End of U.S. Greatness
America Is Much More Vulnerable That We Like to Admit
What is the most important invention since the ancient Mesopotamians came up with the wheel? I say it is the day humans harnessed electricity. Others insist it’s the light bulb, computer chip or global positioning satellites. But none of them works without electricity. When electrical systems fail or are sabotaged today, all the technology we depend on so heavily for survival won’t work.
That fact was on tragic display in the early morning of March 26 in Baltimore, in the middle of the Patapsco River. The Singapore-flagged container ship Dali lost control and smashed into a key support column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Officials have blamed a malfunctioning electrical system as the reason the ship was unable to steer itself and veered into the column. The captain evidently placed multiple mayday and 9-11 calls and dropped the port anchor, according to National Transportation and Safety Board spokesmen, but to no avail.
Once the 900-foot-long cargo ship— loaded with unknown amounts of toxic chemicals—hit one of the support pillars, it took mere seconds for the 1,200-foot main span of the bridge to collapse onto the ship and into the water. Before its collapse, it was one of the longest bridges of its type in the U.S. It took five years to construct. The problem with the Key Bridge was that it had no redundant systems to support the weight of the bridge should any single structural element fail.
As you saw in videos, once that support column was damaged, there was nothing holding the rest of the bridge and roadway from crashing 100 feet into the water below. And that is exactly what happened. Now a mangled tangle of hundreds of tons of asphalt and steel beams blocks one of the busiest ports in the nation. As I write this, commercial shipping is halted until the remains of the bridge are removed—and that could take weeks and months.
The loss of the bridge will be a devastating financial blow for many Americans. Workers who depend on the huge volume of cargo ships that need to be loaded and unloaded will see that volume drop to nothing. Vehicular traffic will have to be rerouted for years; 30,000 cars and trucks crossed that bridge every day. Rebuilding the bridge will be a long and expensive process. It is still to be determined how this will affect the prices of some goods across the nation, including cars and coal, as a major supply chain has been cut off. Federal officials insisted this was not a terrorist attack mere minutes after the event, but one should always wonder.
One column gets smashed on a bridge and an entire city is crippled—with possible global implications. Throw in the threat of toxic cargo oozing by the ton into Baltimore Harbor and you have the potential for a major, dual-threat manmade financial and environmental disaster. I am not saying this was terrorism.
Frankly, I don’t know enough about bridge engineering, container ship electrical systems and how to hack into them, ship stopping distances, or what toxins were on that boat to even speculate. But I can tell you what one journalist is alleging. According to investigative reporter Lara Logan—who is being ridiculed by the mainstream for even suggesting the possibility—“unnamed intelligence sources confirmed the incident was the result of a cyber attack, but added the federal government is avoiding stating this publicly.” “The Baltimore bridge collapse was a 9/11 style attack but they won’t admit it and we cannot see it because it was a cyber attack,” she insisted.
Logan explained further: All the SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] systems that run our critical infrastructure like sewage, electric grid, shipping, etc., are all wide-open systems with no encryption because it is too expensive. They can shut us down anytime they want. Certainly, the United States, while throwing hundreds of billions of your tax dollars at foreign nations every year, is aware of this and has addressed this vulnerability.
Not so. The GPS systems that drive these kinds of boats are not encrypted. When a U.S. Navy ship crashed into a cargo ship not that long ago, it was a cyber attack that made that happen. I know they are saying this was not “nefarious.” How do they know so quickly? I am not sure, but, given how often they lie, I am going to reserve judgment for now and keep asking questions. Right or wrong about her claims of possible terrorism, she does make several good points there.
The purpose of a real journalist is to ask questions and gather facts until he or she arrives at the truth—what we accept as factual—not to take a government spokes man’s word for anything. The second point is that we have become so distrustful of our own government that the vast majority of us no longer believe a word coming out of the mouth of any public official, left right or center. I do find it strange that this Baltimore bridge event comes just a few weeks after the Russian release of recordings of German air force officers plotting on the best way to take out a vital Russian bridge leading to Crimea and how to blame it on another nation.
It also comes just weeks after a deadly terrorist attack outside Mos cow. ISIS has allegedly claimed credit, but the Russians insist the massacre of over 130 people has Ukrainian and U.S. fingerprints all over it. Honestly, though, multiple nations have a legitimate gripe with the foreign policy of America these days. Whatever the truth—cyber attack or not—make no mistake. The collapse of the Key Bridge ought to be a warning signal. If all you have to do is turn off the electricity on one container ship to end up with a trillion-dollar economic disaster affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, that is very concerning. It’s also of concern that we have non-redundant bridges like this left in America. Plans should be made to replace or fortify them all.
