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May 12, 2009 | 12
When it comes to energy policy in the U.S., not very much has changed since President Jimmy Carter declared more than three decades ago that achieving energy independence was "the moral equivalent of war."
Today, Carter had his “I-told-you-so-moment” in testimony on energy policy before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, giving lawmakers a bit of a history lesson (while acknowledging that some of them were also in government then).
Two weeks after becoming president, Carter famously appeared in a cardigan and urged energy conservation on a resistant American public. Ultimately, that and other efforts led to a more energy-efficient economy as well as cutting oil imports in half by 1982.
Apr 9, 2009 | 3
The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed current and former national security officials, reports that spies from China, Russia and other countries have hacked into the U.S. electricity grid and installed software that could cause mass outages. According to these same officials, the foreign agents have not sabotaged the grid (yet), but rather want to “map our infrastructure” for possible exploitation in case of a future war.
Sound a bit cloak and dagger?
“It’s all hype and it’s fear-mongering,” says Bruce Schneier, a security technologist who writes a blog and is chief of security at BT, a U.K.-based communications services company. He says odds are those countries have mapped U.S. power grids just as the U.S. has no doubt mapped theirs—but that it's sort of business as usual rather than cause for concern.
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