DHS To Review Report On US Power Grid Vulnerability

CWmike writes "The US Department of Homeland Security is looking at a report by a research scientist in China that shows how a well-placed attack against a small power subnetwork could trigger a cascading failure of the entire West Coast power grid. Jian-Wei Wang, a network analyst at China's Dalian University of Technology, used publicly available information to model how the West Coast grid and its component subnetworks are connected. Wang and another colleague then investigated how a major outage in one subnetwork would affect adjacent subnetworks. New Scientist magazine reported on this a week or so ago, and the paper has been available since the spring."

Comments

The amazing thing

[guruevi]

The amazing thing is that nobody ever tried it or at least never succeeded. The US is apparently not that hated in the world since nobody ever does anything. We have hundreds of reports on how easy it would be to disable this or take that out of service. All it takes to black out the USA are some well placed charges or for somebody to hit a few poles hard enough but nobody does it. All we got was some measly hijacked plane (which has been done since the 70's) in a few buildings.

Re:The amazing thing

[oodaloop]

All we got was some measly hijacked plane (which has been done since the 70's) in a few buildings.

...whose cost rose into the tens of billions and exacerbated our recession. It didn't topple our economy, which was their aim, but put a dent in it.

Re:The amazing thing

[hoggoth]

> It didn't topple our economy, which was their aim, but put a dent in it.

Yes it did. The cost of the buildings is negligible compared to our GNP. But the cost of the followup war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, DHS, etc have toppled our already shaky economy. What's more their aim wasn't to topple our economy, it was to ruin our way of life. I'd say our descent into security theater, torture, surveillance and paranoia has gone a long way towards destroying our way of life. America the free?

Re:The amazing thing

[dkf]

But the cost of the followup war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, DHS, etc have toppled our already shaky economy.

Actually, it was the collective stupidity of millions of people that did that. And yes, believing that house prices would always go up in real terms (or that you'd at least be able to guarantee to get out without burning yourself when they stopped) is most certainly stupidity. On the other hand, as long as everyone believed, it almost worked; the only problem was this inconvenient thing called reality...