https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/asce-gi...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

Politicians like cutting ribbons in their district. They do not like investing in maintenance, and operators are left to scrape together budgets to make things work. They often make bad calls because they’re forced to.

This has been known for several decades.

The electrical grid in San Jose failed dramatically because someone, yet to be identified, hit a substation off 101 with a rifle. Power engineers constantly warn about incoming failures if we don’t invest in security and maintenance, and power grid security has recently become a Homeland Security concern. The power grid in California has evolved into literally killing people, and they have to turn it off when it’s windy. Yeah. Unparalleled. Your mildly xenophobic subtext of knocking power grids in non-American contexts is noted, but throwing stones and all.

I struggle to imagine a scenario where all of this is news to you.