
Weaponizing disinformation can bring down a city’s power grid - mhb
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236517
======
motohagiography
A squirrel can bring down a city's power grid as well, so YMMV.
[https://www.publicpower.org/blog/defending-against-
outages-s...](https://www.publicpower.org/blog/defending-against-outages-
squirrel-tracker)

This tactic of elevating your pet issue by linking it to a hypothetical
catastrophe seems a bit unserious. A network model of how memes and beliefs
spread is interesting, but they seem to adopt someone elses model in support
of their idea. It's useful to apply extra skepticism to papers that link ideas
to catastrophe, since it's likely using it as a vehicle.

However, an alternative interpretation from this is they may show it's
possible to ascertain someone's political beliefs or alignment and select them
for further investigation using their electricity consumption patterns, which
if true, would be right out of the anti-smart-meter infrastructure
conspiracies we encountered during SMI rollouts.

~~~
raverbashing
One squirrel shouldn't be able to bring a whole grid down. Grids are supposed
to be resilient and have a couple of safety features

A squirrel could bring power to a street down, or maybe a neighborhood. In the
same way falling trees do

~~~
Isamu
> One squirrel shouldn't be able to bring a whole grid down. Grids are
> supposed to be resilient and have a couple of safety features

A very big outage in North America occurred from the cascading effects of a
single breaker working as intended. The grid is a very complex system because
it is dynamic and subject to states of vulnerability that may not be well
understood.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes but it was not "just the squirrel" it is a combination of factors (usually
faults or overloads upstream).

~~~
Isamu
Exactly my point, the grid is a complex dynamic system.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Something being a complex dynamic system doesn’t make it vulnerable to
squirrels. It may be vulnerable to squirrels, but it also may not be.

------
throw0101a
This is already done by accident in the UK:

> _TV pickup is a term used in the United Kingdom to refer to a phenomenon
> that affects electricity generation and transmission networks. It often
> occurs when a large number of people watch the same TV programmes while
> taking advantage of breaks in programming to use toilets and operate
> electrical appliances, thus causing large synchronised surges in national
> electricity consumption._

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup)

~~~
msquog
The world cup half-time tea break spike. The load of millions of electric
kettles boiling in unison.

All the nation's toilets also flush repeatedly at much the same time, which
was a central plot point in the film "Flushed Away".

It's an interesting phenomenon, though I'd never considered that dealing with
it could prepare us for a malicious attack some day.

~~~
andai
Looks like the control room has a little TV in it, to help with the timing.

[https://youtu.be/slDAvewWfrA](https://youtu.be/slDAvewWfrA)

~~~
jonplackett
Is it still done like this? I feel like there's a lot riding on this one guy
clicking his mouse. Surely there's a way to automate this?

~~~
gmueckl
How would you automate that better/more reliably than having a human interpret
the programme?

~~~
rndgermandude
That would require "AI".

E.g. in football/"soccer" the half time break isn't at a predetermined point
in time, as the start of the game can be delayed and the referee can and
usually does give some extra time to make up for unplanned breaks due to fouls
etc. Same after regular time in the second half. And if it's a knockout game,
then you may even have real overtime and even a penalty shootout to find a
winner. Then you have unplanned/semi-planned breaks like players getting a
break to drink when it's hot, or... heavy rain or... the ref getting hit in
the head with a bottle. And people will use these breaks to do their
"business" and make tea/coffee/use the microwave oven. And after the game,
players may stay on the field to celebrate or cry about the loss, which I
would guess a computervision "AI" would have trouble distinguishing from the
actual game.

Just having some people watch the game in the control room (which they
probably would do or at least want to do anyway) is still easier and more
reliable than trying to train an AI to detect all that, in my humble opinion
:D

Of course, automation like automatically detecting and scaling the grid by
looking at the grid itself would and does help a lot; but that's different
from automating watching the telly.

~~~
gmueckl
I have to admit that I was asking that as a loaded question as my thinking was
much like yours, but I didn't feel like typing it out. A human is probably the
most reliable "AI" for the job :D.

------
wwwwwwwww
Why label it disinformation? Even real information, presented in a
"weaponized" way, can bring down power grids or entire governments. Limiting
the discussion to just a certain kind of information, that we then prefix
"dis", covers up the real problem. The real problem being that, while we very
much value the open and free flow of information (free speech), that same
freely flowing information can be weaponized and destructive. And SM has made
it so much easier to weaponize information, both real and "dis".

