So they are again beefing up a terrorism drama for simple third world copper theft problems, as they happen in all third world countries.
No terrorist would try to attack 100 minor power stations, they rather attack 1-2 big lines or grid stations.
What is much more dangerous is this marketing tactic to attack the problem ("terrorists") and the ongoing erosion of core infrastructure, like water, streets and the electric grid by simple neglection, probably caused by outsourcing support for it.
The US power grid quality is only comparable to India. You cannot trust them, and there are constant outages. Over- and undercurrents happen all the time, and consumers have to pay for the damages and outages.
Copper thieves are everywhere. Fight them, but don't call it terrorism. America will go dark, but not by terrorists. Don't blame the foreigners, they are homemade problems.
Government indifference (at all levels) to this risk is scary.
"The Metcalf substation (San Jose, CA, USA), while undergoing security upgrades, was hit again in August 2014. Intruders cut through fences and burglarized equipment containers, triggering at least 14 alarms over four hours. Utility employees didn’t call police or alert guards, who were stationed at the site, according to a state inquiry."
The problem is compounded by a large (and growing) number of electrical outages caused by copper thieves ripping out wiring; it becomes more difficult to distinguish mere theft from terrorism.
If it's difficult to distinguish mere theft from terrorism, then here's a hint: it isn't terrorism.
The "terror" in "terrorism" is there for a reason. If nobody can tell that you stole the wiring because you resent the British rule of the Northern Territories/the French occupation of Algeria/US bases in the middle east/whatever, then even if you intended your act to terrify others into getting their government to comply with your wishes, you have failed pretty badly.
That wording doesn't attract clicks, and it's all this generation is about. You think I'm joking but I'm sure future anthropologists will document how clickbaiting changed the English language. Heck, I have seen common people baiting in their own captions "check what they put in this sandwich, this would be unbelievable in America"
Glenn Greenwald has made this particular point about the word "terrorism" so many times that his columns have to cannibalize themselves, but I do think they will be what future anthropologists cite most frequently, as he's got it nailed:
But if it is not "terrorism" you don't funding, resources, support, publicity, page views. Everyone will learn this eventually and even though they all realize that it isn't really "terrorism" they'll say it is, because it ends up better for them if they do so.
The bigger problem with that article snippet is that the on-site guards weren't notified about the on-site alarms directly. If they are going to the expense of having guards on-site, why route the alarms to some other utility workers who then have to track down the on-site guards to tell them about a local alarm?
I'm not sure how your quote reflects "government indifference". The substation is owned by a private company (PG&E). Employees of this company failed to respond to the alarms and notify police.
If they called police and police failed to respond, then that would be a government failure. A private company's employees not responding, it's more unclear how that's indifference on the government's part.
There are almost certainly people in the FBI and other agencies who have considered the risk and have thought about it and watch for people trying to do this maliciously.
They just don't write things up and tell you what they have thought about and what they have in mind to handle it.
Hopefully, when things like substations go down and alarms go off people do, quietly, think about what the impact could have been.
However, it doesn't mean that an attack couldn't succeed.
That's what the OP is saying. Terrorists are likely to target infrastructure such as power stations, but a power outage caused by copper thieves looks much the same as a power station being taken down by terrorists.
Not to be confused with Zero Days (2016), which is also worth a watch.
Edit: I mis-read, you actually are talking about Zero Days (2016), which - I meant - shouldn't be confused with an earlier documentary called Zero Days - Security Leaks For Sale.
It really is. I can't imagine the havoc that an actually-trained strike team with some real equipment could cause.
I was reading Band of Brothers recently, and the description of how accurate and deadly their mortar-men were in a number of engagements was impressive. A light mortar is not the most high-tech weapon, is mass-produced by every army in the world, and does not take a huge amount of training to handle effectively. Not to mention that it can strike from up to a mile away, from a position without direct line-of-sight to the target; with an accomplice acting as an FO to send adjustments by text. Or skip the accomplice, and use a drone (Is the army doing this? Seems like a natural application). I don't want to imagine the indiscriminate horror that could be inflicted at any kind of open-air event.
The US army already has small portable tube-launched drones that function as a sort of guided mortar, although I can't remember the name at the moment.
Explosives need to be encased in something for best effect. You could use drones for a delivery device, but you would be limited in location selection due to what was both accessible and vulnerable.
I'm not an expert, I've just heard enough times that an explosion that's not enclosed isn't very effective. My plucked-from-the-air guess is that with today's consumer drones, you couldn't fly enough explosive-by-weight anywhere that's vulnerable enough to do anything but superficial damage.
With the metallic powder, while that stuff can fry a circuit-board, power substations have a ton more energy in them, and have much more durable hardware. They already have to be weatherproof in externally accessible areas - I can't see an explosion of metal powder doing any more damage than rain already does. IANAPSEOAE (I am not a power station employee or an electrician), though.
So an obvious maybe long term solution here is to eliminate the need for a grid. The transition to battery solar powered homes would reduce the need for the upstream power supply and larger and transmission lines...
