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How America Could Go Dark
- DrScump 10y agoGovernment indifference (at all levels) to this risk is scary. "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.
- reustle 10y ago> 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.
- luminiferous 10y agoThat's what the OP is saying. Terrorists are likely to target infrastructure such as power stations, but a power outage caused by copper thieves looks much the same as a power station being taken down by terrorists.
- ctack 10y agoIt's Isis paying dirty oil money for American power grid copper in a bid to blackout the country! \s
- forgottenpass 10y agoBy that logic, power lines taken out by tree branches weighed down by snow and ice looks much the same as terrorism too. 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.
- steven777400 10y agoI'm not sure how your quote reflects "government indifference". The substation is owned by a private company (PG&E). Employees of this company failed to respond to the alarms and notify police. 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.
- Spooky23 10y agoIt's a public utility. The regulator should be... regulating this type of thing if the company is to incompetent to do so on its own.
- Johnny555 10y agoThe bigger problem with that article snippet is that the on-site guards weren't notified about the on-site alarms directly. If they are going to the expense of having guards on-site, why route the alarms to some other utility workers who then have to track down the on-site guards to tell them about a local alarm?
- jaredhansen 10y agoIf it's difficult to distinguish mere theft from terrorism, then here's a hint: it isn't terrorism. 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.
- busyant 10y agoMaybe a more accurate phrase is "state sponsored sabotage."
- ivanca 10y agoThat wording doesn't attract clicks, and it's all this generation is about. You think I'm joking but I'm sure future anthropologists will document how clickbaiting changed the English language. Heck, I have seen common people baiting in their own captions "check what they put in this sandwich, this would be unbelievable in America"
- astronautjones 10y agoGlenn Greenwald has made this particular point about the word "terrorism" so many times that his columns have to cannibalize themselves, but I do think they will be what future anthropologists cite most frequently, as he's got it nailed: https://theintercept.com/2015/06/19/refusal-call-charleston-shootings-terrorism-shows-meaningless-propaganda-term/ https://theintercept.com/2015/06/19/refusal-call-charleston-...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rconti 10y agoMaybe it just didn't work. Or maybe it was a dry run. Shooting up transformers in Metcalf was clearly not theft, I know that.
- sien 10y agoThere are almost certainly people in the FBI and other agencies who have considered the risk and have thought about it and watch for people trying to do this maliciously. 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.
- musesum 10y agoThis is a good companion to Gibney's Zero Day Docu: http://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12045334/alex-gibney-zero-days-stuxnet-virus-documentary-podcast http://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12045334/alex-gibney-zero-day... 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
- click170 10y agoNot to be confused with Zero Days (2016), which is also worth a watch. 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.
- musesum 10y agospell corrected; thanks!
- teh_klev 10y agoArticle without the paywall etc: http://archive.is/HCwUJ http://archive.is/HCwUJ
- Johnny555 10y agoOr just click on the web button at the top of the page and click on the Google result (WSJ allows google clickthroughs to skip the paywall)
- cced 10y agoCan we stop posting paywalled articles?
- jsksma2 10y agoYasss. Will WSJ just die already?
- EduardoBautista 10y agoWhy? I have been a subscriber in the past and have found their content to be worth the money.
- ctack 10y agoA TLDR would be a nice to have. Although just inferencing from the comments is enough most of the time.
- sctb 10y agoPlease see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989.
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- taf2 10y agoSo an obvious maybe long term solution here is to eliminate the need for a grid. The transition to battery solar powered homes would reduce the need for the upstream power supply and larger and transmission lines...
- cylinder 10y agoThe grid powers a lot more than homes...
- 1stop 10y agoRight but the same logic applies. Rather than 1 single point of failure you now have millions of mini power generators. The impact of one going is significantly less.
- rwallace 10y agoSo an obvious long-term solution is to reduce the need for the grid. Many commercial and industrial facilities could run at least partly on local wind or solar, and the more decentralised capability there is, the less the vulnerability. (I'm actually not just thinking about terrorists and suchlike. I'm also thinking about other risks, such as another Carrington event.)
- niftich 10y agoThe more decentralized capability, the higher the need to distribute excess production to places of excess demand, hence a higher need for a grid.
- rwallace 10y agoThere's an important difference between 'if the grid goes down, we will have some inefficiency because of excess production here and insufficient production there' and 'if the grid goes down, everything goes down'.
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- bllguo 10y agoIt's scary to think about the damage an actually competent force can inflict in this day and age.
- douche 10y agoIt really is. I can't imagine the havoc that an actually-trained strike team with some real equipment could cause. 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.
- pjc50 10y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack - although in that case the bomb-proof windows worked. The second time the IRA nearly managed to assasinate the head of government. 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.
- omarforgotpwd 10y agoYes, we're lucky so few competent forces exist
- dwaltrip 10y agoI think the greater factor is that, among those who have the competency, virtually none are actually interested in doing something so malicious.
- flukus 10y ago
- stretchwithme 10y agoI thin the real problem is that we've set up only one grid. If we had competing distribution providers, the failure of one network wouldn't matter so much.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoI dunno, the power grid is an enormous capital investment. It seems like having more than one would be like having completely independent road systems, that is, seriously inefficient.
- brm 10y agoWe do have a couple independent road systems when it comes down to it. Having built such an extensive paved road system allows for there to almost always be an alternate route to travel if something comes up. Electric grids don't work the same way obviously, but we did make the capital investment when it came to roads.
- foota 10y agoI feel like there's an important distinction between separate systems versus systems which have some inherit redundancy. Both the transport and electrical network have some inherent redundancy, but they're both monolithic, so to speak.
- msisk6 10y agoWe do. 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.
- angersock 10y agoGod bless Texas. :)
- 10y ago
- mineshaftgap 10y agoEasy to up vote the downfall of America. Much harder to make it happen.
- hashkb 10y agoMy dad has been pointing this out for 20 years. He'd be pissed if I didn't comment here.
- gooseus 10y agoPerhaps you should have taken this opportunity to repeat some of those things he has been saying for the last 20 years so as to contribute to the conversation...
- hashkb 10y agoOK... he's been saying that it would be easy to attack our electrical infrastructure which is exposed and unguarded all over the place. I can't add anything that isn't in the article, besides pointing out that we've more or less been in this state forever and somehow terrorists haven't figured out how to capitalize.
- prdonahue 10y agoSoMa is dark right now. Lovely little power outage.
- mlinksva 10y agoIs there anything in process like the Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act proposed https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/2417 https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/2417 in 2013? Does any jurisdiction in the world have exemplary practices?
- vinodkumaar 10y agoWhy do someone send a link that requires a subscription to read?
- unethical_ban 10y agoBecause sometimes quality journalism is worth finding. If I say I read a lovely article in a magazine, are you going to fix at me for discussing something that cost money to access?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vinodkumaar 10y agoIf I can get a summary before I pay for access it will be good, than proceed with buying. Here the guideline to help us from the FAQs: It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
- rurban 10y agoSo they are again beefing up a terrorism drama for simple third world copper theft problems, as they happen in all third world countries. No terrorist would try to attack 100 minor power stations, they rather attack 1-2 big lines or grid stations. 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.
- cafard 10y agoLet's not forget about squirrels! 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?
- spika 10y agoThe first action of the advance party in the Iraq offensive was to sabotage the grid and take out all the power which was accomplished by a small team in short order.
- synaesthesisx 10y agoAll the more reason why we need to aim for decentralized (and ideally carbon-neutral) power.