Cyber-vulnerabilities Must Be Corrected Not Concealed

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Today’s Washington Free Beacon reveals a dangerous deception. In reports to federal regulators, an electric utilities group has repeatedly downplayed the danger of cyber warfare against America’s most critical infrastructure: the electric “grid.”

The Free Beacon notes that U.S. Cyber Command is starting this week a month-long exercise to test the grid’s vulnerability to “the growing threat” of computer-driven disruptions. Yet, the industry’s North American Electric Reliability Corporation claims the grid experienced no “cyber security incidents” in 2015. In recent congressional testimony and USA Today, its spokesman has insisted that everything is under control.

The unpleasant truth is that the things the utilities assert are protecting us from possibly widespread and protracted cyber-driven blackouts are actually only protecting them from liability for the devastation that will likely occur.

That’s not just deceptive. It’s intolerable.

This is Frank Gaffney.