Then you're missing the point.

If they succeed they may well not be reversible. The question is if this had succeeded would we have shrugged it off again or responded appropriately?

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K0balt 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Can you give some examples of? I can imagine that under the right circumstances you might succeed in blowing up some transformers or even a turbine, but it seems like you’d be up to speed within a month or two on the outside? Or am I missing the gravity somehow?

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3eb7988a1663 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Pardon? A month or two without power does not seem like an enormous crisis?

Stuxnet destroyed centrifuges. It does not seem impossible that a sophisticated attack could shred some critical equipment. During the Texas 2021 outage -they were incredibly close to losing the entire grid and being in a blackstart scenario. Estimates were that it could take weeks to bring back power - all this without any physical equipment destroyed or malicious code within the network.

Edit: Had to look it up, the Texas outage was "only" two weeks and scattershot in where it hit. The death toll is estimated at 246-702.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

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genocidicbunny 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's middle of winter, and it gets pretty danged cold. Being without power in such weather might well end up being deadly, even with short durations.

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applied_heat 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Transformers and turbines of any significance are not off the shelf parts and can have lead times of years

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sillywalk 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Transformers and turbines of any significance are not off the shelf parts and can have lead times of years

Bloomberg had a decent article[0] about transformers and their lead time. They're currently a bottleneck on building. It wasn't paywalled for me.

"The Covid-19 pandemic strained many supply chains, and most have recovered by now. The supply chain for transformers started experiencing troubles earlier — and it’s only worsened since. Instead of taking a few months to a year, the lead time for large transformer delivery is now three to five years. " [0]

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-bottlenecks-transfor...

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esafak an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

How do they not have backups??

	▲	3eb7988a1663 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Enough for the entire grid? There are some amount of reserves on hand (eg drunk runs into a telephone pole), but nothing that could replace a targeted attack with the explicit goal of taking out the most vital infrastructure.

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tosapple 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I wasn't commenting on any particular case. I was stating that flipping a switch is less costly to reverse than blowing up a dam.

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jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent [-]

These attacks are not at the level of 'flipping a switch'. If they succeed they can destabilize the grid and that has the potential to destroy gear, and while not as costly as blowing up a dam it can still be quite costly.

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tosapple 3 hours ago | parent [-]

During WW2 both germany and the UK as example were carpet bombed to assail industry, does that help you to understand my position better?

Vietnam too.

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shakna 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Not really.

If you succeed in attacking the grid, you achieve the same widespread industry impact, without the cost of the munitions.

It can take decades to recover from a cyber attack like this, if it succeeds.

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tosapple 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Again, not endoring any specific case just endorsing SPECIFICITY, COST, and "Collaterals".

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shakna 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I was not speaking to just one case. Today's incident, is _the norm_.

These attacks are widespread, damaging, and the repercussions are felt for decades in their wake. We _are_ being carpet bombed, and the costs for the victims are ongoing and growing. The collateral damage is everywhere.

Do you really think there's no impact?

> Cyber units from at least one nation state routinely try to explore and exploit Australia’s critical infrastructure networks, almost certainly mapping systems so they can lay down malware or maintain access in the future.

> We recently discovered one of those units targeting critical networks in the United States. ASIO worked closely with our American counterpart to evict the hackers and shut down their global accesses, including nodes here in Australia.

> https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-asse...

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tosapple 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You're an idiot, so am I for being drawn into this and having to re-itterate and clarify.

Did I say there's no impact?

	▲	idiotsecant 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		'I appreciate that these scammers are just stealing old people's money online instead of killing them and taking it'!