by Frank Mazur
An attack on our nation’s electrical grid is a national security threat nobody is talking about yet it could change the course of civilization. It can stop our water supply, incapacitate computers, stall transportation and shut down banking. No electricity means a virtual standstill. No presidential candidate or elected officials is talking about it.
Iran and North Korea are developing and testing inter-continental missiles that can carry nuclear warheads launched from ships/submarines. These missiles could explode nuclear payloads above our continent and damage/destroy all electronic equipment in our country.
Various commissions and experts have alerted Congress and the President of our vulnerability and urged them to take action to protect our electric grid. The technology to lessen the effects of this attack is known but steps to protect our grid or provide warning measures to defend our homeland aren’t being implemented.
Russia and China have been responsive to this threat and have initiated steps to protect their electric infrastructure. Maine, the first state to recognize this exposure, passed legislation asking for measures to mitigate the effects. While Washington debates this issue and our President focuses on climate change and being PC compliant, our state legislature should follow Maine’s lead and secure our grid. The cost of damage to an attack is trillions with a long recovery time while the prevention costs to mitigate would be far less.
We need to protect our way of life and our elected officials should be leading efforts to that end. This isn’t a debatable issue anymore.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello,
This treat is real. Maine General Assembly has realized that and taken action. “Dirigo” is Maine’s slogan. It means I lead. VT can follow suit but a lot of dream weavers need to be turned out of the VT Gen. Assembly. Realists are preferable. PFH
I agree that the grid must be protected because access to electricity is absolutely vital for modern life. Nuclear plants are currently the best-protected generating assets because they already have some measure of shielding in place and the safety and control systems make use of analog systems rather than heavy reliance on computers for control and safe shutdown. In the event of widespread grid outage, my guess is that nuclear plants will be among the first recovery assets to become available for large-scale use.
And that means we should protect those assets from other threats. Primarily the threat of premature shutdown posed by unfair market practices and artificial price distortions resulting from favorable treatment of certain generating facilities, which allows them to offer artificially low prices for their product. Likewise, generators that do not bear any costs for their environmental pollution (i.e., natural gas-fueled plants) have an unfair advantage as a result of that. Those things pose no less of a threat to grad stability that postulated EMP attacks, and in some ways are more immediate threats, because they are happening now.
Grid protection should be moved to the front burner post haste. Unfortunately, the super majority is so caught up in increasing or raising taxes, there is little time to address serious issues. How much longer are Vermonters going to put up with this foolishness???????????