The powers that be, up and down the line from the President of Con Ed to the President of the United States, were suspiciously quick to declare that there was no evidence or possibility of terrorism involved in the great blackout of ’03.
How can they be so sure? The only evidence I have heard to support this assertion is the absence of bomb debris. While I understand the need to reassure an easily-spooked public, is a declaration like this in the best interest of the nation? If they aren’t even sure how the damn thing started, how can they say categorically that it wasn’t sabotage at least, if not international terrorism?
How many of those power plants utilized PCs running Windows as part of their IT infrastructure? How hard is it to imagine that some of those computers were compromised? Given the age and poor maintenance of the system, is it so hard to imagine that a disgruntled employee or ex-employee with an agenda and hacking skill or allies could come up with a scheme to trick the system into overloading?
How could it have been an accident? Wouldn’t all that redundancy and disaster planning insure that the fail safes would work UNLESS someone who understood HOW they work did something to circumvent them?
With such abundant evidence of government and corporate incompetence coming to light every day, is it hard to imagine a group of smart hackers figuring out how to make this happen? And finally, if we can’t even figure out how or why it happened, how can we possibly insure that it won’t happen again?
I tend to think that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, it’s important to say right away that there is no evidence of terrorism. Not saying anything implies that there IS evidence.
Denying the “possibility” of terrorism, however, is irresponsible. Did people do that? (I’m not sure… I live in Beijing, and haven’t been following the news that closely.)
What makes me think that the blackout probably wasn’t due to terrorism is the absence of attacks coordinated with the blackout. A lot of people were pretty helpless–on subways, etc., and could have been taken advantage of rather easily.
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