If a nation wants to go to war with the US … this is how they do it, they just shut down one, two or all of these systems down and watch the country go crazy. It wouldn’t destroy the country, just disrupt it enough to make them go nuts and then do more things to them in other ways.
It’s amazing when you think about it, first the US invested in heavily defending and arming itself in the 60s, 70s and 80s … then it spent billions more in the 90s and 2000s to try to come up with ever more inventive ways to screw itself from the inside.
No. Everyone always focuses on the flashy stuff like datacenters but the truth is that the most vulnerable, overtaxed, and underfunded weak-spot for the United States is the electric grid.
Yup. Most of our core electrical infrastructure is over 100 years old now. And thanks to a combination of NIMBYism, profiteering, and the anti-nuclear brigades, we’re not likely to see that change any time soon.
If the way someone goes to war with the US is by freeing us from the overly-centralized landlords of the Internet, maybe whoever they are isn’t so bad.
If a nation wants to go to war with the US … this is how they do it, they just shut down one, two or all of these systems down and watch the country go crazy. It wouldn’t destroy the country, just disrupt it enough to make them go nuts and then do more things to them in other ways.
It’s amazing when you think about it, first the US invested in heavily defending and arming itself in the 60s, 70s and 80s … then it spent billions more in the 90s and 2000s to try to come up with ever more inventive ways to screw itself from the inside.
No. Everyone always focuses on the flashy stuff like datacenters but the truth is that the most vulnerable, overtaxed, and underfunded weak-spot for the United States is the electric grid.
Yup. Most of our core electrical infrastructure is over 100 years old now. And thanks to a combination of NIMBYism, profiteering, and the anti-nuclear brigades, we’re not likely to see that change any time soon.
I’m pretty convinced that if we did have a complete grid failure, we wouldn’t be able to complete a cold start.
Too many people would be pushing for their section to be started first so they could short the market first.
Edit: my proofreading sucks
To be pedantic for a sec, the term is black start. Just cause I think it’s super dystopian sounding.
Doesn’t matter who wants want, the power company has contingency plans and those plans are what is happening.
SOURCE: Worked for Cox after a major ice storm smashed north-central Oklahoma flat. Lived Hurricane Ivan and saw their rollout priorities.
The American dream
Note to self: Sabotage the US’ electric grid.
Which in turn would take down the datacenters too, so same effect, just more severe
Most data centers are backed up by generators.
… that run on fuel for a limited time … once the fuel runs out, the data centres go down
Need to transport more fuel there? Can’t because the entire system is down.
All*
And UPSs.
I feel like you got it backwards. Letting them run is doing more damage than turning them off would.
If the way someone goes to war with the US is by freeing us from the overly-centralized landlords of the Internet, maybe whoever they are isn’t so bad.