Sandy Turned off the Lights, the Phones, and the Heat

A cyber attack could make it all happen again.

Verizon's chief technology officer surveyed a flooded major switching facility in lower Manhattan and put it bluntly: "There is nothing working here. Quite frankly, this is wider than the impacts of 9/11." Damage from Sandy is estimated to reach $20 billion, and interrupted phone service is among the least of it. Flooding in New York's century-old subway system is without parallel. Bridges and roads, homes and businesses have been destroyed. Days after the storm, many businesses remain closed, their employees out of work. And tens of thousands are suffering -- cold and in the dark.

Storms and floods are not the only infrastructure threats that invoke comparisons to 9/11. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made headlines recently when he noted that the economic consequences of a successful cyber attack on our financial system, electric grid, or other infrastructure could dwarf the economic consequences of 9/11. Actually, this wasn't news. Former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell had said the same thing five years earlier. They're both right. And the consequences of that kind of attack might not be merely financial. A cyber attack causing an explosion at a chemical plant, for example, could cause grievous loss of life.

This is not fantasy...

[This article appears in its entirety on ForeignPolicy.com. Read more here.]