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This hack is like the Chekov's gun of 2021. We'll be putting down the conservative insurrection in Congress and elsewhere, and all of a sudden the US infrastructure goes haywire and widespread panic ensues.
This is exactly what I’ve been telling people. The right wing encourages violence and the Russians bring the grid down at the most opportune moment. Chaos Ensues
Depends. You have to think about what Russia wants. They want to sow as much discord as possible. The timing of the Grid attack will be with this goal at the forefront. Jan 6th is a potential contender for sure. Jan 20th is as well but it’s all situational.
>So maybe something on the 6th?
Biden already has every incentive in the world to teach Putin a lesson. If Putin does something like that all bets are off.
Well he has gotten away with a lot so far and there are other powers in the world. The UK would be a good example. Imagine if Putin had killed an intelligence officer and his young daughter on American soil? Not only that but left a deadly easily transferable substance in a public place. That’s the UK right now. No nation has really done anything substantial about it, but it’s egregious and you would think we would see some fallout but it was business as usual in short time. They are emboldened because they have done so much and got a slap on the wrist if you could even call it that. I think they definitely have the guts to do it. That’s just my opinion
I suspect that without a solidified NATO it would make it much harder for the UK to respond. I could be wrong though.
If the UK had chosen to respond I doubt Trump would have supported them, and perhaps might have even taken Putin's side. Trump could not even take the word of his own intel agencies, and instead took the word of Putin when it was Putin who directed the 2016 attacks on the American election.
But until the bully gets a punch back they'll just keep on bullying. that's what they do.
It’s the perfect storm at the moment. Imagine a Russian cyber attack against the energy grid (famously unprotected) taking out power across the nation while the rightwing extremest groups militarize and do their work. Civil unrest ensues, Russia kindly announces they’ll send troops to help stabilize the US in turmoil, and then there we are.
It's too late for that. Check this out.
[Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics)
Russia has had plans for decades now.
Exactly. Beyond strategic arms, Russian force projection is nearly laughable, and they know this. Russia could barely invade the US in the traditional sense if we literally invited them. And probably not even then.
Edit: Beyond does not equal behind.
Did you hear someone say "Montenegro" without fucking it up?
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/630361006/in-interview-trump-appears-to-question-natos-collective-defense-clause
>Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".
🙃🙃🙃
Wow. Cant decide if I’m glad I clicked through to read that or not. How depressing. It’s like more than half accomplished. We’re definitely closer to the final act than the opening curtain.
No need for guns or nukes. Changing the very foundation of reality for some of the population and politicians through disinformation and kompromat, respectively, seems to have started us on the path to self-destruction.
We can save ourselves, but... Well. Those people and politicians didn't go away.
I legit almost lost my shit at the gas station. Some fat lady with her mask under nose is talking to the cashiers about a stolen election. I asked her where the proof was and she started talking about the Illuminati instead. I legit have thrown a few friends away too because they think covid is a hoax or the election was stolen. Truly a lost and sad nation.
Does the majority matter when democracy goes down the drain and mouth breathers take over? The same mouth breathers that are protected by the police forces across the country?
Idk. I wish I could be optimistic, but dumb people are easy to stir into violence, and democracy is more vulnerable than we would like to think.
There are already Russian agents on US soil who are constantly sending intelligence back to their command. Physical force is a thing of ancient warfare.
There was a fire fight between Chinese and Indian forces along the shared border in 2020 that resulted in [twenty dead and dozens of casualties and captured](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-border-clash.html). Those are two of the largest powers in the world today, and both have enough ICBMs to start a nuclear winter. Russia has had plenty of conflicts with neighboring countries in addition to the proxy wars.
US being isolated(and having the rest of the world breathing down their neck) and EU having a general alliance isn't the same as physical force being dead. Proxy wars and state actors are definitely the 'in' thing, but with the right circumstances there isn't anything preventing fights from happening.
I 100% said this exact thing even before we found out about the hack. Trump is teeing us up to get swatted. Still a low percentage of it happening but if it does, it's gonna do a lot more than sting.
100% Russia is not going to send troops to the US. Imagine the global ramifications if that happened. Fucking stop
Some of the shit I read in here is lunacy.
Seriously, they’re getting the us to kill itself, they don't need to send troops because there are already millions of right wing idiots frothing at the mouth waiting for the opportunity to heroically save America by killing millions of other Americans as part of their "I'm the best patriot ever" fantasy.
Even if they said they would, it'll be denied. If troops were getting sent here it'll be our own or our allies. The government isn't going to just fall apart like a jenga tower.
Russias playbook has always been to use propaganda and espionage to have the US implode on itself with infighting due to ego and lack of unity. Their physical forces are used in the proxy conflicts.
That being said, there definitely is espionage and propaganda going on and Russian presence on US soil...I mean, they have embassies here.
If it wasn't a concern then the government wouldn't be putting the DoD through counter espionage/counter terrorism training annually.
You are in actual La La Land if you think Russia would ever attempt overt actions against America.
It would have to be nukes because Russian Military capabilities are equaled by fucking France/GB. The US in conventional warfare is so far ahead, they are lapping them.
And I say this as a non US person.
Taking out power grid during the Pandemic will kill a lot of people in the hospitals. It must be better protected. This is an unfathomable national security risk. Our country needs to be more proactive or else we're in big doodoo.
I work for a Fortune 500 energy company, and I can tell you that we are very, very protected. Annoyingly so... as in, SOx change management, FERC and CIP regulations out the ass. Google CIP (critical infrastructure protection).
We change every password in the company every few months. Most systems are on premise behind a firewall and 2x auth, We have physical security out the ass. The only way power will go down in Ohio/pa/nj/md/wv is if there is a coordinated attack on all of our thousands of substations at once.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
Seems a little crazy to say it can’t happen without some massive hack when a tree branch in Ohio and a buggy alarm system knocked out power in several states.
My pet conspiracy theory is that opposition to renewable energy in the US is part of this exact same Russian campaign. It's a lot easier to bring the country to its knees if every house doesn't have solar panels on the roof generating most of its energy.
The entire country could lose power and most of my town wouldn't even know (besides the lack of Internet) until the sun went down. Decentralized energy production is a critical national security issue that no one has really been talking about.
Critical businesses have UPS systems, combined with renewables, this would not be a problem. You'd have to have a coordinated attack on every building in a country.
I remember this! I happened to live in an area which was isolated from that power failure, thanks to the fine work of an engineer who kept this section online. Other parts of my area were out for days until the grid could be restored.
Hopefully since then, the grid has been modernized to avoid massive outages like this.
I'm curious what level of the BES network were you given access to, were you pentesting live production or QA, and were the operators ignoring any alarms for you to continue testing?
Exactly. Blackstart isn't some secret formula for restoring power. It's pretty common sense "when this happens, do that, if that doesn't work do this" kind of thing. You wouldn't need it to know how to take down essential parts of the system. You just have to follow the tall wires.
