The Washington Post reported that “Since at least March 2016… Russian hackers have ‘targeted U.S. government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.’”  The March 16, 2018 report entitled “Why Russian hackers aren’t poised to plunge the United States into darkness” includes this natural question “How serious is this hacking? :

The idea of Russian hackers having access to the control switches of America’s power infrastructure is particularly unnerving, raising the idea of waking up one morning to learn that the United States has simply been switched off.

The article also included these comments from several experts:

…explained that this is not only oversimplistic but also that it is almost certainly impossible.

The effects of infiltration of America’s power grid would be much more geographically limited thanks to the distributed, redundant nature of the system.

This all seems pretty frightening that a foreign government could take control of the power infrastructure in the US!  Something we should keep an eye on!

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