So an obvious long-term solution is to reduce the need for the grid. Many commercial and industrial facilities could run at least partly on local wind or solar, and the more decentralised capability there is, the less the vulnerability.
(I'm actually not just thinking about terrorists and suchlike. I'm also thinking about other risks, such as another Carrington event.)
There's an important difference between 'if the grid goes down, we will have some inefficiency because of excess production here and insufficient production there' and 'if the grid goes down, everything goes down'.
If your local "grid" can't distinguish between your TV usage and the ventilators at a local hospital then there is no difference between your two conditions. If such a distinction cannot be made within whatever circle you use to define "local" then the two cases are identical. The alternative is to wastefully over-provision each local area.
Right but the same logic applies. Rather than 1 single point of failure you now have millions of mini power generators. The impact of one going is significantly less.
Years ago, I would listen to a daylight only AM radio station located in Boulder, Colorado. If I turned on the radio and didn't hear it, I assumed that a squirrel had taken out their power. This seemed to happen every few months. I think that squirrels may have hit upstream from our home or office power once on twice back then.
Which leads to an interesting question: if I pitch the problem as scary enough, can I get a DHS grant to deal with squirrels I suspect of aiming to nest in my gutters or attic?
The first action of the advance party in the Iraq offensive was to sabotage the grid and take out all the power which was accomplished by a small team in short order.
Because sometimes quality journalism is worth finding. If I say I read a lovely article in a magazine, are you going to fix at me for discussing something that cost money to access?
I thin the real problem is that we've set up only one grid. If we had competing distribution providers, the failure of one network wouldn't matter so much.
I dunno, the power grid is an enormous capital investment. It seems like having more than one would be like having completely independent road systems, that is, seriously inefficient.
In the continental US there's three independent grids: East, West, and Texas. There's some interchange of power between the grids with DC ties, but it's pretty minimal capacity-wise.
We do have a couple independent road systems when it comes down to it. Having built such an extensive paved road system allows for there to almost always be an alternate route to travel if something comes up. Electric grids don't work the same way obviously, but we did make the capital investment when it came to roads.
I feel like there's an important distinction between separate systems versus systems which have some inherit redundancy. Both the transport and electrical network have some inherent redundancy, but they're both monolithic, so to speak.
We had multiple grids in the past, it didn't work and it won't work today for the same reason it didn't work then.
While a great theoretical model, treating everything as something to be left up to competition is naive and misses the advantages of large coordinated systems.
I probably should have been more specific. I think each neighborhood should own the last mile of distribution and be able to hook up to competing providers that handle the long distance distribution.
Such a co-op situation would create the buying power necessary to negotiate good deals. I think this would work for water and internet access too.
The theory is that cities do that for us, but leaders are often compromised by campaign money from the very companies they negotiate with.
Really late reply and I doubt you'll read it, but this disregards the increase in transaction costs from this.
Who is going to spend all their time negotiating this, most people are perfectly content paying a little bit more because they didn't have to spend hours arguing with multiple utility providers.
Never mind the increased distribution costs anyways because there's multiple sets of lines running.
The way it works already for most people have the choice of multiple different energy providers with a common grid system, this is what has happened due to the deregulation of the energy space which has been both for better and worse.
Well, individuals do exactly that for Internet and TV.
But I am talking about individuals joining a co-op that handles it. One that has buying power of many individuals. The co-op would own the last mile, so it not a duplication of the entire network.
With no duplication of the main distribution lines, we are more vulnerable to total outages. It would be better to have some duplication and competition. At least then I can switch. At least then there is an incentive for a utility to be resilient.
As it stands now, PG&E can blows up a neighborhood due to its poor maintenance of gas lines and get a rate increase! And the neighborhood cannot switch away from the utility that killed many of its people.
I live in a condo and we have an HOA that buys many services for all of us. It saves the individual a lot of time and money.
For utilities in California, we have a government body that regulates prices, but its become clear that it is somewhat in bed with the industry, which often happens.
I'd rather have choice than a monopoly regulated by people who are not aligned with the interests of customers.
Perhaps you should have taken this opportunity to repeat some of those things he has been saying for the last 20 years so as to contribute to the conversation...
OK... he's been saying that it would be easy to attack our electrical infrastructure which is exposed and unguarded all over the place. I can't add anything that isn't in the article, besides pointing out that we've more or less been in this state forever and somehow terrorists haven't figured out how to capitalize.
What is much more dangerous is this marketing tactic to attack the problem ("terrorists") and the ongoing erosion of core infrastructure, like water, streets and the electric grid by simple neglection, probably caused by outsourcing support for it. The US power grid quality is only comparable to India. You cannot trust them, and there are constant outages. Over- and undercurrents happen all the time, and consumers have to pay for the damages and outages.
Copper thieves are everywhere. Fight them, but don't call it terrorism. America will go dark, but not by terrorists. Don't blame the foreigners, they are homemade problems.