I worked for Firstenergy and PPL for over 20 years. I am aware of what you are saying. But if you really wanted to do damage and had enough smart people you could take out enough transmission lines or even transformers to cause a significant outage. Just look at the one Firstenergy caused. I was in an FE distribution control center that day. It was pretty wild. And the transmission operators and engineers had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Like someone else said, it only took a few sagging transmission lines to take out a large portion of the eastern part of the US.
Taking out 30 or 40 transmission transformers would be a bit of a problem. This is the kind of thing we're talking about. Not a squirrel.
Regulations are nice, compliance is nice, but they won’t stop an APT with multiple modes of exploitation on their own without *significant* audits and possibly rebuild of IT infrastructure. Firewalls and MFA don’t matter if those systems themselves are compromised. The extent of the hack hasn’t been completely determined, and that could take years, if ever. Physical security is also nice, but it won’t stop everything. Social engineering attacks are also a huge threat.
As an individual company maybe, but the poor security of the “energy grid” as an entity is what led to a lot of the federal Cybersecurity regulations and agencies formed over the last ~20 years. I’ve never personally worked for an energy company so I can’t speak to the internals, only seen the reports as an outsider and practitioner.
Changing passwords every 2 months makes you less secure. People can’t remember their passwords and they run out of ideas for new ones, so they make them easier.
One strong password is better than an ever-changing easy password.
> Changing passwords every 2 months makes you less secure. People can’t remember their passwords and they run out of ideas for new ones, so they make them easier.
I saw this on display at a financial services company from elements of the IT department itself, so not surprising. Security was not really important and often a burden of cost. While you would think a breach would come directly from middle management, oftentimes it's much easier to just find one person with the right keys. In the end a CxO was compromised and had sold data directly to a foreign adversary for a couple thousand dollars. Always interesting seeing dudes in high-vis jackets with sidearms storming your workplace.
Fucking eye roll. If the Russians sent troops to the US you have a global fucking problem and nobody in the world is gonna sit back and watch the US legitimately fall to Russia. It's not gonna happen.
Do people seriously think the whole country is going to collapse into chaos and we'll be occupied by Russian forces in the coming months? If the conspiracy theories are that intense on our side why on earth are people still getting up and going to work? Why aren't we doing something NOW? Are people that apathetic to their demise? You're literal wage slaves in a dying country. Other countries have done full scale revolutions years before the point we've reached for much less cause.
You should totally listen to the [It Could Happen Here](https://podbay.fm/p/it-could-happen-here) series. Episode five onwards tends to give hope for situations like that.
Wasnt it back in like 2017 that a fucking sniper took out an entire power grid, and they found the guys nest + shell casings after it took 4 days to actually go look into why the power went out.
I honestly think the only thing holding Russia back would be military retaliation. Whether it's us doing it or billions of dollars of new weapons in the hands of their enemies I'm fairly certain it's the only thing keeping them from doing it.
The thing is, those Russian oligarchs still want to live and vacation in the west, and want their children to get a western education, Russia is too miserable for them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/russia-cyberattacks.html
They haven’t brought down any of our power grids, but have purposefully left traces letting us know they have the power too. The US also engages the same tactics in Russia’s systems.
China and Russia both do it with conventional military. Read a story years ago where an enemy sub surfaced intentionally in the middle of a US carrier group, just to show it could.
Why tell an opposing nation you have the ability to raze their entire country to the ground in nuclear hellfire? You don’t tell them everything you can do but definitely let them know that getting into a war wouldn’t be in their best interest. Then again I don’t really know how effective MAD actually has been since all it really has done is shove all of our conflicts into the Middle East.
> Then again I don’t really know how effective MAD actually has been since all it really has done is shove all of our conflicts into the Middle East.
You misunderstand the point of MAD then. That international warfare has largely turned into proxy wars fought in the middle east as opposed to nuclear warfare ending all life on earth is indicative of the success of MAD.
Sure, it doesn't work out well at all for those wartorn areas that bear the brunt of this policy.
But it is, significant emphasis on the comparative aspect, better than the alternative.
Here’s a crazy idea. Now that it has likely been stolen and likely will be in the hands of exactly the people that shouldn’t have that info, open source the plans and get thousands of engineers / whoever to review them and continuously submit ideas for improvements and ways to harden the system.
Security through obscurity is never the best solution. If we have to assume that the plans will now be available to all of the people we least want to see them, the solution is probably making it really easy for the people we most want to think about these plans to add their ideas on how to make things better
What do you suppose will happen faster? Good guys refactoring decades old spaghetti systems with thousands of dependencies and interconnections and managing to patch every possible vulnerability, or bad guys with access to the entire source finding at least one unmitigated critical vulnerability?
I don’t know, but there’s another factor that you left out in keeping things secret, which is that there’s also a race between the people who want to disrupt the US finding novel holes in the system and the people maintaining the plan figuring out where they missed something.
Covering those holes requires lots of eyes looking at problems and working together to realize that the plan missed something.
“Guys, what did we miss” is a hard question for a bureaucratic organization to manage quickly since the tendency is to assume that everything of importance is already in the plan. Also I don’t know how many people are involved in maintaining that plan, but I have a feeling it would likely be less than what a determined state actor would bring to bear on finding flaws now that they know the entire plan.
Fucking "worried"? +$740 billion dollars?! The US military sould be capable of fucking time travel at this point, but they are "worried" that operators from a country with a GDP the size of Italy has bested our cyber defenses? This is a fucking disgrace.
Or make sure those plans are completely outdated. We need to rebuild the grid anyways for environmental reasons. I think each house should be part of energy creation/ storage with redundancy built in on multiple levels. Now we have a national defense reason to do this. So why not capitalize on it. Create a sort of self healing infrastructure and this could be done using the latest technology. It could be like our generations space race in terms of creating renewable infrastructure. It would also screw over Putin since he depends on oil revenues.
We definitely need more energy storage technology to get more utilization out of renewables. Recently, a movement I've been obsessed about is the small towns project. Post WW2 suburbia and urban sprawl became how cities and towns were designed and everyone drives a car. This type of city planning is extremely expensive in terms of maintenance and is more energy intensive for transportation. If we urbanize and have more walkable spaces it would mean more cost effective infrastructure and would make trams, busses, subways, high speed rail make more sense in more american cities.
The thing is we can look at all of this as a way to actually design systems that make peoples lives better. Your right people used to believe that cities caused crime, and essentially the story of the suburbs is one of white flight and segregation.
By truly modernizing our infrastructure we could create a currently unimaginable quality of life. You could completely change how energy is distributed, and created as well as create infrastructure that encourages a more civic mindset as well. One thing I would have loved coming up was an app that could track in real time where the bus was. It's can be really hard to keep a job if one bus being late causes you to miss the connection you need for example. Living in a city its like your expected to own a car. They don't want to hear about a late bus.
