Thoughts after a power outage

Our complex of about 250 homes lost electrical power for about 8 hours yesterday. I was working so I didn't even know about it until I was informed that we'd be eating out since there was no power for cooking at home. Coming to a darkened neighborhood after dinner, we did the usual setting up of battery-operated lights and then just sat in the dark waiting for the lights to come back on. Which they did around 10:30PM.

I've recently been reading Richard Clarke's Cyber War, whose subtitle is: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. I'm reading it on our iPad. The glow from the iPad and the decreasing power available in its battery got me thinking about how isolated we would be if there were to be a cyber attack that targeted the power grid - as Clarke was saying while I read in the dark. The power grid in the US is probably the easiest to bring down since it is so tied into the Internet and there is no security that a child hacker can't crack. Why have we been so lucky? Because it isn't to any enemy's advantage yet to bring us down? Every personal computer (especially those running Windows) is a potential, and likely, carrier of hidden software that can be commandeered from a great distance to inflict some kind of damage. You don't have to know about it, don't have to approve of anything - it just runs as though you had approved. Tens of thousands of such computers can be stealthily united into a potent military strike force. Commerical antivirus software is way too slow and imprecise to prevent the zombification of your computer.

What to do about all for this? I don’t' know, but Clarke seems to be promising some practical ideas later in the book. I will watch for these and hope there's a way I can participate. However, I have serious doubts that I - or most people - can do anything about this. How about the next generations? It'll probably be your full time preoccupation. I wish you luck.

Interview at ABC news

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