Back in June 2019, much of Argentina, Uruguay and chunks of Paraguay suddenly found themselves without electricity though, luckily for all concerned, within a few hours things started getting back to normal. As blackouts are fairly common in this part of the world, it had a limited impact on people’s lives, unlike the less extensive one that, in July 1977, affected New York City, and still has a place in North American folklore.
Almost a week ago, Spain, Portugal and southwest France had their first really big blackout. It hit people harder than the one we suffered not just because Europeans feel that their countries are more “developed” than their offshoots in South America and their public services are supposed to be efficient, but also because in the last few years they have come to depend much more on networks that to keep going need ever increasing amounts of electrical power. Unlike their recent ancestors or, for that matter, those of us who live in places where blackouts are frequent, city-dwellers throughout the world now find it difficult to cope when the screens on their television sets, computers and smartphones go blank, trains come to a halt leaving passengers stranded, air travel gets complicated and shopkeepers demand cash.
In 2019, government spokespeople lost no time in assuring us that Argentina had not been the target of a cyber attack. On Monday, the Spanish and Portuguese authorities did the same, presumably because they feared that people would panic if they thought hostile forces led by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un or someone equally sinister were behind what had happened and would be bound to strike again in the near future. They were also reluctant to point out that, for a variety of reasons, energy grids based on “renewables” such as wind and solar power which, in the Iberian peninsula, provide four-fifths of the electricity that is generated, are less reliable than the old-fashioned kind that depend on fossil fuels. In Europe, net zero has become something of a religion so it would be sacrilege to suggest it could have its downsides.
Modern societies are extraordinarily complicated machines whose workings no single person can fully understand. It has long been said that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, a dictum that, over 100 years ago, was attributed to “a distinguished Scotchman,” so it is not that surprising that, days after what seems to have been the worst power outage Europeans have experienced, officials continued to scratch their heads and look for answers. So far, the experts consulted have been unable to come up with anything convincing.
This state of affairs, with things going wrong without anyone managing to explain exactly why, is not about to change. Many people – including some who, like Elon Musk, cannot be described as technophobes – have taken to warning us that, unless we are very careful, scientific research and what it enables us to do could lead us to some extremely dangerous places. They are surely right, but technological progress has an inbuilt dynamic which will keep spurring it on. In addition to delivering lots of good things, it is certain to provide some that are very bad. Mankind’s prospects would surely look brighter if there were no atomic bombs waiting to be detonated or deadly viruses getting “enhanced” by scientists working in leaky “gain-of-function” laboratories.
By accelerating research, Artificial Intelligence seems likely to put technological progress on steroids. As a result, a growing proportion of the decisions that affect people will be made by artefacts that can be hacked either by individuals working for hostile regimes, religious zealots who disapprove of Western ways or mere mischief-makers who get a kick out of provoking turmoil. This was made clear over 10 years ago when the Israelis and North Americans succeeded in snarling up the clandestine Iranian nuclear programme by injecting malware – Stuxnet, which was quickly hailed as the world’s first digital weapon – into the computers controlling the centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium gas.
Modern societies depend so much on electricity that, if deprived of it, they would find it hard to keep going for more than a couple of days. The makers of Hollywood disaster movies are not the only people who assume that a prolonged blackout would be quickly followed by social disorder on a truly massive scale. Many governments have prepared themselves for such a contingency; you do not have to be addicted to conspiracy theories to see the Covid lockdowns as something of a trial run devised by for planners who take it for granted that, sooner rather than later, their country could face far more serious emergencies and they had better prepare themselves to confront what could be coming their way.
When Portugal suddenly found herself without electricity, a spokesman for the country’s power grid blamed it on an “induced atmospheric vibration.” Many found this a bit outlandish, but such phenomena do occur and can have far-reaching consequences. In September 1859, a giant solar flare produced what is remembered as the “Carrington Event” by setting off a huge geomagnetic storm that, among other things, set fire to telegraph stations and disrupted communications, which by our standards were rudimentary, throughout the world. Were something of a similar magnitude to occur today, the effects would be devastating.
Though nobody is in a position to control the Sun’s behaviour and prevent it from periodically firing destructive solar flares in our direction, military thinkers are well aware that, should an unfriendly power prove capable of generating electromagnetic waves and aiming them at a specific part of the world, it could cause as much damage in the target area as would a repetition of the Carrington Event. In recent months, the Russians – who greatly enjoy rattling their nuclear sabres and conceivably could use one to detonate an electronic pulse from somewhere miles above the Earth’s surface – have been harassing European energy systems by infecting them with malware, so it is entirely natural to suspect that they switched off the lights in Portugal, Spain and France in order to warn those living there that, if they let their governments support Ukraine, they will have to pay a heavy price. Like it or not, the more advanced countries become, the more vulnerable they will be to cyber attacks on their infrastructure and the services that almost everyone has come to rely on.
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