Pentagon: Energy Grid Open to Cyberattack
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American infrastructure including the energy grid will remain vulnerable to cyber attacks from China and Russia for at least the next decade, according to a recent Pentagon report.
The cyber vulnerabilities must be reduced while the Pentagon creates new deterrence capabilities ranging from low-level disruption to “catastrophic destruction and loss of life,” according to a report by a Defense Science Board task force.
The report, called “Task Force on Cyber Deterrence,” is based on a two-year study by a panel of defense and military experts and focuses on four countries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, notes the Washington Free Beacon.
“The unfortunate reality is that, for at least the coming five to ten years, the offensive cyber capabilities of our most capable potential adversaries are likely to far exceed the United States’ ability to defend and adequately strengthen the resilience of its critical infrastructures,” the report said.
“The United States, as well as our allies and partners, are at serious and increasing risk of severe cyber attack and increasingly costly cyber intrusion,” the report continues. “The requirement for enhanced deterrence is, in our view, not debatable. Nor is the need to accelerate the implementation of deterrence measures.”
The report adds that even if preventive measures are taken, it still won’t be able to prevent sophisticated attacks from China and Russia because “improvements are not on a pace to reduce risks to acceptable levels within the next decade.”
“Such progress will not be adequate to deny Russia and China’s ability to unleash catastrophic cyber attacks on the United States, given their massive resources, and capabilities-at-scale (e.g., intelligence apparatus, ability to influence supply chains, and ability to introduce and sustain vulnerabilities) to dedicate to their objectives,” the report concludes.
China was found to have hacked the Pentagon last year, as well as the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) in 2010.
Despite the narrative that Russia hacked the 2016 U.S. election, there’s still no evidence that Russia had penetrated voting systems, as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that “they did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort.”