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Thread: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

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    United States Avalon Member Mandala's Avatar
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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    I believe we have been looking for FEMA drills, but the coordinator is NERC. It's code name is Friday Ex II.

    WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.

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    This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid.

    They will practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever seen, and more than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to participate.

    “This is different from a hurricane that hits X, Y and Z counties in the Southeast and they have a loss of power for three or four days,” said the official in charge of the drill, Brian M. Harrell of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as NERC. “We really want to go beyond that.”

    One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities.

    “If we fail at electricity, we’re going to fail miserably,” Curt Hébert, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a recent conference held by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    Mr. Harrell said that previous exercises were based on the expectation that electricity “would be up and running relatively quick” after an attack.

    Now, he said, the goal is to “educate the federal government on what their expectations should or shouldn’t be.” The industry held a smaller exercise two years ago in which 75 utilities, companies and agencies participated, but this one will be vastly expanded and will be carried out in a more anxious mood.

    Most of the participants will join the exercise from their workplaces, with NERC, in Washington, announcing successive failures. One example, organizers say, is a substation break-in that officials initially think is an attempt to steal copper. But instead, the intruder uses a USB drive to upload a virus into a computer network.

    The drill is part of a give-and-take in the past few years between the government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing the electric system.

    The grid is essential for almost everything, but it is mostly controlled by investor-owned companies or municipal or regional agencies. Ninety-nine percent of military facilities rely on commercial power, according to the White House.

    The utilities play down their abilities, in comparison with the government’s. “They have the intelligence operation, the standing army, the three-letter agencies,” said Scott Aaronson, senior director of national security policy at the Edison Electric Institute, the trade association of investor-owned utilities. “We have the grid operations expertise.”

    That expertise involves running 5,800 major power plants and 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, monitored and controlled by a staggering mix of devices installed over decades. Some utilities use their own antique computer protocols and are probably safe from hacking — what the industry calls “security through obscurity.”

    But others rely on Windows-based control systems that are common to many industries. Some of them run on in-house networks, but computer security experts say they are not confident that all the connections to the public Internet have been discovered and secured. Many may be vulnerable to software — known as malware — that can disable the systems or destroy their ability to communicate, leaving their human operators blind about the positions of switches, the flows of current and other critical parameters. Experts say a sophisticated hacker could also damage hard-to-replace equipment.

    In an effort to draw utilities and the government closer, the industry recently established the Electricity Sub-Sector Coordinating Council, made up of high-level executives, to meet with federal officials. The first session is next month.

    Preparation for the November drill comes as Congress is debating laws that could impose new standards to protect the grid from cyberattacks, but many in the industry, some of whom would like such rules, doubt that they can pass.

    The drill is also being planned as conferences, studies and even works of fiction are raising near-apocalyptic visions of catastrophes involving the grid.

    A National Academy of Sciences report last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying crucial components.

    An attack using an electromagnetic pulse is laid out in extensive detail in the novel “One Second After,” published in 2009 and endorsed by Newt Gingrich. In another novel, “Gridlock,” published this summer and co-written by Byron L. Dorgan, the former senator from North Dakota, a rogue Russian agent working for Venezuela and Iran helps hackers threaten the grid. In the preface, Mr. Dorgan says such an attack could cause 10,000 times as much devastation as the terrorists’ strikes on Sept. 11, 2001.

    Despite the growing anxiety, the government and the private sector have had trouble coordinating their grid protection efforts. The utility industry argues that the government has extensive information on threats but keeps it classified. Government officials concede the problem, and they have suggested that some utility executives get security clearances. But with hundreds of utilities and thousands of executives, it cannot issue such clearances fast enough. And the industry would like to be instantly warned when the government identifies Internet servers that are known to be sources of malware.

    Another problem is that the electric system is so tightly integrated that a collapse in one spot, whether by error or intent, can set off a cascade, as happened in August 2003, when a power failure took a few moments to spread from Detroit to New York.

    Sometimes utility engineers and law enforcement officials also seem to speak different languages. In his book “Protecting Industrial Control Systems From Electronic Threats,” Joseph Weiss, an engineer and cybersecurity expert, recounted a meeting between electrical engineers and the F.B.I. in 2008. When an F.B.I. official spoke at length about I.E.D.’s, he was referring to improvised explosive devices, but to the engineers the abbreviation meant intelligent electronic devices.

    And experts fear government-sponsored hacking. Michael V. Hayden, another former C.I.A. director, speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center conference, said that the Stuxnet virus, which disabled some of Iran’s centrifuges for enriching uranium, might invite retaliation.

