Dont Panic

Cyber Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 2 of 5)

An EMP attack is far from the only way of wreaking havoc on America’s infrastructure or blacking out our power grid. Cyber-attacks through the internet, for example, are a new and growing danger to our nation’s most sensitive government, military and financial operations.

Many experts worry that they could shut down our nation’s financial system, locking up bank accounts, freezing credit cards, and putting our economy into a tailspin.

Worse, according to 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the danger of cyber terror is even more immediate and deadly. “Hackers can threaten the control systems of critical facilities like dams, water treatment plants, and the power grid.” Being able to remotely control a dam, pumping station or oil pipeline could unleash large-scale devastation.

Terrorists could deliver a knockout punch with more conventional means as well. Last year, in what was called “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred,” unknown individuals used rifles to disable 17 electrical transformers near San Jose, Calif.

It took technicians almost a month to get the facility back online, and that was just one substation. What if terrorists did the same thing in coordinated attacks all across the country? According to Wellinghoff, they could disable the grid and black out much of the United States.

Whether it’s through an EMP, a massive cyber-attack, another 9/11, or just isolated sprees of murder and mayhem, military and homeland security officials agree it’s just a matter of time before the U.S. faces some kind of terrorist attack.

It might be along the lines of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, where terrorists launched a dozen coordinated attacks, gunning down innocent victims at hotels, a bar, a train station, a hospital, and a movie theater. In all, they killed 164 innocent people.

Or it might be like the attack on Westgate Mall in Kenya last year. Four armed terrorists linked to al Qaeda were able, thanks to Kenya’s strict anti-gun laws, to spend four days torturing, mutilating and gunning down shoppers with almost no fear of reprisal. They killed 63 innocent people and wounded 175 more before they were stopped.

So ask yourself: Could suicidal terrorist mass murderers try to bomb an American hotel, an American train station, shopping mall or movie theater? Don’t think that a group of terrorists aren’t smart enough to pull it off, eventually, or that a single determined person with an agenda isn’t going to be successful.