Cyberattack

A large scale cyberattack on North America is very likely according to Investigative journalist Ted Koppel. A crippling first strike can be fought with laptops instead of large armies. The electrical grid requires constant Internet communication to carefully balance generation vs. demand. The same Programmable Logic Controllers that were infected with the Stuxnet virus damaging Iran centrifuges are used to control electric generators and power distribution. However, you probably didn’t hear that ~1000 power plants in the USA and Europe were infected with a Russian virus in 2014. “Dragonfly” just seemed to be just waiting for a command to execute something. Grid security is as strong as the lower common denominator. Deregulation has allowed many small companies to provide power who can’t afford cyber security the big companies used to provide.