Suddenly, the lights go out. So does the heat. It's not a localized disruption – all of DC is down. So are New York, Denver, and parts of Hawaii and Texas. It lasts for hours, then days. It becomes clear this was intentional, a massive cyber-attack by China. Businesses can't function. Wall Street halts trading. Mass looting breaks out. Societal panic sets in.
While the scenario may sound extreme, the threat is very real. Many across the defense and national security community and pockets of private industry use shorthand to refer to it: Volt Typhoon (VT). It is the name of a Chinese hacking group tasked with sabotaging U.S. critical infrastructure to keep America distracted and cowed during a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan. The scenario is changing how members of both the government and private sector think about war, energy, and their respective roles maintaining a safe, secure, and economically prosperous United States.
A catastrophic VT attack is still hypothetical, but its precursors are all too real. During Russia's three-year war in Ukraine, we've witnessed repeated cyberattacks on civilian energy infrastructure, often coordinated with missile strikes to maximize impact on the Ukrainian populace. Here at home, the Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack of 2021 provided a tiny preview of what VT could look like. Spikes in gas prices. Fuel shortages up and down the east coast. Bubbling alarm.
As VT and similar destructive cyber operations have become increasingly central to our adversaries' theories of military victory against the United States, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) – in concert with civilian agencies – must take on a larger role to protect energy infrastructure here in the homeland.
Modern Warfare Pushes DoD into New Territory
The emerging challenge for DoD is stated clearly in a little-known August 2024 Defense Science Board (DSB) report on the DoD's dependencies on critical infrastructure. The report notes that military installations in the homeland – which would be used to project power out to the front in the event of a war with China – rely in many cases on civilian power.
As a result, any interruption of that power supply, say via a cyber-attack on the privately owned utility or gas pipeline, would have direct impacts on the DoD's ability to mobilize forces. In contemplating a VT scenario's impact on the U.S. military, the report states, "Significant disruptions in force projection infrastructure most certainly will doom a 'short war.' But a 'long war' is equally fraught—persistent attacks on infrastructure could sap the nation's will to fight."
The DSB report makes several recommendations, including that the DoD stand up a permanent mission infrastructure resilience organization, which "is structured and resourced to support long-term partnerships across key sectors in the interagency and with civilian infrastructure owners." The report envisions this new permanent DoD entity would play a major role in mitigating the risks to DoD of an adversarial attack on civilian energy infrastructure (as well as transportation, communications, water, and other critical infrastructure) through ongoing analysis, intelligence and threat assessment, and gaming and exercises.
1 comment:
"Water", no water to fight the Pacific Palisades fire. Not China but the city of Los Angeles and the state of California did these people in.
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