Power Grid Catastrophe, by Nature or North Korea

The disaster caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico from the winds and rains was bad enough but the hurricane’s damage continues to wreak havoc among its residents because there is still no electrical power, and thus no electric lights, refrigeration, and myriad other things humans require to survive and prosper. But malevolent hackers could wreck the power grid of much larger and populous nations, including the USA. They proved this in early 2016 in the Ukraine.

It seems to us that the telecommunications network is nearly as important as the power grid, because it is needed to deal not only with gear requiring electrical power, but also with communicating with critical physical things (in Puerto Rico’s case the ports that could receive emergency supplies, equipment, and manpower).

As if hurricanes and hackers weren’t enough, the power grid could be destroyed by solar storms and electromagnetic pulses (EMPs). Because “the most ruinous type of EMP would come in the form of a high-altitude nuclear detonation, where it would create a series of blast waves radiating in all directions, impacting electrical equipment on the ground, in the air, and in orbit “, the very recent North Korean rocket launch is even more threatening.

But even without a malevolent action by North Korea, just a system overload, such as the one experienced in India in July 2012, could take a whole country’s power grid down. We can hope that the United States and its allies have taken or are taking measures to prevent such outages. However, the U.S. power grid is far from perfect.

Technology Can Help or Hurt – Part 4: Social Media Giants’ Missteps Alter History, Spur Regulation

Mark Twain’s 1897 quote had it right: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” One possible Truth in the current fracas involving Russians, Trump’s campaign team for the 2016 presidential election, and social network companies including Facebook, Google, and Twitter is that this is an early example of wars that are fought by hackers and the Internet rather than soldiers and guns. Numerous semi-fiction books could be written or movies created about this craziness. One possible plot is that the Russians knew how unusual (AKA weird) Donald Trump is, and preferred him to Hillary Clinton as president because they could exploit that unusualness (AKA weirdness). A bunch of congresspeople are calling for regulation of these giant Internet-based companies. So are the media, who are far more regulated than Facebook, Google, and Twitter. These are crazy times, and the Russians and other enemy nations must be enjoying all the gyrations that the US is going through.