    “In a time of peace, someone just used a cyberweapon to destroy another nation’s critical infrastructure,” he said. “Ouch.”
    With Peace and Love, Mandala
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    United States Avalon Member Mandala's Avatar
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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/CIPOutreach/Pages/GridEX.aspx

    The announcement sounds like a typical training exercise.
    With Peace and Love, Mandala
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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Quote Posted by Mandala (here)
    http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/CIPOutreach/Pages/GridEX.aspx

    The announcement sounds like a typical training exercise.
    Yes, and the main word here seems cyber security ...
    I don't see any mention of 'From Canada to Mexico' either.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    I know how you feel Mandala, I mean as I sort of internally cringe at the words "mainstream" I too felt I needed some news other than supposed leaks by FEMA employees. I wanted to see if they were actually letting people know about this grid shutdown. What I found funny was, in the article they don't mention the dates..at least I don't remember them mentioning those dates.

    Well, it's going to be an interesting month between october and november, I guess we will have to just wait and see what happens.

    I'm going to at least get some extra candles, make sure I have enough water and some groceries,..not get too crazy with preparedness, but at least have some stuff that anyone should have if they are dealing with a power outage.

    Thanks again!

    Quote Posted by Mandala (here)
    Ruthy, you just posted what I was looking for. A NY Times Post, ( mainstream media), about this drill. Thanks.


    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    It was in the article, you have to read the whole thing...no cheating! don't skim!! It was there, because I was searching for those words and was actually shocked they said it in this article...I will see if I can find it and post it here in a quote or try to direct you to it.

    Quote Posted by Operator (here)
    Quote Posted by Mandala (here)
    http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/CIPOutreach/Pages/GridEX.aspx

    The announcement sounds like a typical training exercise.
    Yes, and the main word here seems cyber security ...
    I don't see any mention of 'From Canada to Mexico' either.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Operator....IT's a two page article on the NYTimes..so I think the link I gave sent you to page 2, if you scroll to the bottom of that page it will show you the link to go back to the first page of the article. On PAGE 1 paragraph 2 it says and I quote...."This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid".

    NOW on page 2 is where it talks about EMP threats caused by the Sun or by a detonated device by a terrorist. here is the quote for that so there is no confusion again. "The drill is also being planned as conferences, studies and even works of fiction are raising near-apocalyptic visions of catastrophes involving the grid.

    A National Academy of Sciences report last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying crucial components.


    So there you have it...it clearly stated the US MEXICO and CANADA and it also stated the threat not only by a cyber threat but also some natural occuring EMP from the SUN or by a device.

    Adios

    Quote Posted by Operator (here)
    Quote Posted by Mandala (here)
    http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/CIPOutreach/Pages/GridEX.aspx

    The announcement sounds like a typical training exercise.
    Yes, and the main word here seems cyber security ...
    I don't see any mention of 'From Canada to Mexico' either.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    I posted a thread on this around 2 weeks ago. Could this be merged?
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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Quote Posted by Positive Vibe Merchant (here)
    I posted a thread on this around 2 weeks ago. Could this be merged?
    I merged the threads, and also "merged" the thread titles to a more informative "US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013"
    Last edited by ThePythonicCow; 16th September 2013 at 01:16.
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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Quote Posted by ruthy (here)
    Operator....IT's a two page article on the NYTimes..so I think the link I gave sent you to page 2, if you scroll to the bottom of that page it will show you the link to go back to the first page of the article. On PAGE 1 paragraph 2 it says and I quote...."This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid".

    NOW on page 2 is where it talks about EMP threats caused by the Sun or by a detonated device by a terrorist. here is the quote for that so there is no confusion again. "The drill is also being planned as conferences, studies and even works of fiction are raising near-apocalyptic visions of catastrophes involving the grid.

    A National Academy of Sciences report last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying crucial components.


    So there you have it...it clearly stated the US MEXICO and CANADA and it also stated the threat not only by a cyber threat but also some natural occuring EMP from the SUN or by a device.

    Adios

    Quote Posted by Operator (here)
    Quote Posted by Mandala (here)
    http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/CIPOutreach/Pages/GridEX.aspx

    The announcement sounds like a typical training exercise.
    Yes, and the main word here seems cyber security ...
    I don't see any mention of 'From Canada to Mexico' either.
    Yes, no problem ruthy. I've read the article, thanks for the link, but I was not referring to that. In this case I was looking for
    the original root source of the story. Which in this case seems to be NERC.