That fact was on tragic display in the early morning of March 26 in Baltimore, in the middle of the Patapsco River. The Singapore-flagged container ship Dali lost control and smashed into a key support column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Officials have blamed a malfunctioning electrical system as the reason the ship was unable to steer itself and veered into the column. The captain evidently placed multiple mayday and 9-11 calls and dropped the port anchor, according to National Transportation and Safety Board spokesmen, but to no avail.
Once the 900-foot-long cargo ship— loaded with unknown amounts of toxic chemicals—hit one of the support pillars, it took mere seconds for the 1,200-foot main span of the bridge to collapse onto the ship and into the water. Before its collapse, it was one of the longest bridges of its type in the U.S. It took five years to construct. The problem with the Key Bridge was that it had no redundant systems to support the weight of the bridge should any single structural element fail.
As you saw in videos, once that support column was damaged, there was nothing holding the rest of the bridge and roadway from crashing 100 feet into the water below. And that is exactly what happened. Now a mangled tangle of hundreds of tons of asphalt and steel beams blocks one of the busiest ports in the nation. As I write this, commercial shipping is halted until the remains of the bridge are removed—and that could take weeks and months.
The loss of the bridge will be a devastating financial blow for many Americans. Workers who depend on the huge volume of cargo ships that need to be loaded and unloaded will see that volume drop to nothing. Vehicular traffic will have to be rerouted for years; 30,000 cars and trucks crossed that bridge every day. Rebuilding the bridge will be a long and expensive process. It is still to be determined how this will affect the prices of some goods across the nation, including cars and coal, as a major supply chain has been cut off. Federal officials insisted this was not a terrorist attack mere minutes after the event, but one should always wonder.
One column gets smashed on a bridge and an entire city is crippled—with possible global implications. Throw in the threat of toxic cargo oozing by the ton into Baltimore Harbor and you have the potential for a major, dual-threat manmade financial and environmental disaster. I am not saying this was terrorism.
Frankly, I don’t know enough about bridge engineering, container ship electrical systems and how to hack into them, ship stopping distances, or what toxins were on that boat to even speculate. But I can tell you what one journalist is alleging. According to investigative reporter Lara Logan—who is being ridiculed by the mainstream for even suggesting the possibility—“unnamed intelligence sources confirmed the incident was the result of a cyber attack, but added the federal government is avoiding stating this publicly.” “The Baltimore bridge collapse was a 9/11 style attack but they won’t admit it and we cannot see it because it was a cyber attack,” she insisted.
Logan explained further: All the SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] systems that run our critical infrastructure like sewage, electric grid, shipping, etc., are all wide-open systems with no encryption because it is too expensive. They can shut us down anytime they want. Certainly, the United States, while throwing hundreds of billions of your tax dollars at foreign nations every year, is aware of this and has addressed this vulnerability.
Not so. The GPS systems that drive these kinds of boats are not encrypted. When a U.S. Navy ship crashed into a cargo ship not that long ago, it was a cyber attack that made that happen. I know they are saying this was not “nefarious.” How do they know so quickly? I am not sure, but, given how often they lie, I am going to reserve judgment for now and keep asking questions. Right or wrong about her claims of possible terrorism, she does make several good points there.
The purpose of a real journalist is to ask questions and gather facts until he or she arrives at the truth—what we accept as factual—not to take a government spokes man’s word for anything. The second point is that we have become so distrustful of our own government that the vast majority of us no longer believe a word coming out of the mouth of any public official, left right or center. I do find it strange that this Baltimore bridge event comes just a few weeks after the Russian release of recordings of German air force officers plotting on the best way to take out a vital Russian bridge leading to Crimea and how to blame it on another nation.
It also comes just weeks after a deadly terrorist attack outside Mos cow. ISIS has allegedly claimed credit, but the Russians insist the massacre of over 130 people has Ukrainian and U.S. fingerprints all over it. Honestly, though, multiple nations have a legitimate gripe with the foreign policy of America these days. Whatever the truth—cyber attack or not—make no mistake. The collapse of the Key Bridge ought to be a warning signal. If all you have to do is turn off the electricity on one container ship to end up with a trillion-dollar economic disaster affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, that is very concerning. It’s also of concern that we have non-redundant bridges like this left in America. Plans should be made to replace or fortify them all.
By: Elena Tonra
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