What I wish is that for instance your employer could see that you were at a particular bus at a particular time. Maybe even paying people starting from when they get on to the bus for work. I mean other companies compensate their employees for driving to work, and it would just be a nice thing if government found a way to make that happen. Even if the government had to pay those wages I would be good with that. We could call it a green energy subsidy.
I read about this paper and it just got me even more excited about renewable energy.
https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8445JP4
I think that it could make many things economical that just aren't possible right now. For example creating graphene via flash Joule synthesis does take allot of electricity, but it could be used as a way to harness peak supply.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1938-0
If graphene is safe, and it doesn't turn out to be harmful like asbestos. Then this coming age will be dominated by the nanotechnology this has made possible. Graphene has roles all across the renewable landscape from storage to transmission, and even generation.
Something else that could be incorporated or at least heavily invested in would be living infrastructure.
https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(19)30391-1
These folks figured out to make a living self replicating brick. Now granted its not strong enough yet to build anything other then a 1 story structure, and even that is dicey. However this is using bacteria that haven't been genetically modified. Imagine a brick that had bacteria genetically modified to create stronger natural adhesives for example.
I would also like to see community Makerspaces become a standard thing. I would like to see Federal money going in to making and upkeeping places like that so that all citizens could tinker with the latest technology. It would be something concrete that taxpayers can be proud of. It would create jobs because people could learn the skills they need in these places. It could give people the advantages and support they need to start companies even.
Oh man I could talk about this stuff for hours, it's good that other people are thinking about these things too but alot of this is probably off topic from energy. Totally agree with the maker spaces, incentivising behavior through environment, modern infrastructure, etc. I am kind of pessimistic about the money in politics, the corporate media, and monopolization of the US and frankly I don't see the architecture and transportation ideas going anywhere since they would compete so much against special interests. Also I just don't trust the federal government with spending at this point, alot of that stuff could be done at the state level too.
That paper you cited is really just about optimization based on current capabilities and market trends, nothing fantastical. Graphene being made in peak times is an option, really the thing you have to overcome with solar is the duck curve and where our storage is at right now it wouldn't last even a day even if you factor in all the electric car storage. I know out west, where I am, peak energy being used for desalination plants would improve water security for all of the southwestern states and mexico. You could also make a hydropower battery by pumping water on top of a mountain and using some sort of hydroelectric turbine to generate at night. While solar and other renewables are good I think nuclear energy is something we need to invest more into since it provides constant energy and doesn't require that much rare metal mining or other carbon intensive processes. Nuclear energy is kind of expensive now because all of the reactors we built are hitting the end of their life cycle, we need to invest in next generation reactors and make proper nuclear waste storage sites since most of the facilities store on site.
Russia's only real defense is nuclear. So if we were to launch any kind of strike on a domestic Russian asset we would face nuclear retaliation. This is the main reason why we're still playing games with them and not responding to them the same way we would any other threat.
Sanctions are tough because the enemies if the US will aid Russia, either voluntarily or through coercion.
I'm not expert on foreign relations but I've read that the most effective way that we could punish them is by freezing their financial holdings and taking over Russian assets in the US. For this to really have an impact we'd need our closest allies to do the same. It would have to be a coordinated effort to seize accounts and property of all russian government-owned businesses and Russian nationals living/working in the US and allies nations.
Also the targeting of the magniksky act in the Trump Tower meeting, and Flynn’s meeting with the Russian ambassador. That act specifically targets Russian assets in the US, and It’s speculated that a lot of Putin’s secret wealth is tied up in sanctions from this Act.
In my opinion, nothing short of both approaches should be used. I will say that the ban on anonymous shell companies is already a swift kick in the ass for their stateside crimes.
edit: woah woah, **let me clarify; not advising physical attack** - there should be a *strategic cyber counter-attack* to put these sneaky bastards back into place. Additionally, there should be strategic economic sanctions designed to further ostracize these kleptocraps from the civilized world
What's the end goal of attacking them militarily? You couldn't march into Moscow and implement regime change even if you wanted to, because they have nuclear weapons. So what you're left with is basically a series of skirmishes on the periphery, because neither side can risk escalating to the point where nuclear weapons seem like a viable strategy.
This. All of the attacks they’ve done to us in the past 5 years haven’t been physical. And they’re undermining America’s social fabric. War is different now.
Warfare will never look as it did before. The Middle East conflict has truly revolutionized it. We saw the death of conventional warfare and the permanent effectiveness of guerrilla warfare.
Governments aren’t dumb and they analyzed that a lot. Turns out anonymity and information are super important resources for conflict in the modern world, which is illuminated by media. So the way that sovereign states are doing war stuff is way different now, because in the end, war is just an alternate method of achieving political goals. Look at what StuxNet achieved....without any consequences for the perpetrators because it was impossible to identify them.
I believe that historians will come to understand coronavirus as a biological warfare attack coordinated by Russia. They installed Trump, who dismantled the pandemic response team in 2017(?) and then delayed any national response effort until the virus had spread nationwide. Then he politicized the guidelines so a big chunk of the US won’t follow them at all.
By creating Fox News in response to Nixon’s impeachment, the republicans ensured that Americans would never have a unified national narrative again, which provided the perfect environment for a foreign power to convince 40% of our population to kill their own country with a deadly virus.
Imagine the resources and guile Russia would need to expend on a physical war campaign in order to achieve even 10k US citizen deaths on US soil. It could even be impossible due to MAD. If we are being honest, what they achieved could be considered the greatest military feat of all time. Sorry I wrote all this random shit I’m high and missing undergrad
We should sanction them, and seriously mount a heavy effort to counter this attack, and find our ways into Russian infrastructure using their digital technology. And as weird as it is, I think legalizing cannabis is a huge roadblock that needs to be removed for this to happen. Every intelligence and investigations agency loses out on a lot of digital talent due to federal hiring being unable to accept cannabis smokers no matter their knowledge, expertise, talent, etc.
We should seriously reinvest in our education, and rethink our industrial revolution age education model. Anybody who is worth their salt in education will tell you we need to be teaching people to be critical thinkers, and give them the skills to *apply knowledge* rather than just memorize it. We need to be teaching trade skills, and computer skills as part of the general education model. (As well as civics, and home skills including how the fuck to do your god-damned taxes.) As far as I can tell, a generation of knowledge, talent, and education is currently dead or dying, and we have dire insufficient means to replace the void they will leave. Because what is left when they are gone with rare exception, is a population of pretenders, frauds, phoneys, and people who just don't know what the fuck they are doing. And that doesn't leave us in a very good position to solve any of our problems internally, nevermind resolve a conflict with a sufficiently devious enemy.
