(OPINION) What would you do if the power grid where you live went down and there was no electricity for an extended period of time? You might want to think about that, because experts are warning that it is just a matter of time before cyberattacks successfully cripple our power grids. In fact, foreign hackers are working hard to infiltrate critical infrastructure as you read this article.
As you will see below, we are extremely vulnerable, and the Russians and the Chinese have both developed highly advanced cyberwarfare capabilities.
When the U.S. ends up fighting a war with Russia or China (or both simultaneously), devastating cyberattacks on our power grids will be conducted.
What is your plan when your community is suddenly plunged into darkness? The United States and Canada do not have a single power grid.
Rather, multiple grids collectively provide the electricity that we all need. The following explanation comes from Wikipedia…
The electrical power grid that powers Northern America is not a single grid but is instead divided into multiple wide-area synchronous grids.[1] The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest.
Three other regions include the Texas Interconnection, the Quebec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection. Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency.
The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized with each other, but some HVDC interconnectors exist. The Eastern and Western grids are connected via seven links that allow 1.32 GW to flow between them. A National Renewable Energy Laboratory study found that increasing these interconnections would save energy costs.
Bloomberg reports that “US power grids are facing heightened risks of cyber and physical attacks as the election nears,” and one expert warns that there is “a 100 percent chance” that critical infrastructure will eventually be breached.
“I think there’s a 100 percent chance that organizations in the critical infrastructure space at some point will experience some sort of the breach,” said Stephanie Benoit Kurtz, lead cybersecurity faculty at the College of Business and Information Technology at the University of Phoenix. “No longer are the days when organizations can say, ‘We’ll never be breached.’ It’s not if, it’s when.”
Sadly, she is quite correct. We should never have exposed our power grids to the Internet, and now we are incredibly vulnerable.
During a recent congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray publicly admitted that Chinese hackers have been targeting our power grids… (READ MORE)
