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Comment by eth0up | Hacker News Reader

Curious if this is a grid down innuendo.. And more so, curious of your more direct insight on the probability of such... if I am going in the right direction.

I've been building a strong case to be concerned on this topic. I am in Florida, which is as far as I know, a power island with no adjacent state agreements for grid resilience. And I think we know the CIA's perspective on this, which is grim, and severe. There's the component vulnerability, the supply chain with its delays and such, and now, a geopolitical scenario kind of making bad things a bit more plausible.

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It was a stupid throw away comment about how expensive power could become in the near future, such that popping corn becomes a 'lifestyle choice'.

Having said that, throughout the years I have made the odd comment about how fragile the grid is, and how fragile society is in its dependence upon the grid. My favourite way to demonstrate the fragility of the grid is referencing CyberSquirrel1: https://www.cybersquirrel1.com/

If small furry animals can accidentally take down segments of the grid for hours at a time, the scope for intentional (human) sabotage must be pretty darn broad. I feel like I don't want to call much attention to it because it feels like it would be both easy and effective at the same time as requiring essentially no direct violence against another human (it's just a direct violence against a community, but that's a more vague concept).

My favourite example from cybersquirrel1 was an eagle that dropped a sheep skull on <some critical part> of an electrical substation that shorted out a whole regional area for a time.

A friendly reply, and surprise which I rarely see here.

Despite my misinterpretation of your original comment, somehow I managed to be wrong but still right, and indeed you admit to having considered similar grid vulnerabilities.

I can imagine someone having a sip of radiofeisty tea on the Euphrates, musing that in the end, it was no bearded hero, no throbbing missile, no ornery atom, but a perfectly normal pigeon, or more poetically/biblically, the vacant head of a lamb that took down the great superpower.

On a sober note, we may soon be facing such strange times where popping corn by campfire is the more economically prudent culinary method, where not prohibited (Oregon?). Or maybe just grope in the eternal darkness for a slingshot and hurl a copper wire through the blinding electropustule of whatever inevitable datacenter happens to be humming nearby.

The US grid (even in Florida) doesn't depend on oil that went through Hormuz, does it?

It depends on an extensive network of foreign-made components, with very little security or resilience built in, and transformer wait-times exceeding two years. If anything, the straight issues and Iran situation only add more stress where the opposite was needed. The scale of infrastructure damage in Iran could, conceivably, motivate retaliation here.

And then we have n amount of CVEs in the wild with yet to be discovered exploits on SCADA, ICS systems and much more. I was actually in Pinellas during the water facility hack of 2021. Maybe not a terrific example, but if you truly think we're locked down and secure, by all means, share the confidence, as I could use it. The U.S. grid depends on long‑lead, foreign-sourced critical components and has documented ICS/SCADA vulnerabilities; resilience is not as strong as typically assumed.

Otherwise, I guess I fail to catch your point. I'm wrong, is it?

I suppose, considering you are not the one I asked, yet imposed a veiled answer, indicates an unconditional on the above, nu?

My point was that you failed to supply any plausible cause-and-effect that would cause electrical disruptions in Florida. In your reply here, you supplied one. A plausible one, too. I don't know if they would open that can of worms, but they might. (Why would they not? Because they are pretty sure that the US has counter-threats to Iranian infrastructure that are at least as good. On the other hand, if the US simply bombs their infrastructure into oblivion, that counter-threat disappears.)

Your last paragraph reads like veiled innuendo, but is so veiled that it's hard to be sure. At a minimum, your post would be stronger without it.

I hope to meet you some day, before I am withered altogether. If you could not identify me, I am sure we could have some fascinating conversations.

Take care. Thanks for the insight.

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