The excerpt below is from an article written by Peter Pry via Newsmax, which originally appeared on July 16, 2019. The article in its entirety can be read here.
New York City’s July 13 blackout that put over 70,000 people in the dark, on
the 40th anniversary of the 1977 city-wide blackout effecting 9 million (the
latter resulting in riots and looting, 550 police injured, 4,500 arrests,
and 25 uncontrolled fires) is yet another forewarning we live in an
electronic civilization.
While the July 13 blackout allegedly resulted from no foul play, a natural
or manmade EMP or cyber-attack could potentially blackout much or all of
North America for weeks, months, or permanently.
Senator Angus King (I-Maine) and Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) deserve high
praise for Senate passage of their Securing Energy Infrastructure Act (SEIA)
– that now awaits passage through the House. SEIA – as important to national
security as tactical nuclear weapons – could perhaps pass during
Senate-House conferencing on the National Defense Authorization Act.
SEIA would explore protecting electric power grids from cyber-attacks by
isolating and defending industrial control systems through old-fashioned
analog and non-digital controls without the internet.
Cyber warfare poses potentially an existential threat to our electronic
civilization because high-tech controls, managed or accessible through the
internet, run virtually everything – electric power, communications, water
and gas pipelines, even traffic lights.
Said Senator King upon Senate passage of SEIA, “This bill takes vital steps
to improve our defenses, so the energy grid that powers our lives is not
open to devastating attacks from across the globe.”
The Securing Energy Infrastructure Act was inspired, according to its
sponsors, in part by Ukraine’s experience in 2015 when a sophisticated
Russian cyber-attack on the Ukrainian electric grid blacked-out more than
225,000 people. The attack could have been worse if not for the fact that
Ukraine relies on manual technology to operate its grid.
Subsequent Russian cyber-attacks on Ukraine’s electric power grid in 2016,
2017, 2018, and 2019 have been of diminishing effectiveness. None inflicted
more than temporary, localized blackouts, from which Ukraine has recovered
quickly.
SEIA seeks to build on lessons learned from the Ukrainian experience by
studying ways to strategically use manual, mechanical, and other such “retro
technology” to isolate the U.S. electric grid’s most important control
systems from the internet, thereby defeating cyber-attacks.
The consequences of a protracted nationwide electric blackout were recently
foreshadowed in Venezuela. After being without electricity for a few days –
due not to cyber-attack, but because of mismanagement and under-investment
in the grid by the socialist regime of President Nicolas Maduro –
Venezuelans without water were drinking from city sewers.
Venezuela’s problem started from failure of a single high-voltage powerline,
triggering cascading failures, like falling technological dominoes, causing
nationwide blackout.
All modern high-tech electric grids share Venezuela’s potential
vulnerability to cascading catastrophic failures – triggered by
cyber-attacks, EMP, or accidents. The U.S. is not invulnerable.
For example, the 1977 New York City blackout started with a lightning strike
that tripped two circuit breakers.
The Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 started when a powerline contacted a
tree branch – triggering cascading failures that plunged 50 million
Americans into darkness.
The USSR and China during the Cold War, before cyber-threats existed,
hardened their electric grids, other critical infrastructures, and military
forces – in part by relying on “retro technologies” – to survive nuclear EMP
attack. That is why Ukraine, previously part of the USSR, is resilient
against Russian cyber-attacks today.
The USSR used “retro-technology” to EMP harden some of its most
sophisticated military systems.
For example, in 1976, when Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected with his
MiG-25, then the USSR’s most advanced fighter aircraft, U.S. analysts were
surprised to discover it was wired with vacuum tube technology. The Soviets
could have used modern electronics in the MiG-25 – but deliberately used
old-fashioned electronics because they are one million times less vulnerable
to EMP.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National
and Homeland Security. He served in the Congressional EMP Commission as
chief of staff, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House
Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of “Blackout Wars.” For
more of his reports, Go Here Now.
Read the original article in its entirety here.
