Lights Out Quotes

“the Internet, among its many, many virtues, is also a weapon of mass destruction.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“One of the imponderables in our system of government is how rapidly and easily secretaries of state, defense, and treasury, high-ranking military officers, congressmen, senators—indeed, even former presidents of the United States—are, upon departing office, able to transform their expertise, their experience, their contacts into extraordinarily high fees, contracts, and lucrative new businesses.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“A skillfully executed cyberattack serves the multiple purposes of inflicting damage and conveying a strong warning, all the while permitting the attacker to deflect accusations with a posture of innocent indignation”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“it took on average 279 days before companies that had been breached came to realize it or were told by someone else. The”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“If you go into a big, modern power station in Shanghai, or a big, modern power station in California, you’re going to find the same SCADA software.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“American democracy rests on a foundation of competing tensions among local, state, and federal laws,”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“These days, NORAD’s peak period of public visibility is at Christmastime when it tracks the course of Santa and his sleigh.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“Attempting to alert the American public to an impending crisis becomes more difficult when the subject itself is complicated and defies easy or brief explanation.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“Dispatching journalists into the field to gather information costs money; hiring a glib bloviator is relatively cheap, and inviting opinionated guests to vent on the air is entirely cost-free.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“And let the record show: it is not easy to convince the American public of anything. For”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“It is precisely among young, educated radicals, warns Austin, that a new generation of cyber warriors will be recruited.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“Schmidt also echoed the assumption that China and Russia, encumbered by a network of interlocking interests with the United States, would likely be constrained from launching a full-scale cyberattack on an American power grid. Could they do it? Yes. Would they? Only in the context of an expanding crisis.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“Our points of vulnerable access are greater than in all of previous human history, yet we have barely begun to focus on the actual danger that cyber warfare presents to our national infrastructure. Past experience in preparing for the unexpected teaches us that, more often than not, we get it wrong. It also teaches that there is value in the act of searching for answers. Acknowledging ignorance is often the first step toward finding a solution. The next step entails identifying the problem. Here it is: for the first time in the history of warfare, governments need to worry about force projection by individual laptop. Those charged with restoring the nation after such an attack will have to come to terms with the notion that the Internet, among its many, many virtues, is also a weapon of mass destruction.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“There are emergency preparedness plans in place for earthquakes and hurricanes, heat waves and ice storms. There are plans for power outages of a few days, affecting as many as several million people. But if a highly populated area was without electricity for a period of months or even weeks, there is no master plan for the civilian population.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“With adversaries’ malware in the National Grid, the nation has little or no chance of withstanding a major cyberattack on the North American electrical system. Incredibly weak cybersecurity standards with a wide-open communications and network fabric virtually guarantees success to major nation-states and competent hacktivists. This [electric power] industry is simply unrealistic in believing in the resiliency of this Grid subject to a sophisticated attack. When such an attack occurs, make no mistake, there will be major loss of life and serious crippling of National Security capabilities. [Emphasis added.]”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“But the directions for even loose associations are relatively simple: locate and establish the needs of the most vulnerable, determine the skills and assets of those willing to share either or both.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“what they have achieved is extraordinary. No group of comparable size comes close to matching the scale and organizational discipline of the Mormons’ efforts to prepare for whatever catastrophe may come.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“In successive State of the Union addresses President Obama has warned of the danger of cyberattacks on our infrastructure. Government is adapting to the “new normal” of daily hacking, and cyber specialists such as Richard Clarke and George Cotter, who held senior government posts, have explained that the Russians and the Chinese are almost certainly inside the grid, mapping its vulnerabilities. Keith Alexander and Howard Schmidt warn that independent actors will soon have the capability to damage the grid, if they don’t have it already. If nothing else, the United States demonstrated with Stuxnet what a carefully planned cyberattack can do to the most securely defended equipment. Still, senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security, including the current secretary, treat the likelihood of a crippling attack on one of the nation’s power grids as nothing more than a speculative threat, and an unlikely one at that.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“We have come to know how nuclear weapons can destroy societies and human civilization. We have not yet begun to understand how cyber warfare might destroy our way of life,” Benedict noted. “How ironic that the first acknowledged military use of cyber warfare is ostensibly to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“What about independent actors using cyberattacks to knock out one of our power grids? Are we at that point yet? “Simple answer,” said Schmidt, “yes.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“Countries such as Iran and North Korea (of which more in the next chapter) cannot hope to match the United States in their ability to project conventional or nuclear force; what the Pentagon describes as “kinetic power.” Cyberattacks, however, present second- and even third-tier military powers with a fresh avenue for projecting force in the heartland of their enemies, all while enjoying that additional element of deniability.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“George Cotter believes that the rash of cyberattacks on U.S. banks during the summer and fall of 2014 does, in fact, constitute a warning from the Kremlin, related to events in Ukraine—a demonstration to Washington of what might follow if economic sanctions escalated.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“He is convinced that China and Russia have already penetrated the U.S. power grid, both for purposes of reconnaissance and, very likely, in order to plant cyber weapons that could be activated at some time in the future.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“The Internet, as we now know it, carries a trove of inherent dangers. Those dangers are just beginning to reveal themselves, and their scale and scope may someday call into question our easy acceptance of its benefits.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“The world is locked into a state of cyber dependency”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“These and many other businesses have concluded that the advantages of the Internet are nevertheless worth whatever vulnerabilities may emerge as by-products.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“There are, as previously noted, more than three thousand electric power companies in the United States. Many of the smaller electric companies lack the resources and often the motivation to provide their operations with the best cybersecurity. Computer access to any one of them can provide access along the network to the SCADA and EMS systems that calibrate supply and demand for the grid as a whole.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“None of these people has suggested that there is anything simple about sabotaging a grid; they say only that the capability exists, an opinion shared by specialists who have no financial interest in the field. When I asked Janet Napolitano, who is now president of the University of California, what she thinks the chances are that a nation-state or independent actor could knock out one of our power grids, she replied, “Very high—80 percent, 90 percent. You know, very, very high.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“Doubts over security of the power grid cover a broad range, from that cautious “nothing is impossible” to the full-throated warning of “not if, but when.”
― Ted Koppel, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath