A RECENT report claimed that the People’s Republic of China had the means to shut off the country’s power grid.
A lot of Filipinos were naturally alarmed, but we’re not the only one. Foreign news outlets were alarmed by the stories too. After all, China has built a lot of power plants all over the world, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a large portion of those plants have some sort of kill switch.
Here’s a brief passage from a Daily Mail article: “China could shut off the Philippines’ power grid at will, a report has warned – highlighting fears about Beijing’s role in infrastructure around the world. A report for Philippine lawmakers found that the country’s national security ‘is completely compromised’ by China’s access to the power grid.”
Government representatives hit back against the report by claiming that the country’s power grid was completely controlled by Filipinos. That’s all well and good but they’re missing the larger picture.
Even if Filipinos have complete control over our own power infrastructure, that doesn’t mean that the Chinese can’t shut it down in some other way. In fact, I would argue that any sufficiently advanced country with sophisticated cyber warfare capabilities can cripple our power grid, or at least, a portion of it.
At a time when everything is interconnected and smart cities are becoming quite popular, a lot of very important infrastructure can be crippled through information/cyber warfare. And the more we upgrade and integrate them, the more vulnerable they become. That’s the cost of connectivity and network sophistication – vulnerability.
In fact, this form of warfare already exists. Just Google “Stuxnet” or “Iran Cyber Attack” and while you’re at it, Google the cyber weapons capabilities of countries like Iran, Israel and Russia as well. Add in AI, and weaponized algorithms and it’s easy to imagine how the Philippine’s more advanced infrastructure and power distribution facilities can be brought down remotely.
In short, China doesn’t need to control our power grid. If their goal is to cripple energy distribution all throughout the country, all they need to do is to deploy their cyber warfare technology and it’s lights out for us.
Maybe the AFP has deterrents and counter-measures against such contingencies but I doubt it, or if they do, I doubt that they could be effective.
The irony is that if a cyber attack does occur, it may not be able to affect the older and more antiquated infrastructure but then again, who knows? This is how modern warfare works nowadays. Cyber weapons were not designed to target people. No, they were created to target infrastructure and networks, and in this day and age, those two things are often synonymous with life and political stability./PN
