I confess I know little about our computer systems, but the time to try to see that our “EVERYTHING” isnt all linked up, is long gone. Anything that has been built in the last several decades, is run on computer systems. Of course, most modern inventions wouldn’t be possible without them, but the protestations of we luddites fell on deaf ears. There is no way to operate most of what we have, without computers communicating with each other.
Now they tell us that, basically, ANYTHING can be hacked. As I said, I don’t know much, but if all that hardware China, Russia, and other bad actors have been lobbing into space for years, isn’t put there to work against us, and other western nations, I would be very much surprised. How much defensive equipment we’ve sent up, ourselves, I’m sure I don’t know, but I’ll bet we didn’t do much to protect ourselves during the Obama administration.
Big brother has been here for a long time.
Now! Who wants one of those hot new security systems in their homes, which connects everything we own, everything we do, and everything we say, all up together? (Unfortunately, plenty of people do). There’s an app for that!
Pray without ceasing.
“I confess I know little about our computer systems, but the time to try to see that our “EVERYTHING” isnt all linked up, is long gone. Anything that has been built in the last several decades, is run on computer systems.”
That IS NOT THE POINT. Even our utility companies and operators of the grid have been using computers for decades.
What is new, and I think (I use to be an IT director), is their operational external linking of those systems to the Internet, which is how the hacking occurs.
IT IS NOT operationally necessary for them to do that, except that they have done it and don’t want to undo it.
Instead they will pretend they can “harden” those external connections to “prevent” cyber attacks. They can’t and they won’t. It has been proven time and again that ALL they can do is “improve” them but where there is will to break in, it will happen, sooner or later.
The change to undo those external connections will be far easier than the chanegs they made to create them. But it will require hiring more people, because operations sites and equipment will not be able to be controlled REMOTELY from some communications center hundreds of miles away. The site/location of that ewquipment will (as it did before) control persons directly in charge of a system/equipment, and they, using systems ONLY connected to the equipment on that site, will institute any control command/changes requested from a higher authority in the system.
Current methods which “control” electric equipnent:
One man presses a key, and in seconds some equipment hundreds of miles away has new operational instructions, via the hackable telecom grid.
How it was an can be:
One man presses a key, and in seconds another man sitting at the controls of some equipment hundreds of miles away has new operational instructions for some equipment at his sight. Using another, a differwent totollay local system that connects only to the equipment at that site, five seconds later he hits a key on that separate system to cause the requested change.
All that “automation” has done in millions of instances is just increase our vulnerabilities, and ditched millions of jobs that use to keep us more secure.
Before, an enemy had to subvert the people working in our electric grid systems, in order to create a vulnerability in them. Now a hacker sitting in Tehran or North Korea, a single person, can do it all by themself. THAT is not “better” and it was not “necesary”. Simply because computers and the Internet exist, does not put them in charge, does not mandate our stupidity to use them in ways that makes us more vulnerable.