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60min on Sunday had a piece on hackers and the electrical grid. It is very likely that hackers, likely in the service of foreign hostile governments, have some control over our electrical grid. With not only the ability to take it down, but to remotely destroy our electrical infrastructure by commanding generators to self-destruct.

In the piece, they reported that Obama had said hackers had already done this in a foreign country. 60min reported that that country was Brazil in 2007. So now Brazil comes out and says that it wasn't hackers, but faulty equipment. And what happens a day later? An even larger outage occurs, which takes down the power in all of Paraguay and much of Brazil. Again, a weak explanation from Brazil over transmission lines.

This is a user comment from Slashdot:

Quote:

I've been living in São Paulo for over 9 years. I was without electrical power for a few hours last night.

The timeline on this is pretty entertaining. On the 7th, there were a bunch of stories saying the 2007 blackouts in Brazil were caused by crackers (the articles say "hackers"). On the 9th, there were strong denials all around, accompanied by stories saying that no, the 2007 blackouts were caused by "sooty insulators." On the 10th, Brazil suffered a blackout much worse than the ones in 2007. That looks to me like crackers saying "sooty insulators? We'll show you sooty insulators!"

If the grid was knocked out for a few months during the winter or summer, there would be countless deaths.