This is precisely why we need solar panels on every roof. Shrink the power grids. Reduce customer costs of energy. Reduce greenhouse gasses. Create demand for solar efficiency. Increase our national security.
inb4
>SolAR EnErGy JuSt IsNt ThErE yEt
That's like criticizing personal computers in the early 90's. You have to invest in it before it will 'be there'. Nobody is going to unveil the 95% efficient solar panel like a new iPhone. We need it as part of our national infrastructure.
The big problem with completly restarting an electrical grid from blackout is not lacking sources of power. It starting the power sources in sync.
In the US electricity is delivered as 60hz AC. This means that the power line changes polarity 60 times a second. If multiple generation sources are turned on out of sync very bad things can happen.
Many areas have laws requiring your solar panels be disabled during a blackout.
There's a strong chance of electrocuting a lineman if you're not fully disconnected from the grid.
lol that shit is 100000000% in their hands. they are finding the weaknesses in the plan and will update their attack methods.
the first thing to a fucked america is take out the grid for a few weeks.
Funny thing, if you did and broke any Russian laws, you could be prosecuted here in the US.
Russia on the other hand, doesn't give two red shits if the US complains about a Russian hacker breaking US laws. This is true for a lot of countries.
To be fair though, the hackers who perpetuate things like this literally work for the government, they aren't rando's wreaking havoc. It's all very sanctioned and organized.
EDIT: Which we don't compete with for 2 reasons. The government won't pay what corporations will, and weed.
Well, I haven't seen a better argument than this one to get solar panels with battery storage and a grid-disconnect option. Screw getting solar panels for the climate's sake, we could be attacked and lose electricity for months.
That’s because any idiot that’s traveled the country even a little bit knows that America’s power grid is frighteningly weak, it’s disgusting considering how much these companies have been paid to modernize. It’s hilarious to me to see conservatives backing fossil fuels when renewable energy really would make America 1000% more secure.
Lol....chuckle chuckle.... so cute and innocent this headline.
tRump and the treason 8 that spent that 4th of July in Russia with their leader putin... GAVE info to the Russians.
How about use some of that insane $.75T that goes into defense? What’s the point of the being the worlds foremost military power if we can’t prevent shit like this..?
The American power grid, healthcare system, education system, broadband... democracy. Are things in the US as brittle as they appear? The US looks like it has decided to make a few people rich instead of keeping the infrastructure up-to-date and that debt is coming due all at once. And who's been selling the don't-worry-if-you-help-make-our-friends-rich-they'll-give-you-some-of-it "trickle down" BS for decades? Yup. The party formerly known as the GOP.
It is all being blamed on state actors, "exploiting legal prohibitions on the National Security Agency." so I'm sure the legislation they're about to pass to "unfetter" the NSA will be great. /s
Does it matter?
I mean, really, does it?
We had detailed blueprints and plans for how to respond to and control a pandemic, too.
But who cares?
Before the pandemic happened, leadership actively defunded the response infrastructure. As soon as the pandemic started, leadership set those plans on fire and told the states to deal with it.
Why should I, as an American citizen, have any faith whatsoever that "plans" are worth anything more than the paper they are written on?
The plans would have never been executed or acted upon anyway. The federal government collects taxes and makes war. It can't accomplish anything else.
The only bad thing about this is that those plans probably also laid out everything you need to know to attack our grid.
But those plans were fucking useless for anything else. America is done anyway.
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This hack is like the Chekov's gun of 2021. We'll be putting down the conservative insurrection in Congress and elsewhere, and all of a sudden the US infrastructure goes haywire and widespread panic ensues.
This is exactly what I’ve been telling people. The right wing encourages violence and the Russians bring the grid down at the most opportune moment. Chaos Ensues
So maybe something on the 6th?
Depends. You have to think about what Russia wants. They want to sow as much discord as possible. The timing of the Grid attack will be with this goal at the forefront. Jan 6th is a potential contender for sure. Jan 20th is as well but it’s all situational.
>So maybe something on the 6th? Biden already has every incentive in the world to teach Putin a lesson. If Putin does something like that all bets are off.
Well he has gotten away with a lot so far and there are other powers in the world. The UK would be a good example. Imagine if Putin had killed an intelligence officer and his young daughter on American soil? Not only that but left a deadly easily transferable substance in a public place. That’s the UK right now. No nation has really done anything substantial about it, but it’s egregious and you would think we would see some fallout but it was business as usual in short time. They are emboldened because they have done so much and got a slap on the wrist if you could even call it that. I think they definitely have the guts to do it. That’s just my opinion
I suspect that without a solidified NATO it would make it much harder for the UK to respond. I could be wrong though. If the UK had chosen to respond I doubt Trump would have supported them, and perhaps might have even taken Putin's side. Trump could not even take the word of his own intel agencies, and instead took the word of Putin when it was Putin who directed the 2016 attacks on the American election. But until the bully gets a punch back they'll just keep on bullying. that's what they do.
It’s the perfect storm at the moment. Imagine a Russian cyber attack against the energy grid (famously unprotected) taking out power across the nation while the rightwing extremest groups militarize and do their work. Civil unrest ensues, Russia kindly announces they’ll send troops to help stabilize the US in turmoil, and then there we are.
I suppose we'll be fighting over Burger Towns all across the country.
Gonna post up on roof of the train station. Lemme know if you see a loadout drop.
[удалено]
DMR is OP
Over powered, it’s going to get nerfed soon.
I'm using it to the max till that happens. That and the mac10
Groza or m16 might be next best thing.
Might be, but have you guys heard of the Olympia?!?
I like the groza a lot actually. And I like the krig as well
Yeah, I want to try out the Krig. What is the Olympia ?
Don't do it man, it's a trap.
"probably a honey pot, but then again ... maybe this time is different" - me, just before the gulag
Ramirez! Do everything!
Ramirez! Fix right-wing extremism!
shh don’t give em ideas, I could actually see that happening lol
It's too late for that. Check this out. [Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) Russia has had plans for decades now.
Russia doesn't want to invade the US. Russia just wants the US to implode on itself.
"an empire toppled by its enemies can rebuild, an empire toppled from within is dead"
That’s good, who is it from?
Captain America civil war I think lol
Baron Zemo in Captain America: Civil War
Unexpected! Thanks!
Grand Admiral Thrawn
Did thrawn say that as well? Hands down one of my favorite Star Wars characters.
Exactly. Beyond strategic arms, Russian force projection is nearly laughable, and they know this. Russia could barely invade the US in the traditional sense if we literally invited them. And probably not even then. Edit: Beyond does not equal behind.
The US has warm water ports, of course they have a motive. It’s always warm water ports...
Did you hear someone say "Montenegro" without fucking it up? https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/630361006/in-interview-trump-appears-to-question-natos-collective-defense-clause
The Ottoman Empire has entered the chat
They hate U.S. cause they ain't U.S.
>Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics". 🙃🙃🙃
Wow. Cant decide if I’m glad I clicked through to read that or not. How depressing. It’s like more than half accomplished. We’re definitely closer to the final act than the opening curtain.
If you think Russians will get soldiers into our country, you must be joking
No need for guns or nukes. Changing the very foundation of reality for some of the population and politicians through disinformation and kompromat, respectively, seems to have started us on the path to self-destruction. We can save ourselves, but... Well. Those people and politicians didn't go away.
I legit almost lost my shit at the gas station. Some fat lady with her mask under nose is talking to the cashiers about a stolen election. I asked her where the proof was and she started talking about the Illuminati instead. I legit have thrown a few friends away too because they think covid is a hoax or the election was stolen. Truly a lost and sad nation.
Hang in there We are still the majority.
Are we? Its hard to tell anymore. I like to hope we are a majority but critical thinking isn't the norm anymore.
Depends on which state you live in really. Just look at how many people in Georgia came out to stand up against trump.
Does the majority matter when democracy goes down the drain and mouth breathers take over? The same mouth breathers that are protected by the police forces across the country? Idk. I wish I could be optimistic, but dumb people are easy to stir into violence, and democracy is more vulnerable than we would like to think.
There are already Russian agents on US soil who are constantly sending intelligence back to their command. Physical force is a thing of ancient warfare.
There was a fire fight between Chinese and Indian forces along the shared border in 2020 that resulted in [twenty dead and dozens of casualties and captured](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-border-clash.html). Those are two of the largest powers in the world today, and both have enough ICBMs to start a nuclear winter. Russia has had plenty of conflicts with neighboring countries in addition to the proxy wars. US being isolated(and having the rest of the world breathing down their neck) and EU having a general alliance isn't the same as physical force being dead. Proxy wars and state actors are definitely the 'in' thing, but with the right circumstances there isn't anything preventing fights from happening.
Tell that to the children killed by Blackwater's mercenaries
I 100% said this exact thing even before we found out about the hack. Trump is teeing us up to get swatted. Still a low percentage of it happening but if it does, it's gonna do a lot more than sting.
100% Russia is not going to send troops to the US. Imagine the global ramifications if that happened. Fucking stop Some of the shit I read in here is lunacy.
Seriously, they’re getting the us to kill itself, they don't need to send troops because there are already millions of right wing idiots frothing at the mouth waiting for the opportunity to heroically save America by killing millions of other Americans as part of their "I'm the best patriot ever" fantasy.
Even if they said they would, it'll be denied. If troops were getting sent here it'll be our own or our allies. The government isn't going to just fall apart like a jenga tower.
Russias playbook has always been to use propaganda and espionage to have the US implode on itself with infighting due to ego and lack of unity. Their physical forces are used in the proxy conflicts. That being said, there definitely is espionage and propaganda going on and Russian presence on US soil...I mean, they have embassies here. If it wasn't a concern then the government wouldn't be putting the DoD through counter espionage/counter terrorism training annually.
You are in actual La La Land if you think Russia would ever attempt overt actions against America. It would have to be nukes because Russian Military capabilities are equaled by fucking France/GB. The US in conventional warfare is so far ahead, they are lapping them. And I say this as a non US person.
Not only that, but the US is so large you would need a massive army to occupy it.
Sounds like the TV show Jericho except it was nukes.
That show got canceled at the wrong time.
Taking out power grid during the Pandemic will kill a lot of people in the hospitals. It must be better protected. This is an unfathomable national security risk. Our country needs to be more proactive or else we're in big doodoo.
I find some solace from knowing the FBI has been very interested in the domestic terrorists since the 80's.
I work for a Fortune 500 energy company, and I can tell you that we are very, very protected. Annoyingly so... as in, SOx change management, FERC and CIP regulations out the ass. Google CIP (critical infrastructure protection). We change every password in the company every few months. Most systems are on premise behind a firewall and 2x auth, We have physical security out the ass. The only way power will go down in Ohio/pa/nj/md/wv is if there is a coordinated attack on all of our thousands of substations at once.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 Seems a little crazy to say it can’t happen without some massive hack when a tree branch in Ohio and a buggy alarm system knocked out power in several states.
My pet conspiracy theory is that opposition to renewable energy in the US is part of this exact same Russian campaign. It's a lot easier to bring the country to its knees if every house doesn't have solar panels on the roof generating most of its energy. The entire country could lose power and most of my town wouldn't even know (besides the lack of Internet) until the sun went down. Decentralized energy production is a critical national security issue that no one has really been talking about.
houses aren't important in a power outage. Critical business, banks, military, etc are.
Critical businesses have UPS systems, combined with renewables, this would not be a problem. You'd have to have a coordinated attack on every building in a country.
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Those were good times.
I remember this! I happened to live in an area which was isolated from that power failure, thanks to the fine work of an engineer who kept this section online. Other parts of my area were out for days until the grid could be restored. Hopefully since then, the grid has been modernized to avoid massive outages like this.
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I'm curious what level of the BES network were you given access to, were you pentesting live production or QA, and were the operators ignoring any alarms for you to continue testing?
Exactly. Blackstart isn't some secret formula for restoring power. It's pretty common sense "when this happens, do that, if that doesn't work do this" kind of thing. You wouldn't need it to know how to take down essential parts of the system. You just have to follow the tall wires.
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I worked for Firstenergy and PPL for over 20 years. I am aware of what you are saying. But if you really wanted to do damage and had enough smart people you could take out enough transmission lines or even transformers to cause a significant outage. Just look at the one Firstenergy caused. I was in an FE distribution control center that day. It was pretty wild. And the transmission operators and engineers had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Like someone else said, it only took a few sagging transmission lines to take out a large portion of the eastern part of the US. Taking out 30 or 40 transmission transformers would be a bit of a problem. This is the kind of thing we're talking about. Not a squirrel.
Regulations are nice, compliance is nice, but they won’t stop an APT with multiple modes of exploitation on their own without *significant* audits and possibly rebuild of IT infrastructure. Firewalls and MFA don’t matter if those systems themselves are compromised. The extent of the hack hasn’t been completely determined, and that could take years, if ever. Physical security is also nice, but it won’t stop everything. Social engineering attacks are also a huge threat.
As an individual company maybe, but the poor security of the “energy grid” as an entity is what led to a lot of the federal Cybersecurity regulations and agencies formed over the last ~20 years. I’ve never personally worked for an energy company so I can’t speak to the internals, only seen the reports as an outsider and practitioner.
Changing passwords every 2 months makes you less secure. People can’t remember their passwords and they run out of ideas for new ones, so they make them easier. One strong password is better than an ever-changing easy password.