    NERC is focusing on cyber security, not so much a solar event, and I couldn't find Canada and Mexico in their article.
    Perhaps there are participants in Mexico and Canada ... but that's totally different from the North American continent
    which gives a totally different perspective.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    I just wonder what the real involvement is..i mean is Canada and Mexico going to be performing similar exercises...or are they just watching over the US's shoulder to see what they do so they can impose it in their systems securities down the line?

    I agree, the article is a tad vague, I'm sure that was of course purely accidental. Especially since they just said November and mentioned no specific dates or what grids in particular would be shut down, for how long, etc.

    It's just very odd, you would think they would test these matters out in a more private way instead of admitting publicly on the nytimes that our country has these weaknesses.

    I think they started the article to kind of deflect the fear of a solar event being a possibility. Cyber security are the words they use to get funding from DOD. Solar event was kind of mentioned in a very rushed manner..to me it was kind of like when you say something really fast and brush it off because you don't want your listener to ask questions about it or focus on that detail that you'd rather really really not talk about. But that's just my "gut feeling".

    Well I guess the only way is to just wait and see.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    I'm bumping this thread because I think this topic needs more attention!

    As a resident of NYC, I am more than concerned about this "drill." I've actually booked a trip back to the Midwest, where I grew up, to be with family -- just in case things go awry (or rather, according to plans, eh?). I'm planning on permanently moving back in April anyhow -- I'm sick of the city and all of its illness and negative energy.

    Here's my case for concern regarding this drill:

    As I've said in the "American Blackout" thread, the illuminati/PTB clearly get some kind of sick satisfaction out of flaunting their plans in front of the unaware masses. And I'm seeing what I think are some foreboding signs.

    Consider the sudden media-driven topics concerning widespread power outage:

    1) Let's start with the past Superbowl. Remember the power outage, lasting 33 minutes? Yeahhh! The one that was seemingly predicted by this Mercedes ad:



    Huh, it's almost as if they knew!

    2) Then there's the NBC drama, Revolution (wikipedia link). I haven't watched it so I can't comment on what's in the show, but I'm still a little concerned.

    3) And then there's "American Blackout," apparently a show airing in October by National Geographic. No -- not the movie by the same name about voter disenfranchisement. This is a National Geographic show about Americans losing their power. Here, take a look, view the show's trailer.

    You'll notice that there's a URL at the end of the video: survivetheblackout.com. OK, sure enough, it takes you to the National Geographic website. But where the hell is any information about this show? I can't find any. I had to google to find this page: http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...ican-blackout/ but it doesn't seem to have any information about this show. Pretty strange considering it's supposed to come out in October! Where's the marketing and media hype that would surely accompany this show?

    Folks, I hope I'm wrong. Frankly, I'm scared! I hope someone can do some better sleuth-work than I've put forth here and put my mind to rest. I just can't shake the feeling that this is another case of the PTB flaunting their plans right underneath our noses. And as a resident city dweller, I really, really hope that is not the case.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Oh, wow. I just realized the obvious thing about that Mercedes ad. "A thrilling fourth quarter." Fourth quarter, as in ... ending September 30th, 2013?

    edit: I just want to add that I suspect I'm getting too in over my head. Trying to divine future events like this is ultimately a fruitless exercise. I have to remember to stay calm and accept things as they come!

    That being said ... here's a Divine Cosmos article alleging that the Superbowl power outage was a strike against the Cabal by the Alliance: http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/d...inst-the-cabal

    Who knows what's really going on, but something is definitely up in our world.

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Quote Posted by outerheaven (here)
    Oh, wow. I just realized the obvious thing about that Mercedes ad. "A thrilling fourth quarter." Fourth quarter, as in ... ending September 30th, 2013?
    ehh, third quarter ends on September 30th ... fourth quarter starts after that date ...

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    Default Re: US Power Grid Down Exercise, Nov. 13-14, 2013

    Quote Posted by Operator (here)
    Quote Posted by outerheaven (here)
    Oh, wow. I just realized the obvious thing about that Mercedes ad. "A thrilling fourth quarter." Fourth quarter, as in ... ending September 30th, 2013?
    ehh, third quarter ends on September 30th ... fourth quarter starts after that date ...
    Oops ... duh! Well, great, that's even more foreboding and creepy. It will be interesting to see if the budget talks play into this. With the FEMA Region 3 Alert on October 1st, I just have an awful feeling that something is up.

    I hope that the actual "power outage" is the Cabal being removed from power, anyway. A man can dream, eh?

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