Gyroscopic Investing

[quote=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-the-dark ... -security/]"It's frightening," Koppel said. "I mean, it is frightening enough that my wife and I decided we were going to buy enough freeze-dried food for all of our kids and their kids."

"Who are the potential perpetrators here?" Reid asked. "Who do we have to fear the most? Is it Russia? China? Iran? Terrorists? Individual actors?"

"All those. The interesting thing, Chip, is the ones who are most capable are the ones least likely to do it.

"There are some experts who say they're already in."

"Well, they are in. There's no question about it. They are already in the grid. I was told that by the former Chief Scientist of NSA, he stated categorically the Russians are in, the Chinese are in. The Iranians may be on the verge of getting in. And then at the bottom of the capability scale are folks like ISIS, terrorist groups."[/quote]

John Robb also discusses attacks on electrical grids. They have maybe the highest return on terror in terms of economic damage possible. Much higher than stabbing attacks, I'm sure. Despite what the DHS says, it is impossible to defend. It looks like the "best solution" they both have is decentralizing and localizing power production.

Kriegsspiel wrote: John Robb also discusses attacks on electrical grids. They have maybe the highest return on terror in terms of economic damage possible. Much higher than stabbing attacks, I'm sure. Despite what the DHS says, it is impossible to defend. It looks like the "best solution" they both have is decentralizing and localizing power production.

There is very little symbolic value to knocking the power out for a couple of days.  The weather does that all the time.

Terrorists don't want to be mistaken for a storm with high winds.  That may be the reason that it doesn't happen very often in our part of the world.

As far as the security of nuclear power plants goes, those places are very secure.  I've been to them for work-related stuff and entry is a multi-stage, multi-checkpoint process by lots of guys with lots of guns.

Desert wrote:

MediumTex wrote:

Kriegsspiel wrote: John Robb also discusses attacks on electrical grids. They have maybe the highest return on terror in terms of economic damage possible. Much higher than stabbing attacks, I'm sure. Despite what the DHS says, it is impossible to defend. It looks like the "best solution" they both have is decentralizing and localizing power production.

There is very little symbolic value to knocking the power out for a couple of days.  The weather does that all the time.

Terrorists don't want to be mistaken for a storm with high winds.  That may be the reason that it doesn't happen very often in our part of the world.

As far as the security of nuclear power plants goes, those places are very secure.  I've been to them for work-related stuff and entry is a multi-stage, multi-checkpoint process by lots of guys with lots of guns.

The right kind of grid strike can knock power out for weeks or months though.  There was a trial run out in CA a couple years ago, where a substation was taken out briefly.  The shooters appeared to almost deliberately avoid taking out the transformers in a more permanent manner; makes me think it was a test run, probably some kind of LE or military inside job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

Interesting story.  I hadn't heard about that before.

MediumTex wrote:

Kriegsspiel wrote: John Robb also discusses attacks on electrical grids. They have maybe the highest return on terror in terms of economic damage possible. Much higher than stabbing attacks, I'm sure. Despite what the DHS says, it is impossible to defend. It looks like the "best solution" they both have is decentralizing and localizing power production.

There is very little symbolic value to knocking the power out for a couple of days.  The weather does that all the time.

Terrorists don't want to be mistaken for a storm with high winds.  That may be the reason that it doesn't happen very often in our part of the world.

As far as the security of nuclear power plants goes, those places are very secure.  I've been to them for work-related stuff and entry is a multi-stage, multi-checkpoint process by lots of guys with lots of guns.

It's hard to imagine a terrorist attack that could top the symbolism of 9/11. A nuke in a populated area is the only thing that comes to mind. No, the goal in attacking power grids is economic damage, which was part of Bin Ladin's strategy. The target probably won't be a heavily defended nuclear power plant, since there are easier to hit targets that would accomplish the goal of denying electricity to a large area.