>The biggest question is not whether or not these facilities are compromised, it's whether or not a bad actor is going to use it for malicious purpose. It's one thing to shut down a website for the lols, it's another thing to overload a nuclear reactor and contaminate an entire chunk of the US.

This. Tons of stuff is compromised And if the Russians and Chinese are in our power plants we're in theirs too. Everyone can attack everyone else better than anyone can defend themselves. That's the nature of a highly asymmetrical form of warfare like that. Offense > defense (in the case of "cyber warfare").

>At this point it is a waiting game. Who is going to be the fellow to push the enter key on their keyboard that then causes a 7 digit number of people to go without power, clean water, or even be exposed to radiation?

Attribution is hard. Do you think the Israelis wouldn't attack us and make it look convincingly enough (for the talking heads and the general public) like Iran if it looked like our relations with Iran were about to thaw substantially in a way that was bad for them?

>It's understandable that countries feud and people just don't like each other, but actually shutting down key infrastructure like these scenarios suggest is an end game move that establishes the point of no return in global conflict.

Wars have started over a lot less. Nobody ever thinks what they're doing will be the final straw that starts the war.