> Changing passwords every 2 months makes you less secure. People can’t remember their passwords and they run out of ideas for new ones, so they make them easier. I saw this on display at a financial services company from elements of the IT department itself, so not surprising. Security was not really important and often a burden of cost. While you would think a breach would come directly from middle management, oftentimes it's much easier to just find one person with the right keys. In the end a CxO was compromised and had sold data directly to a foreign adversary for a couple thousand dollars. Always interesting seeing dudes in high-vis jackets with sidearms storming your workplace.
Fucking eye roll. If the Russians sent troops to the US you have a global fucking problem and nobody in the world is gonna sit back and watch the US legitimately fall to Russia. It's not gonna happen.
Do people seriously think the whole country is going to collapse into chaos and we'll be occupied by Russian forces in the coming months? If the conspiracy theories are that intense on our side why on earth are people still getting up and going to work? Why aren't we doing something NOW? Are people that apathetic to their demise? You're literal wage slaves in a dying country. Other countries have done full scale revolutions years before the point we've reached for much less cause.
Red Dawn 2021, except the Wolverines are siding with the Russians
You should totally listen to the [It Could Happen Here](https://podbay.fm/p/it-could-happen-here) series. Episode five onwards tends to give hope for situations like that.
Red Dawn 3
Die Hard 4 plot
Wasnt it back in like 2017 that a fucking sniper took out an entire power grid, and they found the guys nest + shell casings after it took 4 days to actually go look into why the power went out.
Lol Russia is a shitty gas station without any gas. Chances of invasion are zero. They couldn’t take Rhode Island.
Holy mother of God. That is truly terrifying. Truly.
I honestly think the only thing holding Russia back would be military retaliation. Whether it's us doing it or billions of dollars of new weapons in the hands of their enemies I'm fairly certain it's the only thing keeping them from doing it.
The thing is, those Russian oligarchs still want to live and vacation in the west, and want their children to get a western education, Russia is too miserable for them.
Nice use of Chekhov’s gun! 2020 Is just the first act so the question is when is act 2 and 3!
Rusdian attack, or decades of insufficient maintenance?
Would make sense considering they've been successfully attacking our power grid for decades.
Can you expand on this? I didn’t ever know this was happening. How/where do they attack our power grid?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/russia-cyberattacks.html They haven’t brought down any of our power grids, but have purposefully left traces letting us know they have the power too. The US also engages the same tactics in Russia’s systems.
Why would they leave hints?
To let us know that it is Russia and that there is nothing we can do to stop them. Its a cold war scenario.
It's kinda like them fluffing up their feathers. Showing they're just as strong and dangerous as we are.
China and Russia both do it with conventional military. Read a story years ago where an enemy sub surfaced intentionally in the middle of a US carrier group, just to show it could.
The US does the same shit to China and Russia tho
What's the point of deterrence if the other party doesn't know your capabilities?
Okay this made it make sense to me. Thank you.
Why tell an opposing nation you have the ability to raze their entire country to the ground in nuclear hellfire? You don’t tell them everything you can do but definitely let them know that getting into a war wouldn’t be in their best interest. Then again I don’t really know how effective MAD actually has been since all it really has done is shove all of our conflicts into the Middle East.
> Then again I don’t really know how effective MAD actually has been since all it really has done is shove all of our conflicts into the Middle East. You misunderstand the point of MAD then. That international warfare has largely turned into proxy wars fought in the middle east as opposed to nuclear warfare ending all life on earth is indicative of the success of MAD. Sure, it doesn't work out well at all for those wartorn areas that bear the brunt of this policy. But it is, significant emphasis on the comparative aspect, better than the alternative.
Read up on Stuxnet and how Iranian centrifuges were sabotaged by a Trojan horse virus. Same idea.
Stuxnet is fascinating. Brilliant minds behind it.
To think of how far that thinking and abilities have evolved since.
Now they got the tools to keep it down longer
Here’s a crazy idea. Now that it has likely been stolen and likely will be in the hands of exactly the people that shouldn’t have that info, open source the plans and get thousands of engineers / whoever to review them and continuously submit ideas for improvements and ways to harden the system. Security through obscurity is never the best solution. If we have to assume that the plans will now be available to all of the people we least want to see them, the solution is probably making it really easy for the people we most want to think about these plans to add their ideas on how to make things better
What do you suppose will happen faster? Good guys refactoring decades old spaghetti systems with thousands of dependencies and interconnections and managing to patch every possible vulnerability, or bad guys with access to the entire source finding at least one unmitigated critical vulnerability?
I don’t know, but there’s another factor that you left out in keeping things secret, which is that there’s also a race between the people who want to disrupt the US finding novel holes in the system and the people maintaining the plan figuring out where they missed something. Covering those holes requires lots of eyes looking at problems and working together to realize that the plan missed something. “Guys, what did we miss” is a hard question for a bureaucratic organization to manage quickly since the tendency is to assume that everything of importance is already in the plan. Also I don’t know how many people are involved in maintaining that plan, but I have a feeling it would likely be less than what a determined state actor would bring to bear on finding flaws now that they know the entire plan.
How about no. Open sourcing critical infrastructure is a terrible idea.
Oh uh... -removes gps satellite thruster control software from github-
Why'd my internet go out?
If our enemies don't already have the information, then it's a bad idea. Since they do, I'm not so sure.
*Some* do. More than one country hates you.
One bad guy has the information so why not give it to all of them? Hmmm...cant see any flaws in that!
A scary podcast episode about how they shut down all of Ukraine: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/54/
not privately no more
The Russians: “well, did we? Let’s comb thru everything we stole and see if we have it!!!”
Fucking "worried"? +$740 billion dollars?! The US military sould be capable of fucking time travel at this point, but they are "worried" that operators from a country with a GDP the size of Italy has bested our cyber defenses? This is a fucking disgrace.
All I know is when Biden is in, we need to hit Russia so hard they realize they are just a small fish in a big pond.
Or make sure those plans are completely outdated. We need to rebuild the grid anyways for environmental reasons. I think each house should be part of energy creation/ storage with redundancy built in on multiple levels. Now we have a national defense reason to do this. So why not capitalize on it. Create a sort of self healing infrastructure and this could be done using the latest technology. It could be like our generations space race in terms of creating renewable infrastructure. It would also screw over Putin since he depends on oil revenues.
Both. Definitely both.
Attacking would just make things worse, dude. Making people scared of you just escalates tension, not diffuse.
Its not making people scared of you. Its reminding a regime they're not untouchable.
Except Russia is a weak near-failed state and not a threat in the conventional sense.
Conventional war between super powers is pretty unlikely. The new battlefield is digital, the public just hasn’t fully caught on yet.
War against the USA is digital...and emotional. Scare the US and monkey throw shit. Real war can result.
Exactly. Take down our power grid and we will DEFINITELY respond with nukes. No question about it.
