What if the pipeline hack is used to shut down refineries and sends gas to over $10 per gallon? People are outraged, and the hackers are tracked back to Ukraine and the US authorizes war operations as revenge and also take out all evidence of Biden family corruption in attacks.
It’s a super basic theory but may not be outrageous.
Thoughts/comments??
Because we have moved all of our control systems to computers and electrically controlled actuators.. If we really had to we could remove the automatic actuators on every valve, replace them with wheel valves, and station people , with communication devices, at each valve, and have them controlled manually. Would be a giant undertaking. We are talking about thousands of valves on the most simple systems. Our systems are extreamly complicated because automation made it so easy to be complicated . Going back would be extremely hard. And the pipelines are just the transport side of things . Remember the oil or gas has to be taken out of the ground, transported to refineries, compressed and transported again to other refineries, transported again to our homes and gas stations. All of it is run by computer. And a relitively small force of skilled workers. The real threat is in our electric grid. Electricity runs everything else. And that to is controlled by computer systems. Welcome to my world!
Manual overrides are always part of the design, especially after the Y2000 scare when it was understood that humans always need to be in the loop. This is what makes me think the whole pipeline hack is bogus.
I work with computer automated pumps and valves. I also worked in the power industry at one point. There is always a way to shutdown and override.