~~~
sp332
I think you're describing misinformation. Disinformation makes people mistrust
their news sources, so that any source of information might be as trustworthy
as any other. That's why they would be susceptible to fake discount
notifications like the ones described in the paper.

~~~
Mirioron
> _Disinformation makes people mistrust their news sources_

But the news sources themselves make you distrust them. I doubt that they are
actively trying to make their readers mistrust them, but they seem to get that
end result by simply engaging in politics.

------
guerby
Funny things happen sometimes: french president Emmanuel Macron speech on TV
on april 13th 2020 was followed by an estimated 36.7 millions people and led
to 2.5 Gigawatt lower electricity consumption in France between 20:00 and
20:30 local time. Grid manager RTE lowered production by 1.9 GW for nuclear
and 0.6 GW for hydro to match demand.

[https://www.rte-
france.com/actualites/allocution_president_c...](https://www.rte-
france.com/actualites/allocution_president_chute_consoelectrique)

" L’allocution d’Emmanuel Macron, retransmise sur les principales chaînes
d’information ce lundi 13 avril, a été suivie par 36,7 millions de
téléspectateurs selon Médiamétrie.

Ce record d’audience se voit au travers de la consommation d’électricité des
Français qui a chuté de 2 500 MW, entre 20h et 20h30, soit l’équivalence de la
consommation d’électricité de Paris."

------
pjc50
It's much simpler to convince people to just burn down their infrastructure:
[https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/4/21207927/5g-towers-
burning...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/4/21207927/5g-towers-burning-uk-
coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-link)

See also convincing people not to take simple public health measures, do
unsafe things in defiance of nonexistant conspiracies, shoot up pizza parlours
etc.

------
steve_gh
That's why the UK has a number of pumped storage schemes such as Dinorwig and
Loch Awe. Typically this sort of facility can put 500MW into the grid from
cold at about 1 minute's notice. With warning (so the turbines can be spun up
to speed) the ramp up time is about 10s.

------
peter303
This is not a scientific paper, i.e. reproduceable result. It is a
speculation. PLOS is becoming a junkmjournal.

------
etimberg
In certain places there are already systems that can handle when the system
load is > available generation. When this occurs, the frequency of the grid
drops and these automated systems begin dropping load. [0] has a report on
such a system in New Zealand that triggered.

These systems need to drop load before the frequency gets so low that it
causes damage to generating stations. In the 2003 blackout in the northeast US
& Canada, load wasn't dropped fast enough and the protection equipment at
generating plants tripped them off before damage could occur. For base
generation like nuclear plants, you generally need to wait up to 72 hours to
restart the plant [1]. One key reason for that long time period is the need to
wait for Xenon 135 levels to stabilize. [2]

The paper actually considers these systems, but dismisses them because "Third,
we disregard the possibility that power utilities react to the sudden increase
in the demand either by increasing the available generation or through load
shedding. As for the former reaction, it would be ineffective since the
primary cause of the blackout in our simulation is the violation of the line
capacity limits rather than a generation deficit. The latter reaction may also
be ineffective in protecting the residential loads considered in our study
since power utilities typically prioritize commercial, industrial and critical
loads during such contingencies."

So in other words, end consumers would lose power, but the grid would continue
to function as designed for critical loads. Hardly seems like the sky is
falling.

0\.
[https://www.transpower.co.nz/resources/report-2-march-2017-s...](https://www.transpower.co.nz/resources/report-2-march-2017-south-
island-aufls-event)

1\. [https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/why-
doe...](https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/why-does-it-take-
so-long-to-restart-a-nuclear-power-plant)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit#Iodine_pit_behavior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit#Iodine_pit_behavior)

------
tarkin2
Do the security services count disinformation as a threat to nation state
security? And if they do, how can they detect it, prove it and stop it without
becoming an arbiter of truth in democracies, where successful parties can
profit from foreign-agent supplied disinformation? The article talks about
practical concerns but the threat to state sovereignty seems as dangerous.

~~~
paganel
> Do the security services count disinformation as a threat to nation state
> security?

They probably do because they need to justify the huge, ever-increasing and
uncontrollable budgets they're receiving. It also seems like "disinformation"
and "fake news" have taken the place of the "terrorists" from the 2000s and
early 2010s, I'm 100% sure I've seen many articles with titles similar to
"Terrorists can bring down city's/country's power grid" back during those
days.

------
agumonkey
On the opposite side, I'd wish to make some large scale positive blips. Like
facebook street cleaning challenges, or bike delivery day, or 1min cold shower
week.

------
bjt2n3904
I normally try to read the article behind the headline, but I honestly can't
bother.

Weaponized disinformation? Is there any other type of disinformation? This
feels very "newspeak".

