When Smart is Stupid
by Miki Saxon
Do ads for smart stuff excite you?
Do you lust for a smart refrigerator, smart doorbell or some other smart product?
Do you want a smart home?
What about a smart city?
We already have a smart electric grid.
What do they all have in common?
They can be hacked.
It’s something to think about.
Smart = hackable.
Hacking a personally owned smart device is bad, but it pales in comparison to what happens if (when) the grid is hacked, whether by a foreign power or civilians for ransom.
Ukraine’s power was hacked in 2015, but old technology saved it from a far worse outcome.
A bill introduced in 2016 has been working its way through the US Congress. It would require similar old tech for US power grids. The bill provides a study period, so it will be 2020 before anything actually happens.
The old tech is actually the only solution that is immune to cyber/digital attacks of any kind.
Can you guess what it is?
If you guessed analog/manual/human give yourself a gold star. If you are under 40 you get five gold stars.
“Specifically, it will examine ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies, like manual procedures controlled by human operators,” said US Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), who introduced the bill on the Senate floor in 2016. (…) The US is very close to improving power grid security by mandating the use of “retro” (analog, manual) technologies on US power grids as a defensive measure against foreign cyber-attacks that could bring down power distribution as a result.
Are you surprised? I’m not.
I always thought hooking the power grid up to the hackable internet was a dumb idea.
Kind of like locking your house and then taping spare keys to the doorframes.
Now we’ll spend millions on these “improvements.”
Stupidity really does rule.
Image credit: Midnight Believer
