Instapundit links a Pajamas Media column titled How to Prevent a Digital 9/11:

It starts on a cold November night. You went to sleep, comfortably warm, after listening to the late news: a nor’easter coming through, the worst storm in several years. You go to bed, quietly excited at the thought of the fairly certain snow day — build a snowman with the kids, maybe work through the email that has piled up, and do a little online shopping; after all Christmas is coming.

That’s not the way it works out, though — about 3 a.m., you awaken, cold. The house is too cold. You get out of bed — the hardwood floor icy against your feet — and when you flip the hall light switch, nothing happens. Odd, the power is out. Automatically, you look out the window and realize the whole neighborhood is dark; in fact, there is no sky glow — usually, you can see the red shimmer of New York City on a cloudy night. It’s darker than you’ve ever seen it.

The column explains that the scenario is based on a war game run by the “U.S. Professionals for Cyber Defense” shortly after 9/11.

The topic is always relevant but has new currency because of a report recently issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies titled: “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency.”

I listened to a radio program about this last night and one of the experts said that hackers could easily take the U.S power grid to 70% capacity for six months, which would potentially be a death blow to the economy.

We have had major intrusions in our governmental security before. For example, a major breach of Pentgon security called “Titan Rain” was traced back to China:

[S]ince 2003, the hackers, eager to access American know-how, have compromised secure networks ranging from the Redstone Arsenal military base. . . Beyond worries about the sheer quantity of stolen data, a Department of Defense (DOD) alert obtained by TIME raises the concern that Titan Rain could be a point patrol for more serious assaults that could shut down or even take over a number of U.S. military networks.

And an operation called “Moonlight Maze” was suspected to have been run by the Russians, although I don’t believe this was ever confirmed.

Everything is run by computers nowadays, including important aspects of warfare: troop movements, flight patterns, and the like. They make life easier for us, but if they go down, they will make life much, much, much harder.