problem ("terrorists") and the ongoing erosion of core infrastructure, like water, streets and the electric grid by simple neglection, probably caused by outsourcing support for it. The US power grid quality is only comparable to India. You cannot trust them, and there are constant outages. Over- and undercurrents happen all the time, and consumers have to pay for the damages and outages.
Copper thieves are everywhere. Fight them, but don't call it terrorism. America will go dark, but not by terrorists. Don't blame the foreigners, they are homemade problems.
"The Metcalf substation (San Jose, CA, USA), while undergoing security upgrades, was hit again in August 2014. Intruders cut through fences and burglarized equipment containers, triggering at least 14 alarms over four hours. Utility employees didn’t call police or alert guards, who were stationed at the site, according to a state inquiry."
The problem is compounded by a large (and growing) number of electrical outages caused by copper thieves ripping out wiring; it becomes more difficult to distinguish mere theft from terrorism.
Please stop using that word so freely. Someone carving out a bunch of wire to make a few bucks at the scrap yard is not a terrorist.
I think that the point is terrorism is just a stupid conclusion to jump to for power outages. Even in cases where it is terrorism.
If they called police and police failed to respond, then that would be a government failure. A private company's employees not responding, it's more unclear how that's indifference on the government's part.
The "terror" in "terrorism" is there for a reason. If nobody can tell that you stole the wiring because you resent the British rule of the Northern Territories/the French occupation of Algeria/US bases in the middle east/whatever, then even if you intended your act to terrify others into getting their government to comply with your wishes, you have failed pretty badly.
You may have crimes, but they aren't terror attacks.
That's the problem when putting so many eggs in the same basket. At the end of the day, it does not matter why it fell, or who dropped it.
https://theintercept.com/2015/06/19/refusal-call-charleston-...
They just don't write things up and tell you what they have thought about and what they have in mind to handle it.
Hopefully, when things like substations go down and alarms go off people do, quietly, think about what the impact could have been.
However, it doesn't mean that an attack couldn't succeed.
Went to a SmartGrid conference in 2009. What I learned:
. $1T infrastructure is scheduled to be replaced,
. Power Co's operate on a 30 year amortization cycle,
. Utility regulations can not only change from state-to-state, but from county-to-county,
. The grid is hackable (known in 2009)
[Edit] spelling
Edit: I mis-read, you actually are talking about Zero Days (2016), which - I meant - shouldn't be confused with an earlier documentary called Zero Days - Security Leaks For Sale.
I was reading Band of Brothers recently, and the description of how accurate and deadly their mortar-men were in a number of engagements was impressive. A light mortar is not the most high-tech weapon, is mass-produced by every army in the world, and does not take a huge amount of training to handle effectively. Not to mention that it can strike from up to a mile away, from a position without direct line-of-sight to the target; with an accomplice acting as an FO to send adjustments by text. Or skip the accomplice, and use a drone (Is the army doing this? Seems like a natural application). I don't want to imagine the indiscriminate horror that could be inflicted at any kind of open-air event.
The US army already has small portable tube-launched drones that function as a sort of guided mortar, although I can't remember the name at the moment.
Alternatively, could an explosion of metallic powder be enough to short out equipment?
With the metallic powder, while that stuff can fry a circuit-board, power substations have a ton more energy in them, and have much more durable hardware. They already have to be weatherproof in externally accessible areas - I can't see an explosion of metal powder doing any more damage than rain already does. IANAPSEOAE (I am not a power station employee or an electrician), though.
(I'm actually not just thinking about terrorists and suchlike. I'm also thinking about other risks, such as another Carrington event.)
Years ago, I would listen to a daylight only AM radio station located in Boulder, Colorado. If I turned on the radio and didn't hear it, I assumed that a squirrel had taken out their power. This seemed to happen every few months. I think that squirrels may have hit upstream from our home or office power once on twice back then.
Which leads to an interesting question: if I pitch the problem as scary enough, can I get a DHS grant to deal with squirrels I suspect of aiming to nest in my gutters or attic?
Does any jurisdiction in the world have exemplary practices?
Here the guideline to help us from the FAQs: It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In the continental US there's three independent grids: East, West, and Texas. There's some interchange of power between the grids with DC ties, but it's pretty minimal capacity-wise.
While a great theoretical model, treating everything as something to be left up to competition is naive and misses the advantages of large coordinated systems.
Such a co-op situation would create the buying power necessary to negotiate good deals. I think this would work for water and internet access too.
The theory is that cities do that for us, but leaders are often compromised by campaign money from the very companies they negotiate with.
Who is going to spend all their time negotiating this, most people are perfectly content paying a little bit more because they didn't have to spend hours arguing with multiple utility providers.
Never mind the increased distribution costs anyways because there's multiple sets of lines running.
The way it works already for most people have the choice of multiple different energy providers with a common grid system, this is what has happened due to the deregulation of the energy space which has been both for better and worse.
But I am talking about individuals joining a co-op that handles it. One that has buying power of many individuals. The co-op would own the last mile, so it not a duplication of the entire network.
With no duplication of the main distribution lines, we are more vulnerable to total outages. It would be better to have some duplication and competition. At least then I can switch. At least then there is an incentive for a utility to be resilient.
As it stands now, PG&E can blows up a neighborhood due to its poor maintenance of gas lines and get a rate increase! And the neighborhood cannot switch away from the utility that killed many of its people.
I live in a condo and we have an HOA that buys many services for all of us. It saves the individual a lot of time and money.
For utilities in California, we have a government body that regulates prices, but its become clear that it is somewhat in bed with the industry, which often happens.
I'd rather have choice than a monopoly regulated by people who are not aligned with the interests of customers.