Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contributors
  • Why We’re Different
  • Foundation Principles
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Investing
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Your Survival Guy
  • Your Health
  • Old Confederacy
  • The American Conservative
  • The Trump Economy
  • My Rifles

Can Russia Cause a U. S. Electric Grid Blackout?

August 10, 2018 By Richard C. Young

Image Credit – Aliaksandr Marko @ Adobe Stock

At the American Spectator, Betsy McCaughey explains how Russian hackers can shut down the U.S. power grid remotely. Below is an abridged version of her write up:

Kremlin-connected cyber criminals are capable of turning off our electric power from afar, while power plant employees watch helplessly. In the last two weeks, the federal Department of Homeland Security held four briefings warning that Russian hackers are already practicing how to throw the switch and cause a blackout in the U.S.

We’d have no lights, no gas at the pump, no life support in hospitals, no mass transit, no food supply.

Yet nearly all Washington pols are ignoring the danger. To the public, “power” means electricity. But to self-absorbed politicians, “power” means elections, votes, and protecting their seats. That disconnect explains why they’re in a frenzy over Russians hacking into campaign email accounts and tweeting unflattering things about Hillary Clinton, instead of dealing with the far larger peril of Russians hacking into the electric grid.
Russians have invaded over a hundred electric power companies in the U.S. in the last four years. DHS reports these Russians “got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and shut off power but did not.

In Ukraine, they did. They flipped the switches on three Ukrainian utilities on December 23, 2015. On that chilly night, local engineers in control rooms sat helplessly as cyber criminals operated controls remotely, plunging hundreds of thousands of people into frigid darkness.

The U.S. is harder to cripple than Ukraine. America has not one but rather three power grids fed by 8,000 generating plants and several thousand distribution utilities. Con Edison uses different software from Pacific Gas & Electric. That decentralization means even a successful attack would likely affect only a region, not the entire nation.

Protecting the electric supply is the government’s job. Sadly, most members of Congress are all-consumed with protecting their own line of work instead — getting reelected.

Read more here.

Also read SCADA Vulnerable to Cyber Attack and EMPs.

The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts

Richard C. Young

Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.

Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)

  • Eastern European Millennials Shifting Right, Led by Hungary and France’s Rassemblement National. - February 22, 2019
  • How to Avoid Wall Street’s Unshakable Attachment to Earnings - February 22, 2019
  • A Prison Sentence for Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe? - February 21, 2019

Related Posts

 

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • How to Avoid Wall Street’s Unshakable Attachment to Earnings
  • My March Rage Gauge: Take Inventory of Your Investment Life
  • The Richest Town in the U.S.A.
  • Europe Takes Aim at America’s Big Tech Companies with Copyright Demands
  • Americans Want to Leave Their High Tax States
  • National Right to Work Could Help States That Can’t Help Themselves
  • Surprise: Battery Powered Cars Don’t Work Well in Extreme Temperatures
  • Tyson Tries to End the Cycle
  • Democrats Sign on for $1.5 Trillion Tax Hike
  • What Do You Need to Do Before You Retire?

Are You Prepared for the New Money Crisis?

Bernie Sanders’ Crushing Failure in Vermont

Eastern European Millennials Shifting Right, Led by Hungary and France’s Rassemblement National.

My March Rage Gauge: Take Inventory of Your Investment Life

How to Avoid Wall Street’s Unshakable Attachment to Earnings

Drugs, Child Trafficking, Disease at the Border: Pelosi “No Emergency”

A Prison Sentence for Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe?

Copyright © 2019 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives