Cyberwar Against Our Electric Grid?

As many of you know, for a number of years I've talked about the single greatest threat to our way of life; an attack on our electric grid. Here's what it comes down to...

FIRST, everything in our society is completely dependent upon electricity. It is the foundation of everything; from food distribution, to water distribution and treatment, to communications, travel and even our military.

SECOND, our electrical infrastructure is surprisingly fragile and easy to take down. We live in a time when nation-states as well as rogue terrorists could potentially bring down our entire electric grid through a cyber attack.

THIRD, the USA is more vulnerable than any other country to a power outage. We literally would not know how to survive without it, which is why there are estimates that MOST people in the USA would be dead within 12 months if we had a blackout that lasted for months.

FOURTH, according to Ted Koppel's book "Light's Out", the US government does not have a plan in place to deal with a long term power outage.

So how real is this threat?

Last year, a New York Times article said, "The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will." The article goes on to conclude, "They have the ability to shut the power off. All that’s missing is some political motivation,”

This past weekend, the New York Times published another article claiming that, "The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said."

President Trump called the latest article by the NYT "treasonous", and Russia warned of the potential for a cyberwar.

This is a very disturbing situation, because a cyberwar on our infrastructure could be just as deadly as a nuclear war, yet the vast majority of people have no idea that this threat even exists. The threat is real, and I'll say again, this is the biggest threat to our national security that exists.

What say you? Please comment below!