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"Blood Oil" by Leif Wenar BLOOD OIL shows how the West can now lead a peaceful revolution by ending its dependence on authoritarian oil, and by getting shoppers out of business with the men of blood. Learn more | See more from the author
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People have been warning of the potential catastrophe awaiting us if the electric grid should fail for a long time, but most of those warnings have fallen on deaf ears or considered the rantings of post-apocalyptic doomsayers. But when Ted Koppel--one of the nation's most trusted journalists--takes up the cause, each and every one of us needs to listen. In a relatively short and readable book, Koppel succinctly and unemotionally makes the case that (a) the electric grid of the U.S. is extremely vulnerable to collapse due to either cyberwarfare, EMP attack, or solar flare; (b) due to a variety of economic and political reasons, we have not implemented necessary steps to protect the grid; and (c) most frighteningly of all, we do not have emergency plans on either the state or federal level to deal with a widespread collapse of the grid.
This is not a trivial threat. Imagine Katrina, only thousands-fold. Koppel notes that the report of the commission tasked with evaluating a potential EMP attack predicted that, in the case of such an attack that would destroy large parts of the grid, only 1 in 10 Americans would still be alive a year later. It is important to stress in light of the preceding sentence that Koppel's book is NOT a hysterical fear-mongering rant; instead, it is a careful analysis of the genuine risks and a convincing documentation of how completely unprepared we are, at all levels, to face this threat. As a chilling example, consider the quote Koppel provides by Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who when asked how the country would respond to a collapse of the grid, said "Oh, I'm sure FEMA has the capability to bring in backup transformers.Read more ›
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Because he’s Ted Koppel, he gets to interview cabinet secretaries and their senior staff, as well as senior civil servants, politicians and agency heads. To set up interviews across the country, he simply called US Senators. That quality alone makes Lights Out a higher level read. The other plus is the way Koppel has organized and written this book. It is broken out into bite-sized chapters, like television news items, keeping interest but delivering the salient points succinctly. And he leaves no stone unturned. Every time you think “Yes, but…” he has the answer in the next paragraph, page or chapter. So Lights Out is both challenging and satisfying, fascinating and horrifying. And important.
The core of the horror is our electrical grid. It is no secret that it old, old fashioned, creaky, decrepit and vulnerable to physical attack. Koppel adds that in addition, it is even more vulnerable to cyberattack. Hackers could, if they so desired, crash the whole electric grid, much as the United States and Israel ruined Iran’s uranium processing plants and as Iran turned 30,000 Saudi computers into useless doorstops. We have the technology; we have successfully deployed it ourselves. If similar efforts were made against the USA, it would mean weeks and months before power was restored. Water would stop flowing, gas would stop flowing, gas stations would close, hospitals would close, banking systems would cease. Debit and credit cards would not operate. Replacements for Very Large Transformers run to over a year lead time. The US has hundreds, all custom made.
And the government? Clueless. There are no plans to deal with this or prevent it.Read more ›
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This book is organized into three parts. Part One looks into the vulnerability of our power grids to a catastrophic cyberattack. While a few in the power industry still think our power grids are resilient and well protected, a majority of the experts interviewed by the author concede that someone who has the right skills and knowledge can indeed cause damage to our power grids such that multiple states and their millions of residents can be simultaneously knocked off from the grid for a very long time (a year or longer is possible, depending on, say, how quickly replacements for damaged grid components can be manufactured, etc.).
Part Two poses the following question (my wording, not the author's): What has our government been doing to deal with this possibility of a catastrophic cyberattack on our power grids? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be "Not enough." To be fair, some in the government do know what some of the challenges are, but to date, there is no known coherent "big picture" plan.
Part Three examines the efforts of some communities at becoming self-reliant when it comes to disaster preparedness, the limits of such efforts, and possible takeaways for our government and the rest of the nation. The Mormon community's organizational capability is described in good detail, and there is passing mention of other religious organizations having a similar capability but no additional detail.
Overall, this book is well written and does a good job describing the nature of the problems we have and why we need to push our government to do more sooner.
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