MSP53 [] The Fragile Earth

A combination of natural disasters and cyber-attacks has shown how fragile our way of life is. Are we heading for chaos? Or will the better side of human nature prevail?

Links:
https://www.wired.com/story/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-recovery/
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/a-year-in-the-dark/


Episode Excerpt:

Episode Transcript

These shows are dictated to and transcribed by machines, and hurriedly edited by a human. Apologies for the minor typos and grammar flaws.

Recent natural disasters have started to show how delicate the web of technology that holds the world together actually is, reckons Kulturpop’s Matt Armitage. But what if those natural disasters were followed up by cyberattacks from a hostile nation? On that happy note, it’s time to ask Matt to explain.

Where are we starting, natural disasters or cyber-attacks?
•This is one of those weeks where a bunch of stuff comes together.
•Listened to a recent episode of the 99% invisible podcast earlier this week which focused on Puerto Rico’s electricity grid.
•I know that might not sound fascinating, but it was.
•The podcast is adapted from a longform article in wired magazine about the year long struggle to get Puerto Rico’s electricity grid back online after Hurricane Maria last year.
•We’re facing increasing numbers of extreme weather events and natural disasters. The recent earthquake in Indonesia. Flooding in Italy, which affected your recent trip, to name some of what’s happening.

Is it climate change?
•Honestly, I don’t want to bang that drum.
•I think it is but that’s not the purpose of the podcast.
•So I don’t want people to switch off because they don’t believe my take on things.
•Today is about our infrastructure and how delicate it is and how we take so much for granted.

Let’s start with Puerto Rico
•Ok. We’ve heard a lot over the past couple of years about how easy it has been to hack into electricity grids and other critical infrastructure projects.
•Now, it is perfectly possible to imagine parts of a grid being ruined. Turbines in a power plant being run in a way that might physically damage them, that kind of thing.
•But most plant has physical overrides. You could potentially send surges down individual lines that might damage them or upset substations downline.
•But from what I understand, most hacking of these systems is for short terms disruption. Days, weeks, months if they get really lucky.

It’s the command and control mechanisms rather than the infrastructure itself?
•Exactly. It isn’t bringing the towers or the cables down.
•Water pipes aren’t collapsing.
•But weather events are causing that kind of damage.
•So we’re seeing this non-fortuitous convergence of conditions.
•At a time when we’re increasingly putting these systems online and trusting them to automated control systems…
•We’re in this situation of growing geopolitical uncertainty where countries are increasingly prepared to meddle in one another’s affairs
•And the planet is having its own series of wobbles in terms of extreme weather events and natural disasters.