> The value gained by practicing on US soil to execute such a mission likely outweighs tipping their hand.There is tremendous operational value in carrying out the logistics and process of such a test. The lessons learned can be applied not just to the electrical grid, but many other reserves-sensitive infrastructure.
Long rant ahead that comes as no surprise to Taleb and principal-agent problem space cognoscenti which most HN readers are, so freely ignore.
The US lacks reserves of nearly every kind except in the crudest forms like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As already noted elsewhere, the leadership-think that in the US permeates both private and public sector leadership to treat redundancy as deadweight losses still outweighs any and all national security considerations. This is absolutely rampant everywhere, and not a national secret.
It is so severe that even companies like 3M who actually plan ahead and do what they're supposed to do (set up emergency production lines, materiel, procedures, and staffing that are mothballed until needed, urge customers to keep a working reserve on hand suitable for continuity planning) get unjustifiably crucified [1]. Because...tada!...leadership in hospitals ditch working reserves who then turn around and blame 3M when the shit hits the fan for their lack of continuity planning. Then these same leaders who utterly failed their continuity planning lean in on government. And...tada!...leadership in government let working reserves exhaust from SARS who then turn around and blame 3M for their lack of continuity planning.
Of course this happens because the incentives are misaligned; leadership are not an evil cat cabal, they're just min-maxing to incentives they've been handed like everyone else. There is no tail risk governance of life- and national-security-critical infrastructure to maintain continuity.
There is no clawback for intentionally ignoring pointed out tail risk, nor is there an emphasis upon leadership in the same organization across a long period of time to expose and correct misalignments. Tail risk decisions are not tracked and evaluated in most organizations. Raising the organizational risk profile way after the leader has left for another role, and disconnecting the organization's ability to systemically learn from those expensive and infrequent tail risk mistakes.
Even worse, the US business culture and political culture itself severely punishes those who do prudently and competently assess tail risk. How the US arranged reserves is about right for nearly a century ago, but that means a successful attack on reserves-sensitive infrastructure will take us roughly back to that tech tree until we resupply.
Precision coordinated infrastructure attacks through black-hat, memetic and specops combined force of arms can be far more effective than many stealth bomber runs, with the additional invaluable bonus of plausible deniability, and possibly economically eclipsing the US if it causes enough damage. It's a really effective asymmetric attack mode option.
The US has long had people who thought about all this already, and encoded their thought experiments into various policy guides, with some updates from lessons learned like during SARS (and now COVID-19). Our policy leadership are choosing not to follow their advice because it involves unsavory spending decisions with negative political ramifications. COVID-19 has not sufficiently raised awareness about this, so it will likely take a Carrington-scale event to have these guides dusted off to see the light of day of implementation.
Individually as a normal citizen, at least prepare for natural disasters as guided by FEMA, financially prepare as much as you feel prudent (if you see the rampant de-reserving in infrastructure going on, just what do you think is happening in the less-regulated parts of finance?), and just hope three standard deviations doesn't hit our asses in our lifetimes.
[1] https://marker.medium.com/how-3m-gambled-its-reputation-on-t...