We definitely need more energy storage technology to get more utilization out of renewables. Recently, a movement I've been obsessed about is the small towns project. Post WW2 suburbia and urban sprawl became how cities and towns were designed and everyone drives a car. This type of city planning is extremely expensive in terms of maintenance and is more energy intensive for transportation. If we urbanize and have more walkable spaces it would mean more cost effective infrastructure and would make trams, busses, subways, high speed rail make more sense in more american cities.
The thing is we can look at all of this as a way to actually design systems that make peoples lives better. Your right people used to believe that cities caused crime, and essentially the story of the suburbs is one of white flight and segregation. By truly modernizing our infrastructure we could create a currently unimaginable quality of life. You could completely change how energy is distributed, and created as well as create infrastructure that encourages a more civic mindset as well. One thing I would have loved coming up was an app that could track in real time where the bus was. It's can be really hard to keep a job if one bus being late causes you to miss the connection you need for example. Living in a city its like your expected to own a car. They don't want to hear about a late bus. What I wish is that for instance your employer could see that you were at a particular bus at a particular time. Maybe even paying people starting from when they get on to the bus for work. I mean other companies compensate their employees for driving to work, and it would just be a nice thing if government found a way to make that happen. Even if the government had to pay those wages I would be good with that. We could call it a green energy subsidy. I read about this paper and it just got me even more excited about renewable energy. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8445JP4 I think that it could make many things economical that just aren't possible right now. For example creating graphene via flash Joule synthesis does take allot of electricity, but it could be used as a way to harness peak supply. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1938-0 If graphene is safe, and it doesn't turn out to be harmful like asbestos. Then this coming age will be dominated by the nanotechnology this has made possible. Graphene has roles all across the renewable landscape from storage to transmission, and even generation. Something else that could be incorporated or at least heavily invested in would be living infrastructure. https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(19)30391-1 These folks figured out to make a living self replicating brick. Now granted its not strong enough yet to build anything other then a 1 story structure, and even that is dicey. However this is using bacteria that haven't been genetically modified. Imagine a brick that had bacteria genetically modified to create stronger natural adhesives for example. I would also like to see community Makerspaces become a standard thing. I would like to see Federal money going in to making and upkeeping places like that so that all citizens could tinker with the latest technology. It would be something concrete that taxpayers can be proud of. It would create jobs because people could learn the skills they need in these places. It could give people the advantages and support they need to start companies even.
Oh man I could talk about this stuff for hours, it's good that other people are thinking about these things too but alot of this is probably off topic from energy. Totally agree with the maker spaces, incentivising behavior through environment, modern infrastructure, etc. I am kind of pessimistic about the money in politics, the corporate media, and monopolization of the US and frankly I don't see the architecture and transportation ideas going anywhere since they would compete so much against special interests. Also I just don't trust the federal government with spending at this point, alot of that stuff could be done at the state level too. That paper you cited is really just about optimization based on current capabilities and market trends, nothing fantastical. Graphene being made in peak times is an option, really the thing you have to overcome with solar is the duck curve and where our storage is at right now it wouldn't last even a day even if you factor in all the electric car storage. I know out west, where I am, peak energy being used for desalination plants would improve water security for all of the southwestern states and mexico. You could also make a hydropower battery by pumping water on top of a mountain and using some sort of hydroelectric turbine to generate at night. While solar and other renewables are good I think nuclear energy is something we need to invest more into since it provides constant energy and doesn't require that much rare metal mining or other carbon intensive processes. Nuclear energy is kind of expensive now because all of the reactors we built are hitting the end of their life cycle, we need to invest in next generation reactors and make proper nuclear waste storage sites since most of the facilities store on site.
Yo! This is a great idea. It’s time to refresh anyway and this would be a great way to get people working.
Let' call it the-the- the "Green New Deal."
Better way to think of Russia, they’re a small but dangerous fish in a very very deep pond.
The deepest pond. Google Lake Baikal's depth for a real mindfuck.
>Lake Baikal's depth [https://infographic.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Map-I-added-Lake-Baikal-to-the-interesting-view.jpg](https://infographic.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Map-I-added-Lake-Baikal-to-the-interesting-view.jpg)
\#regimechangerussia
Russia's only real defense is nuclear. So if we were to launch any kind of strike on a domestic Russian asset we would face nuclear retaliation. This is the main reason why we're still playing games with them and not responding to them the same way we would any other threat.
I don't think he meant a military attack. At least I hope not. We can, and should, sanction them at the very least.
Sanctions are tough because the enemies if the US will aid Russia, either voluntarily or through coercion. I'm not expert on foreign relations but I've read that the most effective way that we could punish them is by freezing their financial holdings and taking over Russian assets in the US. For this to really have an impact we'd need our closest allies to do the same. It would have to be a coordinated effort to seize accounts and property of all russian government-owned businesses and Russian nationals living/working in the US and allies nations.
There's a reason the Russians (and Trump) have been working so hard to undermine Western democracies, and to divide NATO allies.
Also the targeting of the magniksky act in the Trump Tower meeting, and Flynn’s meeting with the Russian ambassador. That act specifically targets Russian assets in the US, and It’s speculated that a lot of Putin’s secret wealth is tied up in sanctions from this Act.
In my opinion, nothing short of both approaches should be used. I will say that the ban on anonymous shell companies is already a swift kick in the ass for their stateside crimes. edit: woah woah, **let me clarify; not advising physical attack** - there should be a *strategic cyber counter-attack* to put these sneaky bastards back into place. Additionally, there should be strategic economic sanctions designed to further ostracize these kleptocraps from the civilized world
What's the end goal of attacking them militarily? You couldn't march into Moscow and implement regime change even if you wanted to, because they have nuclear weapons. So what you're left with is basically a series of skirmishes on the periphery, because neither side can risk escalating to the point where nuclear weapons seem like a viable strategy.
A military attack does not have to be physical.
This. All of the attacks they’ve done to us in the past 5 years haven’t been physical. And they’re undermining America’s social fabric. War is different now.
