4 ms·

Last para is pretty relevant: "But it’s important to put this event in context as well. Attacks on the power grid are relatively rare, and they fall pretty low

by NavinF 4y ago

Last para is pretty relevant: "But it’s important to put this event in context as well. Attacks on the power grid are relatively rare, and they fall pretty low on the list of threats, even behind cybersecurity and supply chain issues. The number one threat to the grid in nearly every place in the US? The weather. If you experience an outage of any length, it's many times more likely to be mother nature than a bad actor with a gun"

jfengel 4y ago
They're rare because nobody is doing them. If some group decides that it's a thing to do, it will increase rapidly in frequency. I don't know what the limitations are, and maybe natural disasters will continue to dominate. But I wouldn't extrapolate just because it hadn't been the mechanism of choice so far.
- htag 4y ago
  > it will increase rapidly in frequency There's what, 1000-10000x the number of law enforcement personal, national guard, and active military than electrical substations? If these attacks were to rapidly increase over a few days we'd just post guards with guns and cameras at every substation while we pour a thick and tall wall of concrete around all the sensitive bits.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    And presumably all the other stuff that law enforcement normally does would just... carry on as normal?
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Per Wikipedia there are 55,000 substations in the US. With 800k cops, that in theory gives you not 1:1000, but a 1:15 ratio with cops, so perhaps 5 cops on duty at once if they do nothing else. But a lot of substations are intentionally in wide-open spaces, so shooting them from a distance is very plausible, meaning the cops will have a hard time covering all the space. And that's assuming cops do nothing else. National guard reserves are only another 400k, which does not change the math a ton. Your build-a-wall plan is even less plausible. Assuming a half-acre per substation, that's over 6000 miles of walls. In non-flat areas, they might have to be quite tall. We're looking at billions of dollars here, but the hard part is likely the equipment and labor, and knock-on economic costs from supply chain disruption. This kind of chaos and expense sounds like a terrorist's wildest dream, honestly, a cure worse than the disease.
    - htag 4y ago
      > National guard reserves are only another 400k, which does not change the math a ton. It changes the math a ton. Shooting at an unmanned substation is one crime. Shooting in the general direction of the national guard is a completely different type of crime.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        I have trouble believing you could not figure this out on your own, but my point is that it does not change the math in terms of having enough people to physically guard each substation. Which was the point I was replying to. That said, I also think you're wrong in the case being discussed, a group launching a wave of disruption via shooting substations. People engaged in that sort of ideologically driven societal disruption are not going to be put off by exactly which class of felony they'll fall under, as they know they'll be going away for a long, long time regardless, via everything a federal prosecutor can think to charge them with to get the sentence up into the "until you are old" range. Which might not take a lot of work, as "conspiracy to attack energy facilities is punishable by up to 20 years in prison": https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-four-pierce-county-power-substations https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-fou...
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    That's far from free in terms of direct, logistical, or opportunity costs, and even high concrete walls are easily defeatable with a little imagination. The main problem for would-be attackers is discoverability - preparing and escaping without detection is quite challenging. Opportunities for teamwork are limited by the FBI's outstanding abilities to infiltrate social networks and entrap hotheads, keeping militant types in a constant state of paranoia and distrust. It's hard to accrue the necessary knowledge alone, harder to locate peers (though this varies with geography and economic power), and very hard to coordinate. Doing so online has obvious security difficulties, and professional criminal networks aren't easily accessible or sympathetic. The feds can't catch everyone, but they can drastically raise the cost of force multipliers.
    - EricE 4y ago
      >>"FBI's outstanding abilities to infiltrate social networks" - Where has this been demonstrated? All the recent "infiltrations" like the Michigan governor kidnapping had more FBI guys involved than so called bad guys. It's not infiltration if you instigate it.
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        I think you should look up infiltrate and entrap in the dictionary.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  [dead]
andrewflnr 4y ago
I actually don't think that's terribly relevant. Deliberate attacks are qualitatively different from natural events. They're not independent, so naive statistical comparisons are misleading. In particular, deliberate attacks have a significant social component, where the success of one attack, especially one that is widely known, can lead to more being attempted. Attackers can adapt to your countermeasures. There also seem to be an increasing number of people willing to destroy critical bits of society. In short, past rates are not a guarantee of future risks. I expect infrastructure attacks to be a growing problem.

