02.13.13
Shoeshine (continued)
The President can’t even get the minimum wage up to what it should be if it had been adjusted for inflation. But this is what our cyberwar shoeshine boys were saying today:
One threat is that another nation could perpetrate a Stuxnet-style attack on the US. Stuxnet, the powerful cyberweapon unleashed on Iran’s nuclear fuel centrifuge facility at Natanz, is reported to have destroyed at least 1,000 of the machines and set the program back as many as two years. Such weapons, targeted at civilian systems, could likely wreak havoc on the US power grid. — the website that used to the newspaper called the Christian Science Monitor
The [executive order] won’t scare potential cyber enemies, says Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS institute, a cybersecurity educational organization.
“I expect all of those attack communities that might have been worried [about the order] are breathing a sigh of relief and shaking their heads in wonder that the United States government leaders could be so completely in the thrall of corporate interests that they would leave their military and financial future in harm’s way,??? he says.
“We are in a cyber war. Most Americans don’t know it … and at this point, we’re losing,” said House Rep.[ Mike Rogers, R-Mich., on the Intelligence Committee.]
The United States military/intelligence structure attacked the Iranian nuclear program with malicious software, most notably the Stuxnet virus.
The argument made by the cyberwar shoeshine corps has morphed that reality into a threat against the United States power grid.
What if a Stuxnet was loosed on us?
It takes a lot of hypocrisy and mental gymnastics to be so self-serving.
Officials within the US government and an assortment of cyberwar flacks have since gone public with their belief that Iran is behind the cyberattacks that made some big banking websites run unevenly, sometimes. But probably not when you were there.