Currently what is the biggest risk to global security?
The downfall of the United States energy and infrastructure systems: That is water, electricity, gas, and communications. This can only happen through invasion or hacking into our energy and infrastructure grid, which is currently happening as we speak. Energy and infrastructure are our biggest dependency, and will be our demise if we don’t upgrade its security internationally.
Main point #1: How fragile is Americas infrastructure and Electric grid?
Americas electric grid is highly outdated and weakening according to a Forbes article published in March of 2023. They mention the rolling blackouts that California residents face now on a yearly basis, utilities personnel practically begging their customers to turn down their thermostat from New York to the Midwest during the cold Christmas season in 2022 and the cold snap that rushed over Texas in 2021 that led to blackouts and the death of over 250 people…not to mention that according to a Wall Street Journal study blackouts have doubled since 2013.
Main point #2:
Furthermore, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently came out at the end of January this year stating that Chinese hacker groups are hacking into our critical energy and infrastructure systems. Jen Easterly, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm, voiced a similar sentiment “This is a world where a major crisis halfway across the planet could well endanger the lives of Americans here at home through the disruption of our pipelines, the severing of our telecommunications, the pollution of our water facilities, the crippling of our transportation modes — all to ensure that they can incite societal panic and chaos and to deter our ability.”
The FBI recently worked and is still working with their partners to shut down an operation titled Volt Typhoon which was a malware created by the Chinese government that hid among routers & enabled itself to hide preoperational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure like our communications, energy, and transportation to degrade our systems and cause societal panic.
Main point #3: How this affects global security & end:
You may be thinking, what does this have to do with GLOBAL security? Well, if our communications go down and our society descends into chaos, how will we communicate with our bases across the world? How will our adversaries react and take advantage of this situation? If our CIA case officers, military contractors, soldiers, and embassies can’t communicate with headquarters located in the U.S this allows our enemies to have the upper hand not just in the US, but in every part of the world where we are stationed. Our ports can be seized thus eliminating trade that is vital to upkeeping our economy and the economy of the globe since the U.S dollar is the world’s dominant currency. My proposed solution to this is directing more funding towards cybersecurity, cybersecurity research, and strengthening our deteriorating cybersecurity infrastructure across the globe because if the U.S falls, so does the world.
Thank you.