by NavinF 4y ago

jfengel 4y ago

They're rare because nobody is doing them. If some group decides that it's a thing to do, it will increase rapidly in frequency. I don't know what the limitations are, and maybe natural disasters will continue to dominate. But I wouldn't extrapolate just because it hadn't been the mechanism of choice so far.

htag 4y ago
> it will increase rapidly in frequency There's what, 1000-10000x the number of law enforcement personal, national guard, and active military than electrical substations? If these attacks were to rapidly increase over a few days we'd just post guards with guns and cameras at every substation while we pour a thick and tall wall of concrete around all the sensitive bits.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  And presumably all the other stuff that law enforcement normally does would just... carry on as normal?
- wpietri 4y ago
  Per Wikipedia there are 55,000 substations in the US. With 800k cops, that in theory gives you not 1:1000, but a 1:15 ratio with cops, so perhaps 5 cops on duty at once if they do nothing else. But a lot of substations are intentionally in wide-open spaces, so shooting them from a distance is very plausible, meaning the cops will have a hard time covering all the space. And that's assuming cops do nothing else. National guard reserves are only another 400k, which does not change the math a ton. Your build-a-wall plan is even less plausible. Assuming a half-acre per substation, that's over 6000 miles of walls. In non-flat areas, they might have to be quite tall. We're looking at billions of dollars here, but the hard part is likely the equipment and labor, and knock-on economic costs from supply chain disruption. This kind of chaos and expense sounds like a terrorist's wildest dream, honestly, a cure worse than the disease.
  - htag 4y ago
    > National guard reserves are only another 400k, which does not change the math a ton. It changes the math a ton. Shooting at an unmanned substation is one crime. Shooting in the general direction of the national guard is a completely different type of crime.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      I have trouble believing you could not figure this out on your own, but my point is that it does not change the math in terms of having enough people to physically guard each substation. Which was the point I was replying to. That said, I also think you're wrong in the case being discussed, a group launching a wave of disruption via shooting substations. People engaged in that sort of ideologically driven societal disruption are not going to be put off by exactly which class of felony they'll fall under, as they know they'll be going away for a long, long time regardless, via everything a federal prosecutor can think to charge them with to get the sentence up into the "until you are old" range. Which might not take a lot of work, as "conspiracy to attack energy facilities is punishable by up to 20 years in prison": https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-four-pierce-county-power-substations https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-fou...
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  That's far from free in terms of direct, logistical, or opportunity costs, and even high concrete walls are easily defeatable with a little imagination. The main problem for would-be attackers is discoverability - preparing and escaping without detection is quite challenging. Opportunities for teamwork are limited by the FBI's outstanding abilities to infiltrate social networks and entrap hotheads, keeping militant types in a constant state of paranoia and distrust. It's hard to accrue the necessary knowledge alone, harder to locate peers (though this varies with geography and economic power), and very hard to coordinate. Doing so online has obvious security difficulties, and professional criminal networks aren't easily accessible or sympathetic. The feds can't catch everyone, but they can drastically raise the cost of force multipliers.
  - EricE 4y ago
    >>"FBI's outstanding abilities to infiltrate social networks" - Where has this been demonstrated? All the recent "infiltrations" like the Michigan governor kidnapping had more FBI guys involved than so called bad guys. It's not infiltration if you instigate it.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      I think you should look up infiltrate and entrap in the dictionary.
kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]

andrewflnr 4y ago

I actually don't think that's terribly relevant. Deliberate attacks are qualitatively different from natural events. They're not independent, so naive statistical comparisons are misleading. In particular, deliberate attacks have a significant social component, where the success of one attack, especially one that is widely known, can lead to more being attempted. Attackers can adapt to your countermeasures. There also seem to be an increasing number of people willing to destroy critical bits of society. In short, past rates are not a guarantee of future risks. I expect infrastructure attacks to be a growing problem.