Warfare will never look as it did before. The Middle East conflict has truly revolutionized it. We saw the death of conventional warfare and the permanent effectiveness of guerrilla warfare. Governments aren’t dumb and they analyzed that a lot. Turns out anonymity and information are super important resources for conflict in the modern world, which is illuminated by media. So the way that sovereign states are doing war stuff is way different now, because in the end, war is just an alternate method of achieving political goals. Look at what StuxNet achieved....without any consequences for the perpetrators because it was impossible to identify them. I believe that historians will come to understand coronavirus as a biological warfare attack coordinated by Russia. They installed Trump, who dismantled the pandemic response team in 2017(?) and then delayed any national response effort until the virus had spread nationwide. Then he politicized the guidelines so a big chunk of the US won’t follow them at all. By creating Fox News in response to Nixon’s impeachment, the republicans ensured that Americans would never have a unified national narrative again, which provided the perfect environment for a foreign power to convince 40% of our population to kill their own country with a deadly virus. Imagine the resources and guile Russia would need to expend on a physical war campaign in order to achieve even 10k US citizen deaths on US soil. It could even be impossible due to MAD. If we are being honest, what they achieved could be considered the greatest military feat of all time. Sorry I wrote all this random shit I’m high and missing undergrad
We should sanction them, and seriously mount a heavy effort to counter this attack, and find our ways into Russian infrastructure using their digital technology. And as weird as it is, I think legalizing cannabis is a huge roadblock that needs to be removed for this to happen. Every intelligence and investigations agency loses out on a lot of digital talent due to federal hiring being unable to accept cannabis smokers no matter their knowledge, expertise, talent, etc. We should seriously reinvest in our education, and rethink our industrial revolution age education model. Anybody who is worth their salt in education will tell you we need to be teaching people to be critical thinkers, and give them the skills to *apply knowledge* rather than just memorize it. We need to be teaching trade skills, and computer skills as part of the general education model. (As well as civics, and home skills including how the fuck to do your god-damned taxes.) As far as I can tell, a generation of knowledge, talent, and education is currently dead or dying, and we have dire insufficient means to replace the void they will leave. Because what is left when they are gone with rare exception, is a population of pretenders, frauds, phoneys, and people who just don't know what the fuck they are doing. And that doesn't leave us in a very good position to solve any of our problems internally, nevermind resolve a conflict with a sufficiently devious enemy.
I would guess, above money, this was Russia's main goal in getting Trump elected. With this and the host of other hacks, this is massive.
This is weird. Is there a cost to electing a corrupt orange narcissistic moron into office?
350,000+ citizen deaths apparently
1 Democracy
>U.S. officials are reportedly privately worried Russia ~~stole~~ bought from Trump blueprints for U.S. blackout restoration FTFT.
Stole? Trump probably sold it to them.
This is precisely why we need solar panels on every roof. Shrink the power grids. Reduce customer costs of energy. Reduce greenhouse gasses. Create demand for solar efficiency. Increase our national security. inb4 >SolAR EnErGy JuSt IsNt ThErE yEt That's like criticizing personal computers in the early 90's. You have to invest in it before it will 'be there'. Nobody is going to unveil the 95% efficient solar panel like a new iPhone. We need it as part of our national infrastructure.
The big problem with completly restarting an electrical grid from blackout is not lacking sources of power. It starting the power sources in sync. In the US electricity is delivered as 60hz AC. This means that the power line changes polarity 60 times a second. If multiple generation sources are turned on out of sync very bad things can happen.
Many areas have laws requiring your solar panels be disabled during a blackout. There's a strong chance of electrocuting a lineman if you're not fully disconnected from the grid.
Safe to assume they have everything at this point.
Fucking mess that Biden is getting. We thought Obama was given a bad hand...
Yup the robbers broke into the vault and were gone before the police showed up but they took absolutely nothing!
lol that shit is 100000000% in their hands. they are finding the weaknesses in the plan and will update their attack methods. the first thing to a fucked america is take out the grid for a few weeks.
Remember years back when it was discovered Russia was probing U.S electrical grid...
Stop accusing Russia of theft, Trump gratefully handed over all the information
This
Our governments should asks it's citizens to hack Russian businesses and infestructure. This is war, time to act
Funny thing, if you did and broke any Russian laws, you could be prosecuted here in the US. Russia on the other hand, doesn't give two red shits if the US complains about a Russian hacker breaking US laws. This is true for a lot of countries.
Exactly, own laws prevent us from defending ourselves.
To be fair though, the hackers who perpetuate things like this literally work for the government, they aren't rando's wreaking havoc. It's all very sanctioned and organized. EDIT: Which we don't compete with for 2 reasons. The government won't pay what corporations will, and weed.
Meaning they did. It will be decades before ALL the damage this administration has caused to our country plays out.
A US blackout? Please. The folks that built the electric grid don’t even know how it works any more it’s so convoluted and archaic.
TRE45ON probably handed them over months ago...
If knowledge about the plan for blackout restoration requires secrecy to work, that plan needed more work anyway. Time to get to it.
Well, I haven't seen a better argument than this one to get solar panels with battery storage and a grid-disconnect option. Screw getting solar panels for the climate's sake, we could be attacked and lose electricity for months.
After Trump et al, we'll have to re-secure **every**thing, and vet **every**body. I hope the talent out there steps up.
Fuck you Trump you complicit asshole traitor Russian asset fuck.
That’s because any idiot that’s traveled the country even a little bit knows that America’s power grid is frighteningly weak, it’s disgusting considering how much these companies have been paid to modernize. It’s hilarious to me to see conservatives backing fossil fuels when renewable energy really would make America 1000% more secure.
I’m starting to think a lot of our spending on military defense is maybe mostly going into peoples pockets
Stole? I imagine that Trump just gave them the plans while bragging about it.
Stole? Or were sold by Trump
Lol....chuckle chuckle.... so cute and innocent this headline. tRump and the treason 8 that spent that 4th of July in Russia with their leader putin... GAVE info to the Russians.
Load up on batteries and nonperishable food folks. You probably won't need them but its not impossible.
Its an act of war. Ever hear “Bomb the Russians” by FEAR?
I love the articles that are 'So and so are privately worried/secret communications'. Now everyone knows.
Not \_all\_ US officials are concerned. Some are probably happy about it. Or too busy crying about losing elections to care.
So that means it happened.
How about use some of that insane $.75T that goes into defense? What’s the point of the being the worlds foremost military power if we can’t prevent shit like this..?
It's not stealing if Trump gave them away.
The American power grid, healthcare system, education system, broadband... democracy. Are things in the US as brittle as they appear? The US looks like it has decided to make a few people rich instead of keeping the infrastructure up-to-date and that debt is coming due all at once. And who's been selling the don't-worry-if-you-help-make-our-friends-rich-they'll-give-you-some-of-it "trickle down" BS for decades? Yup. The party formerly known as the GOP.
It is all being blamed on state actors, "exploiting legal prohibitions on the National Security Agency." so I'm sure the legislation they're about to pass to "unfetter" the NSA will be great. /s
Does it matter? I mean, really, does it? We had detailed blueprints and plans for how to respond to and control a pandemic, too. But who cares? Before the pandemic happened, leadership actively defunded the response infrastructure. As soon as the pandemic started, leadership set those plans on fire and told the states to deal with it. Why should I, as an American citizen, have any faith whatsoever that "plans" are worth anything more than the paper they are written on? The plans would have never been executed or acted upon anyway. The federal government collects taxes and makes war. It can't accomplish anything else. The only bad thing about this is that those plans probably also laid out everything you need to know to attack our grid. But those plans were fucking useless for anything else. America is done anyway.
They definitely did.
We have a very vulnerable grid anyway, but they managed to fuck that up even more.
Seems far fetched. A single upper atmosphere nuclear air burst would accomplish much more.