I watched an hour-long presentation on the collapse of empires. In their heyday their currency is strong, and they have massive public projects. As they age, they debase the currency. They can no longer afford to maintain the projects they already have. Also, they develop substantial complexity. Initially, adding complexity, like processes, procedures, and laws enhance the entire economy. But in an effort to maximize things, they go overboard with complexity. An example was the number of compliance requirements in 1950 for things like dams and powerplants. Compared with today, just the environmental regs can run into hundreds of thousands of pages, up about 1,000 percent. I’m afraid we’re on the wrong side of the decline curve.
Oh, did I mention 31 trillion in debt and a debased currency?
The age old question: Why are utility controls connected to public networks?
In 1995, I ran a small program on critical infrastructure security for electric utilities. THIRTY YEARS ago. A lot of our efforts were focused on keeping the power on with the upcoming Y2K, but much effort was focused on protecting SCADA systems and open modems at substations. I left the industry a few years later and I’m constantly reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the same old recycled stories about cyber threats to critical infrastructure.
It’s truly crazy. They have spent BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars on the NSA but they can’t keep our infrastructure safe. The only thing they can seem to do is crack down on racism, anti-semitism and mis and disinformation online.
They have spent 20 Trillion dollars on defense in the past 30 years yet we can’t even beat the toughest 3rd world / weakest 1st world country (depending on how you rank it).
This is a disgrace.