The recently foiled terrorist strike at an oil-processing plant in Saudia Arabia highlights al Qaeda's long-term strategy of attacking the global energy infrastructure.
The author argues that the western world's reliance on a "weak and dilapidated energy and communications network infrastructures" is a recipe for disaster.
The revelation that a computer worm disabled a safety system in a US nuclear power station in January has led to fresh calls for security on electricity grids to be overhauled. Experts say much of the grid's critical infrastructure is too accessible to the virus-ridden public internet.
Fred Kaplan argues that the recent blackout in the U.S. clearly indicates a problem with the archaic energy grid but it also reveals "the system's?and society's?resilience" to terrorist attack.
While energy experts differed on the precise cause of today's power blackout, they were in agreement that the extensive failure betrayed the age of the region's transmission system and its struggles to keep up with demand.
Scientists and engineers with the National Research Council warned the White House and Congress about the vulnerability of the power grid as recently as November, saying nationwide weaknesses needed to be repaired ? and fast.
Enormous flow batteries make large-scale electricity storage on the grid possible for the first time. Expect fewer blackouts and a thoroughly revamped electric power industry.
U.S. intelligence agencies have detected surveillance by terror suspects at three oil facilities in the United States, raising fears that plans are under way to attack oil-shipping terminals and refineries.
The authors survey the terrorist threat to the energy infrastructure in the United States and urge caution in current efforts to restructure the electricity industry.
The computers that control the electric power system around the nation have been probed from the Middle East, and terrorists may have inspected the physical equipment, said experts at a conference on the security of the electric system.