Lights Out
by
Ted Koppel
a review by Jansen Estrup
Cyber attacks are very much in the news (the real news) these days, and it it is not only social media that is in peril. It is our elections, water, sanitation, physical infrastrucure-everything from energy grids (including nuclear) to communications networks. We are, according to Koppel and many knowledgeable government and former authoritiies, extremely vulnurable and not doing very much to catch up.
Given the disarray of the current regime, we may very well be cringing backward and wishing for some supernatural intervention instead of Russian or North Korean.
Koppel's book covers threats ranging from direct millitary (small unit) action to EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) bombs to secret undetectable sabotage, all of which will leave you, your family and neighborhood in the dark and your food rotting in the powerless refrigerator.
March of 2018 DoD and Intelligence press releases reveal that the USA has been under these kind of probing attacks for more than two years and that the President has not even given orders to develop defenses against our enemies, let alone authorization to deploy them. Seems likely he never will.
Neither does corporate America assume leadership, the two entities squabling over rights and funding at the treasure trough.
And those of us who thought ahead to renewable energy sources to avoid the regular networks won't fair much better, but at east we'll be able to read a book, if we stocked any sort of library. On the other hand, isn't that light the sort of beacon in the dark which attracts plunderers, rapists, pirates and other American (forget Russian) adventurers?
It is too late to learn to grow a garden or repair your boots, which are doomed to wear out during the long trudge to whatever work might be available.
Koppel is pretty thorough detailing the problems, but not very encouraging when outlining prospects for successful security.
Maybe the gun-buffs are right, that sitting in the dark with an AR-15 on one knee an infant on the other is the way we'll go down …
...With a bang, bang. bang … and a waaaa.
But Koppel and I differ in our outlook. I line up with Obama when he said that we could easily "absorb" another 9/11. Calamities and disasters are happening all the time. Cyber warfare is just a new twist to all the other man-made threats that have accumulated over 10,000 years of warfare and mayhem that we seem to enjoy and want to continue with huge "defense" forces and equipment. The facts show that individual danger is much less than it was 100 years ago and declining every year. We just reported it more and faster, like it's happening to us.
However, I love writing apocalyptic scenarios. I'm serializing The Last Wanderer here, showing that food would be harder to get after everything rotted in your refrigerators/freezers than worrying about wearing out your shoes.
A good review of a useful book. Thanks. Keep up the good work
Ron